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.