How To Kill A Good Buck In Early Bow Season

By Mike Hanback Big Deer Blog www.bigdeerblog.com

Your strategy starts with a working knowledge of a whitetail buck’s home range and core area.

New science reaffirms that the living quarters of most mature bucks are relatively small, especially on lands with good food sources and bedding cover.

Researchers from North Carolina State University fitted adult bucks with GPS tracking collars and found that bucks’ home ranges averaged 400 acres in late summer through early October. Most recently, Clint McCoy, a graduate student from Auburn, tracked 37 collared bucks on a 6,000-acre property in South Carolina. He found that the home ranges of various age classes of bucks, from 2.5 year-olds to 4.5 year-olds, averaged only 300 to 400 acres. One mature buck he tracked lived entirely within 108 acres.