I read here and on several other sights where people are watching a group of does expecting a buck to be chasing them or someone says I shot a buck chasing 3 does etc. From my experience if you see a group of does they are not in heat and no buck is going to be chasing them. if a buck is chasing a doe that is in heat she wont be with any other doe it will be one doe and one or more bucks until she is finished. Sure I have seen a buck come out and check groups of does but in no way are they chasing the group of does. Are people calling a buck checking a group of does chasing? Or do bucks actually chase groups of does for some reason?
A few years back had a group of 3 or either 4 does come crashing out of a thicket in a old cutover. Less than a min I heard another deer coming and it was a 8pt. Idk if he was chasing them as a group or if one of them was hot but he was def pushing them and following them. Until I stopped him anyway.
You may see a lot of pestering of doe groups, generally by younger bucks, but certainly older bucks will do the same. It is also very common to see a pair of does or a larger doe group come through and a buck come through trailing, and could be 30 minutes to an hour later. Generally, the trailing bucks will be moving along pretty good, nose down and grunting. Typically, though, a full-on chase is when a doe has been singled out by one or more bucks. I have seen more than one buck chasing the same doe a couple of times. Several years ago, a buddy of mine in MS saw 7 racked bucks chasing the same doe.
I watched a fork horn enter the far end of a food plot and feed for all of about two minutes. He fed through and entered the woods to my right. About five minutes later he is directly to my right maybe 15 yards in the woods. He got downwind of the foodplot and was inside the wood line scent checking the field he just left out of. Not two minutes later two little does maybe 65 to 70 pounds enter the field from my left. The buck to my right makes a strange blow noise and the two does proceed nervously walk over towards him. That fork horn bust out of the brush and chased those does wide open through the woods. I could hear them crashing through the woods for several hundred yards. I have seen bucks pester does plenty of times but that was first time I actually got to watch a buck call does to him only to chase them through the woods. It was pretty neat.
I’d say a buck harassing/cruising a group is not chasing. He’s looking for a willing partner, but they might not be ready. Once he has one paired off then it’s chasing. Here’s a couple of videos I got a few weeks back. He’s just checking to see if anyone was hot. Harassed them for about an hour.
ive accidentally shot more than a couple small spikes because i shot at what i thought was a group of does if you see a group of does moving this time of year there is a good chase the tailing deer is a small buck i learned to never shoot the tailing deer in a group its hard to see small horns at 100+ yards on a moving deer when you have about 3 seconds to shoot
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