Patterning deer

This is the new trendy phrase it seems.... to pattern your deer but who here with any type of certainty can say they’ve patterned a buck? Does definitely seem to be creatures of habit but a buck just makes less sense the more I learn. In fact after all my experience to this point I believe the best way to kill a mature buck isn’t some special tracking skill, or food plot, or cover technique etc. it’s just having good land and time in the woods.

Guys can’t rant and rave about how good they are at hunting this and that but the folks that consistently kill big bucks have good land and get to spend more time in the woods than others.

You certainly can put yourself in places that greatly increase your odds on any piece of property. That goes for “patterning” a certain buck, or just finding a good spot where several different bucks frequent. But nothing beats having the time to put in and wait one out. If you have good woodsmanship and a decent amount of time, there’s not an animal out there that stands a chance.

Eat, Bedup, Mate. After about 3 1/2 years they transition to moving with the wind at their butt and mating with mature does in cover.

I’ve got mine patterned, The bucks on our property move at night. Except for January 17th they were all on their feet that day and I was at work.

To say you have one patterned is potentially possible, but not completely.

My take is that most wild animals are somewhat creatures of habit (they frequently feed/travel certain areas). I believe that these animals basically have a somewhat predictable travel pattern assuming nothing interferes (unknown variables). Unknown variables could be changes in weather, changes in a food source, terrain changes (flooding), a coyote or some other predator spooks them, or we as hunters spook them. I think that a once in a while interference does not affect the animals predictable pattern, but if an interference takes place too often or becomes predictable then the animal may alter their pattern accordingly. Once this happens and happens enough it could become have a generational affect. I have hunted places where every deer seemed to be nocturnal, as a result the hunters then moved closer and closer to bedding areas, resulting in even more nocturnal behavior.

This is why it's absolutely imperative to be aware of the wind and limit pressure as much as possible. I have a theory that a rain is kind of like a reset button, if I spook turkeys or deer I try to stay away from that area until after a rain.

Back to patterning deer; most years I will have a few different bucks that will frequent certain fields or stands "most" days of the week. This primarily happens during the first several weeks of the season, once pre-rut kicks in all bets are off. During this time I have to pick my wind carefully and normally if I can hunt the same stand 2-3 "prime" times in a given week I will have an opportunity to at least see the buck I was expecting.

Everything one needs to know to pattern a deer is already covered, especially the one about being in the woods and the other about being at work.

You won’t take that deer if you ain’t in da woods

Lmao. I know the feeling

some one on here said, if you find the the Doe's then sooner or later the Bucks should show up. No Does no Bucks ??? could that be a pattern of sorts.

If you are saying average Joe, ain't ever killed a big un, can go to prime property and kill them as good as a season mature buck killer just because there's a good number of big uns there YOU ARE WRONG. I'm not saying average Joe won't ever get lucky and kill one every now and then , but the seasoned woodsman will be much more consistent. I've seen many properties that have a good buck population and it's always the same couple guys that kill more big bucks than the others.

It is absolutely possible to pattern a buck . These new fangled game cams can make it a fairly easy task IMO.

Agree. But, the later in the season it gets, the harder it gets.

Best chance at killing a buck in a "pattern" is during bow season, before thousands of folks hit the woods and guns start going off. Feeding is their main goal, and you can pattern bachelor groups of bucks between bedding and feeding areas. Pressure is the key...like always.

Old bucks seem to be fairly easy to pattern with enough trail cams. They seem to do the same thing daily and the ones I have patterned have tiny areas they live in. Their routine can get them killed once you have enough info about that routine.

truth

I agree with you. I know there are exceptions, but by and large I've never seen bucks do the same thing. When I hear someone talking about "patterning" a buck, what I picture is they have him predictably visible at a precise point at the exact same time every day for days and days in a row. "He walks out on the bottom right corner of X food plot at 4:00 every day this week" Shish, I hardly ever get the same buck on the same camera twice in one week, and even then it was at different times and coming from different directions, then he disappears for two weeks, then he's on camera once at night a mile across the club, then gone a week, then on another camera in a different place, then finally dead on someone else's Facebook the next week, killed 3 miles from my land. I don't even think my bucks live on my land two days in a row, much less show up in the same place twice.

