On a large, open forest in South Carolina, researchers tracked a 4.5-year-old, GPS-collared whitetail buck during August and September. Like many mature bucks, this deer had a small summer/early fall home range. GPS readings showed that he moved only a quarter-mile from his bedding area to a soybean field, where he fed every night.

The buck was easy to monitor and pattern. If you had trail cam pictures and bowhunted this deer, you’d probably hang a treestand on the edge of the beans, or maybe 50 yards back in the woods on his entrance trail. You’d have a good shot at tagging out, right?

Wrong! The researchers’ GPS readings showed that the buck never once arrived at the bean field before dark-thirty, around 9 p.m. Some nights the buck would hang around until 3:30 a.m., then he would start moseying back to bedding cover. The rascal was tucked safely in bed by 5 a.m. every morning.

Roll the Dice on Buck Bedrooms

One of those “unkillable” bucks? Possibly, though the researchers did note one chink in the buck’s armor. Although he never approached the soybean field before dark, he was often up and moving around in the woods 30 minutes before the end of legal shooting light.

The takeaway: When you bowhunt hard on a field or food plot but never see a mature buck that you know is there — a very common occurrence during the early season — you need to get more aggressive and push deeper into the woods and closer to where you figure the ghost is bedding.

It’s a risk, of course, and you have to play the wind and be smart, but sometimes it’s the only way to see and get a shot at a mature buck during the first week of archery deer season.

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