Depends on the deer, they don't all act same.

In my experience, old deer are kinda like us old folks in that they're set in their ways. They probably would change their habits if forced to but tend to keep to the same routine. The 8 pointer I described above, I watched that buck from a distance of 300-400 yards away, from opening day until I killed him in early January. The closest I was able to get was 100 yards, and that was the day I shot him. He bedded in the same area every day that I could tell. It was the ideal set up too. He had food, water and cover right that. When I recovered him there were bed spots everywhere in the immediate area. They don't get old being stupid, granted a doe can change that aspect during a certain time of the year.

Game cameras have done more than anything to open my eyes to this. The same buck will be on cameras all over the place, and I mean miles apart sometimes. I think you're literally hunting ghosts lots of the time.

My parents own 22 acres, it's a large hardwood ridge with a few fingers. The next door landowner cut his timber 6 years ago now, it's about 100 acres, and from my parents' treeline I could literally see 90% of this cutover. To me, it was obvious, this is where EVERY deer within a 5 mile circle should be bedded ALL the time. However, I'd sit on that cut multiple days and not see a deer (or at least not a buck), then check my cameras and have bucks on it maybe the day before or day after, just random. Over time I noticed other people I knew in the area had "my" bucks on their cameras too, some of which would be long distances away, even across major highways. It was highly unlikely that I sat on that big cutover that many times and they just never happened to stand up...they simply weren't there much of the time. I often share the story of the "crab claw 7pt", which I had 1000's of pics of. Very heavy mass, extremely identifiable with odd crab claws on the end of each beam. I had this deer on my camera at 7:50 AM on Thanksgiving morning that year (I was actually in there hunting), and he was killed by a friend on Black Friday morning over 2 miles away. Not rutting, no reason whatsoever to be that far off the next day. After talking to my friend, he said he had 1000's of pictures of that deer too, sometimes on the same days that I did.

I have had bucks lay down next to a hot scrape several times even mature bucks during the rut. Wide open areas. I am assuming they picked that spot to either keep other bucks run off or watch for does. probably both. I have a video of a big buck that laid down right next to scrape and stayed there for several hours just resting and looking around. Had no idea a camera was within 5 feet of him.