I can understand this fully!! haha

You nailed it!! That's exactly what I'm talking about and what I've gone through season after season. I've had no issue getting bucks on camera while in velvet at the same place.... almost the same times but once the velvet comes off it's an absolute crap shoot.

I have definitely seen bucks that enter certain fields at certain times. Problem is those aren't the ones that usually live too long. Had a 150-160 class buck that was like clockwork on my parents place. Well 2 out of 3 days he was within about 100 yards of the corner of the bean field. Problem is unless you live on a property and are there every day it is tough to figure out. Cameras only offer a small sample of the deers movement.

I think people need to make a distinction between "patterning" a 1 or 2 year old buck and the
occasional 3 year old on one hand, and 4, 5 or 6 year old bucks on the other.

At 4 they basically aren't patternable as they are 99% nocturnal - even during the rut.

I know a wise ole sagey man down in Ramer who had a saying about these fully mature bucks:

"They will pattern YOU before you pattern them."

A mature bucks pattern is that he doesn't have a pattern after the velvet comes off. I'd guess that 70% of the mature bucks I've seen, the first time I saw them was the only time saw them

I've been mighty lucky finding them during that 1% they're traveling during daylight.

It is about pressure. On 20,000 acre ranches in Kansas those bucks were pretty consistent until the hunters started showing up and killing a few. Usually the smaller ones cause a 150-160 class buck looks pretty big when your used to shooting 120s or smaller. Then the big ones got real sneaky.

But seriously, I don't think bigger bucks are necessary harder to pattern
.but older ones are because of pressure.

For 4 years I set aside about 500 acres and only hunted it 1 or two days a year. The last 2 years I have started hunting it harder but still carefully. The bucks on that place seem to move much more in the daytime than some of the other land I hunt.

Y'all making me feel real good about the 3+ year olds I've killed off public land the last few years.

This guy gets it. It's all bout the pressure. Keep the pressure down you might catch a mature buck in daylight, might even pattern him too.

To the OP, you need to PM whild bill and he can splain to you bout patterning deer, especially bigger bucks, and how to hunt them.

RonfromRamer said it best... Basically all the biggest bucks I've ever killed, was the first and only time I ever saw them. I'm the biggest wingnut in the bunch about "hunting pressure", but the real issue in Alabama is that your deer's home range is MILES!!!!!!! I've replied on dozens of threads here about multiple deer over the years that would 100%, no lie, no exaggeration, be on camera at my place at let's say 3:00AM, then be on someone else's camera 3 miles away at 6:00PM the same day. I've repeated the story of the crab-claw 7 point (VERY, VERY recognizable deer, both rack-wise and throat patch distinctions). If any of you know where the motorcycle track is on Hwy 21 between Talladega and Munford, I had that deer on camera sporadically right in behind that track. I hunted there one morning, checked that camera on the way out of the woods, and he was there in the daylight at 8:30AM (I just didn't see him). The next day I saw him dead on a tailgate on Facebook, killed by a guy I went to high school with who lives a dang long way from there. I inboxed him about it, said he killed it in his back yard right after daylight. Frankly I didn't believe his story, but he started sending me trail pics he had of him, many of which were the same day or one day apart (before or after) that I would have pics of him. Based on Google Earth, his address is 3.5 miles AS THE CROW FLIES from where my camera was. Now that's an extreme example, but I've had similar experiences with trail cameras all over the state. This deer was crossing a major highway and at least two county roads basically every day it seemed.

Bux , they are all individuals, some are homebodies not traveling far from their core area and some are nomadic and go miles. Several radio collar studies prove this. How can there be a dominate buck in an area if they all wander aimlessly? If you have a sizeable tract with food, water ,cover and keep pressure low , you will hold some doe family units and some mature bucks along with them.

