Gibby's outdoor

08/24/2025

08/05/2025

This map shows movements for the same buck as our post from a few days ago, just one year later. He's now 6.5-years-old. GPS locations are recorded every 15 minutes and shown for the month of October. How does the food-cover theory hold up now, and why the difference?

1. The food-cover pattern from last year is gone. He now only makes 3 trips to the field from last year, and he doesn't stop to eat. Why? It's no longer planted in soybeans! There is no longer a destination food source in his summer range, so the food-cover pattern disappears.
2. His bedding habits are even more sporadic than last year. His bedding area is still the same 200-ac patch of timber, but now his beds are scattered more uniformly throughout.
3. Hunting this buck will be more difficult than the previous year. He's no longer on a predictable food-cover pattern, and hunting him will require getting up-close and personal in his bedding area. Which bed will he be in? Who knows! He has dozens of beds scattered throughout.

This buck is not an anomaly; we see this pattern in most of our GPS data. Food-cover patterns are strongest when there is a destination-style food source, such as a large soybean, clover, or deer vetch field within a buck's summer range.

Take-home point? Habitat management efforts that prioritize high-quality bedding areas and large, destination-style food sources are an excellent way to capitalize on early-season buck movement patterns. Once fall rolls around, bucks get much less predictable!

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