If you’ve ever been on a good buck and had him disappear, you know the frustration and downright anguish that it can bring. Wondering if they were shot, or if they just relocated, possibly never to be seen again, can be a hard pill to swallow. But you don’t have to just accept that they are “gone.” There are some ways to refind and even take “vanishing bucks”.. that is if you have a particular set of skills. Let’s look at the reality of this difficult task, how you might be able to refind a buck you thought was long-gone, and maybe even put a tag on him.
1. The Big Limitation:
First lets address an enemy of you accomplishing this – the range of the buck you’re after. This can vary wildly depending on his age, pressure in the area, terrain, food sources, and personality. We’ll talk about buck personalities later, but on average data shows a buck’s home range is around 640 acres or one square mile (some more, some less). This means that most hunting properties do not encompass a buck’s full range. He also probably has areas within it that he likes best or he feels safest (core area) or the areas he can be found in daylight. If these aren’t where you can hunt, or he has changed them, then you’re out of luck. So not having the space to track down the buck due to “no trespassing” signs is a major factor that can stop you cold, and a reality to accept for most people locked into small chunks of private land.
2. The Public Land Advantage:
Although some public chunks are small, and can be good hunting, the best scenario to refind a buck is terrain that is uninterrupted – aka big public land chunks. If he can roam a mile or more in any direction and still be where you can hunt him, you have a significantly higher chance of doing so. The other alternative is having a ton of contiguous private (not feasible for most) or a smaller piece that is close to large chunks of public that give you multiple places to scour if a buck disappears. The more property options within a few miles the better, because as we’ll see some bucks are roamers and some stick to their defined home ranges.
3. Buck personalities:
Studies at MSU show two distinct buck personalities – mobile and sedentary. The former will either bounce back and forth between two areas, making them very unpredictable and hard to locate, or have two distinct ranges sometimes miles apart where they live for parts of the year. Mobile bucks make up about 1/3rd of whitetail and are the harder ones to figure out. However, with enough access and time, you can find the “shifters” who have the two distinct ranges and possibly hunt them with success due to predictability of these ranges. Sedentary bucks comprise about 2/3rds of whitetail and have one distinct range, making them easier to refind. He’ll be within his range, just maybe not using the same portions as often as he used to. Refinding him means pinpointing his currently used area, or where he likes to hang a particular part of the year, or where he retreats when the pressure’s on. It’s also important to determine if he’s just roaming more due to the rut, or if it’s outside of this phase of season. Rut is a totally different animal, and its unpredictable nature should not be factored into your decisions as much as non-rut time frames.
4. Leveraging History:
Refinding a buck in a short time period, like a single season,is a difficult task. Limited or no intel about a particular deer puts you at a major disadvantage and makes time your enemy. Each day of the season that ticks by just decreases your odds of finding him. It’s much easier to have several years of information on a deer through multiple scouting methods (trail cameras, glassing, observations during hunts), and using this to help predict where he’s hiding. This historic data is your ticket to refinding a deer, as bucks, even mobile ones, tend to follow the same routines (where and when) from year to year. Collecting data over time is your best friend, as bucks you’re familiar with are much easier to refind. So refinding a buck should usually be looked at as a multi-year task. (Learn about buck profiles HERE)
5. The Particular Set of Skills:
So when it gets down to it, what are the exact skills that will help you lock on a buck’s new location?
- Glassing – Hunting can be counterproductive when you’ve lost a buck especially if it’s not getting you closer to finding him. Stepping back where possible, and observing wide expanses of land allows you to cover much more terrain and is probably the quickest way to refind a relocated buck.
- Trail Cams – Canvasing a large area with trail cams can definitely get you back on a deer. But without unlimited resources ($$) or cameras this isn’t as effective as glassing and they only focus on small segments of your areas, showing the full picture. For optimal use focus on high traffic areas and food sources, and utilize cell cameras to save time and energy over SD models, which require the legwork of checking them. I’ve received intel on several bucks this way and it can be the little piece of evidence you needed for a high-odds hunt and kill.
- Working Your Network – Using other people’s eyeballs is probably the most overlooked way to get back on a deer. Talking to locals and friendly landowners has on several occasions directly led me from wondering where he’s living and showing in daylight, to knowing exactly where and taking him.
- Maxing Out Your Patchwork – The more properties you have access to within a few square mile area directly relates to your odds of refinding a buck within his home range. It’s simply an odds game at some point, so getting more permission should be a top priority for the immediate area where you hunt.
- The Observation Sit – If you think you have it narrowed down but aren’t quite sure, this can be a good way to gather intel on an area without pressuring it. Hang back and hunt/observe where you can see large expanses where you think he’s living. These sits can lead to dialing in the exact spot to be for a close encounter.
Your Best Bet:
There are certain properties that attract and hold deer, and ones that do not. Knowing the factors deer select for helps you know exactly how to narrow your focus, and which properties to ignore. Based on a study by Andy Little of the University of Oklahoma, if your area is heavily hunted (1 or more hunters per 80 acres), the older bucks will select for the best cover most likely, as their #1 need is staying alive. If it’s relatively low pressure (1 hunter per 270 acres or more), the best food will usually win and could be why he moved (outside of the rut). An area with both will definitely be tough to beat and where to look first. And a big mistake is hunting too soon or before you really have proof that the buck is daylight active where you can hunt him. So keep scouting until you get this confirmation.
At the end of the day, however, some bucks just aren’t going to be “refound” no matter how much work you put in. This is when you have to decide if you need to move on to a buck who’s actually killable, and drop the dream of refinding a particular buck…at least for the time being.