That's amazing. I've never heard your story before but I absolutely believe it. That just makes me want to ask so many more questions of the "Deer" guys. What do you think made him move that much? (food, cover, water, does, etc)

Deer who live in hardwoods, like TNF, have to travel a long ways to get the nutrition they need. On our mountain property, this is the case, but on our club it's not the case, they have smaller 400-600 acre home ranges. Yes, there are exceptions to every rule. Some mature bucks wander and some hold tighter to their core area.

To perpetuate the species.

Correct Blum. I killed a big 4YO 5X4 a few years ago that my son and I had seen several times but couldn't get killed. I had plenty of pics of him year around, at two locations for two years. When he was ripe , my son saw him one afternoon at one of the camera sites and couldn't get him killed . I saw him about 400 yards away a few days later and couldn't get a shot. I killed him a few days after that in between where we had seen him. That buck stayed real close. He could walk in 3 directions 400 yards and be in ag fields. Folks think because they can't see or kill them they are always 5 miles away. Some are , but some may be hiding right under their nose. They're all different , just like people.

Alabama's season length is both a blessing and a curse. Problem is too many guys running around for 2-3 months with rifles. If an individual deer has any site fidelity he is dead or at least shot at. Growing up in a state with a 1 week gun season you learn that deer exhibiting patterns may change them for a week or even 3-4 weeks during rut or during the orange army week. But they usually fall back in. I bet if you all changed your leases to bow only (or limited gun to a week) you would think differently about whether you can pattern an old buck.

Yeah I agree. The goofy hunting shows nowadays who are always talking about "patterning" bucks is total made for tv bs! I don't know about a high fenced or privately intensely managed high $ preserve because I have never hunted such a place, but maybe with zero pressure they could be patterned, but for the real world areas most of us hunt in the bucks movements are pretty random in nature. Of course this is perfectly normal for a grazing animal. I have been hunting for 40 years and the closest thing I have been able to put together for patterning is that I have rarely if ever seen a buck two days in a row. Seems to me they have a 3 or 4 day cycle of areas they move through. Have seen this several times.

I agree strongly that the nearly 4 month season contribute to mature bucks being wary, nocturnal and hard to pattern. Just because the season is so long doesn't mean you have to hunt all of it. Shut the place down for 2-3 weeks prior to the rut and see the difference. You can treat your property like it's in a state with a 2-3 weeks season.

2dogs, that will work, if you have a lot of acreage by yourself, but most people are either hunting public ground or in a club with a bunch of other morons that think they need to hunt every single day and wonder why they don't see a mature buck. For instance, my club is only 400 acres and there's me and my son, but the surrounding property, we have no control over so just because we keep down pressure on our land, the deer don't stay on just our land. On our mountain property its easier because there's only a few people hunting and it joins landlocked national forest.

Like other management and hunting strategies it'll work on small properties if you have the right neighbors. I have a friend that has 160 acres, it's the right 160. It's surrounded by large tracts with limited hunting. He and his son will hunt some the first week , then not set foot on the place till rut some 6 weeks later. They kill em and it doesn't take long.

Two angles when talking about "patterning". I do believe in some case on lightly pressured properties or when food sources are scarce that deer can be patterned in such a way that you can setup at a certain time/place and see them. I had a woods stand this past year that I hunted four times in the evening in a three week stretch. All four times a doe and her yearling showed up walking the same trail by me during the same time frame. They clearly were on a regular pattern at that point. Early in the season or later than when I was hunting, it might not have been the case but it was at that time of the season.

Another angle about "patterning" is predicting when deer might begin showing up on a tract of land. The first year I hunted a particular tract, I began feeding corn in the middle of it. Over the year (and the season), I would occasionally see my shooter bucks on the property and they would largely be random visits at night. However, when the rut began, my pictures of those deer dramatically increased - and a lot of the activity would be in the daylight hours. When I started seeing daylight pics of a big 8 during the "first rut", I started hunting the property and killed him within a few days. Everything died down after that and pics resumed as usual. When the "second rut" began, a big 6 started showing in the daytime. I began hunting the tract again and killed him within a few days also. In this "patterning", I wasn't trying to pin either of those deer down to a certain time/place. Rather, I just needed a general time frame to know that they would be in the area during daylight hours.