“Wow, take a look at this ten-pointer,” my son, John, excitedly blurted. He was viewing his newest trail cam photos on my laptop in our scouting camp. “Its tines are much longer and have more bulk than the antlers on that other ten-pointer I showed you. And here’s another buck, a 2-1/2 year-old. Its antlers are weird but they have a pretty good spread. Here’s a forky. This is amazing. All these bucks plus one doe with a fawn were at this one location several times this the past week, day and night. I figured it might be a good spot to place my camera because of all the deer tracks I’ve seen in the snow in that opening in past hunting seasons, but I never realized it was a feeding area. All these deer were feeding on grass there.

“If the wind is blowing from the south on opening morning,” John mused, “like it often is in early November, some of those six-foot pines on the adjoining slope northwest of that opening would make a dandy ground level stand site.”

“Do you mean you are no longer planning to stand hunt at the Moose Mountain clearcut on opening morning?” I asked. “That would be a first in about twelve years.”

“Well,” he replied, staring at a nighttime closeup of that 10-pointer, “where would you hunt this buck?” 

“That photo has you mesmerized,” I said. “It’s even got you convinced you can shoot that buck where it was photographed. Remember what happened to your brother Dave a few years ago after his trail cam photographed seven mature bucks on a deer trail east of Acorn Mountain. While he sat in tree stands near both ends of that trail during the following hunting season, seeing no bucks, other members of our gang took four of them, two about a mile away and two about a half mile away. The reason was, those bucks were doing different things during the period they were photographed and the period during which they were hunted. In October they were eating green grasses in graze areas and breeding was still two weeks away. During the following November hunting season, they were eating thin stems of red osiers and sugar maple saplings in browse areas, lesser antlered bucks were sometimes sneaking back from where they were temporarily hiding off-range, having been chased off by the rampaging dominant breeding buck before breeding began, and that dominant breeding buck was spending most of its time searching for and accompanying does in heat. Because each doe 1-1/2 years of age or older was in heat only once for 24-26 hours on different days during that first of the three two-week periods of breeding when 85% of does are bred (November 3—17 in our region), that dominant breeding buck was doing a lot of traveling—here one day and a mile away the next.

“That buck you are staring at is a probable dominant breeding buck. About the only time you are likely to see it in the vicinity of where it was photographed during our firearm deer hunting season is when and where that doe you also photographed is feeding and in heat. Our deer normally begin feeding on browse on November on 8th and our next hunting season begins on the 9th. There is very little of the kind of browse our whitetails prefer in that opening where these deer were photographed. Their favorite browse is most abundant in three nearby locations: the Moose Mountain clear-cut, that steep wooded slope northeast of that clear-cut and the east side of that string of beaver ponds west of that opening. Stand hunting at one of these browse areas would make the most sense, but it now appears, like most hunters who have photographed a big buck at a certain location with a trail cam, you are now powerless to hunt anywhere else.

“If and when you do finally come to your senses and decide to hunt at a more sensible spot on opening morning, let me know. Then to prove how ridiculous it would have been for you to sit on a stool among those pines overlooking that area where those deer were photographed, I might decide to waste my first half-day of hunting there myself.”