Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Serious Deer Talk Forum Yearling buck dispersal

When do most yearling bucks in Alabama disperse from their birth home to establish their new home range?

Most studies I have read were on November rut deer and say they primarily disperse in fall at 1.5 coinciding with the rut, with some dispersing the prior spring at 1 yr if their mother kicks them out prior to fawning. Is the fall dispersal still most common in Alabama or do ours disperse in January (or whenever the rut timing is)?

The reason I ask is I want to know if a spike I see on my place in November on a January rut property has already established a home range on my place, or will he be 5 miles away in a month?

They’ll disperse sometime between late winter and that first summer. They may choose to disperse again after that first year. How far they disperse seems to be more of an individual characteristic.

Late winter of their yearling year or the following late winter as a 1.5 yr old?

A spike on your place in November has likely arrived from somewhere else
I’m talking about a spike, not button head

Guess I should say most 1 year old bucks you see were not born there. They’ll disperse before their 1st birthday.

Thanks for the info. That is good to know. All the more reason to let them live if there is a better than even chance they stay in that same home range the rest of their lives.

I guess this is another thing that adds to it being all but impossible to improve genetics by killing culls. If you. Would make a difference, you would in reality just be improving them for someone else.

So a follow-up question for Matt and anyone else in the know. Since most bucks were not born on your property, what, if anything, can be done to recruit a dispersing yearling buck to choose your property as its home range? Is it pure randomness? Are they more likely to choose a home range with a lot of does for future mating potential, or one with fewer does for less food and bedding competition?

Everything I have read says most bucks stick with their chosen home range no matter what, even if there is better habitat nearby. So the trick is not to lure a mature buck to your square mile. It is to lure a young button buck or spike there. How do you do that?

I’m going to throw this out there, and take it for what’s it worth. There’s others who will disagree. I focus on providing the highest quality habitat possible, with the least competition possible. Bucks spend 11 months out of the year either alone or with other bucks. A receptive doe is on his mind the other month. If you’re trying to provide the most attractive area possible for young dispersing bucks, you need an abundance of food resources, cover, low pressure and a lack of competition from other deer. Dwell on that a little bit.

And don’t listen to the “gotta keep all my does around to attract bucks” crowd. There’s so much scientific evidence on the breeding behaviors of deer I honestly can’t comprehend why anyone still believes having multiple does per buck on the landscape is remotely beneficial to the health of a deer herd.

Absolutely

A lot of it has to do with the make up of the habitat on a larger landscape level around you…..In late summer does are going to shift around and occupy the best fawning habitat…..Lets just say for example that fawning habitat is fairly limited in your area and you have a whole property full of prime……Even if you whack out a bunch of does during hunting season it’s most likely that come time have fawns….your fawning habitat will fill back again…..A lot of times dispersing bucks will end up occupying the secondary locations where they find adequate food sources but cover may be limited to a downed oak tree on a ridge point or something of that nature…..Its why you so often find bucks that have their core areas behind someone’s house or in a little 5 acre woodlot, etc…..These are areas that arent as conducive to fawning……

If you’ll take an area and zoom out to 30,000 ft and look at the area as a whole…..A lot of places will break down as here are my fawning areas and here are all the secondary locations where bucks are able to occupy…..There’s a lot of areas where the secondary locations will far outweigh the fawning…..BradB’s area we talked about would probably be a good example…..If inside of a 10,000 acre bubble you only have 3000 acres of fawning habitat and 7,000 acres of secondary habitat then think about how that could affect dispersal in the long run if fawning is limited but there are endless places to hide bucks…..Every property on the map doesn’t set up with the same scenario

Does the death of a yearling buck's mother at his young age, affect his dispersal by him staying at his birth home?



God Bless,
David B.

It can go either way. Some will disperse regardless.

I bet its just a matter of where he’s trying to hang out and the amount of aggression he’s getting from other does…..If dispersal is happening in late summer just before fawning then does are gonna move into and start hanging around the habitat where they want to drop their fawns and it would be at that point that they stop tolerating their buck offspring and any others that comes into that area…..If that orphaned buck fawn is trying to use prime fawning habitat then he’s likely to be shown aggression just the same as any other…..It’s very likely that it comes down to the old cliché answer that it just depends on how the variables play out for each situation.

I would think in the end though that its something that has little to no impact one way or the other on the grand scheme of things…..He’s just another buck fawn out of many that are moving around the landscape at that particular time and the end result of how they all settle out is the same in the end….. …..The does are gonna move into the best fawning cover to drop fawns and the dispersing young bucks are gonna get what’s leftover…. He’s either been orphaned in a “hole” that would have eventually been occupied by another dispersing young buck....or he hasn’t and has to move on when the does stop tolerating his presence in their fawning spots….

Here's something to dwell on for a little bit when it comes to the idea of trying to shoot does to open up holes for dispersing young bucks….Lets say you own 600 acres and you have it all on a burn rotation and the understory is just ideal……However, none of the neighbors around you burn and their properties are just your typical pine rotation understories that gets shaded out, some closed canopy hardwoods, yada yada yada…….If you’re the only one in the neighborhood with prime understory....do you think it would be possible to open up holes for dispersing young bucks that wouldn’t just get filled by other does from the neighbors come fawning time??

I believe you are over thinking the cover aspect. Deer require a lot less specificity than say turkeys and quail which have defined needs for nesting and brooding.

Quality deer habitat includes quality cover among other things. Create that and you will have does, fawns and bucks.

The situation I described is what many folks commonly refer to as a "doe sink"

A lot of times folks will talk about doe sinks as if it’s a bad thing….For me I just look at it as how the game board sets up on a landscape level….These places of improved prime understory loaded with 2nd year roughs are what supports many of our herds at a population level…..These are your main reproductive grounds in todays world of a landscape saturated in coyotes……These may be some of the only places on the landscape in that area that arent seeing 60-80% fawn mortality…..I would be more than happy to own a property that was labeled a doe sink if I were in such an area……You just need to recognize it for what it is in the larger context in which it exists…..If you’re the only one in the neighborhood managing for prime understory then it is what it is……..You’re the nursery and you wont shoot your way into changing that setup

If you really wanted to have a more even distribution of bucks and does occurring naturally and have places for young dispersing bucks to take up residence on your property ……then you would need control of a good bit of land and provide both prime fawning understory (2nd year rough) AND secondary buck bedding locations….. A lot of times properties will still have secondary buck bedding even if they’re trying to manage for prime understory across all of it…..You’ll still have some swamps and creek bottoms and SMZ’s and hardwood ridges, etc…. Most properties wont be all 100% burn units across every acre …..Every property is a little different though with a different mix of neighboring habitat…..Its why you hear guys talk about having nothing but bucks on their place sometimes or nothing but does, etc…..Its habitat related

Just something to ponder over when thinking every acre has to be a burned acre to be “quality” deer habitat…..Some of the best buck bedding I’ve seen was some hardwood ridges full of scattered blown downs from a storm that was on some neighboring property to a quail plantation…..It seemed like there was a buck in every tree top…..It was just natural ground “structure” that provided secondary bedding adjacent to the more prime habitat…..Some of the best properties are the ones that have a diversity of habitat types