Today's Hunt

Well today was a good day to be hunting. The weather was great, a little cold this morning but not intolerable, no noticeable wind, and a crescent moon only 5% full. I saw 3 bucks this morning, which is kind of unusual, but even more interesting, I saw all 3 of them at the same time. A younger 6 pointer, an old 6 pointer, and a very young 4 pointer. The young 6 pointer was the only one who even came close to giving me a shot as he came out of the thicket to my left at about 40 yards, but he immediately headed away from me. The young 6 pointer and old 6 pointer met under a white oak tree about 65 yards from me and began to spar a little, not too serious as I discussed in my first post it's not the time of year for them to fight seriously yet.  The young 4 pointer only wanted to keep his distance and watch, but he quickly got scared away as he didn't want any part of what was taking place. This took place in an area I've been hunting for a the past few days, where there is a clearly defined scrape line that looks to be very well maintained, so I knew this was the home territory of a somewhat mature buck. So now the question is this, how do I know which of these bucks that I saw is the one responsible for these scrapes, and therefore lays claim to this area? This is important, because the buck that controls this area is the one I'm most likely to see there again, and therefore is the one I want to try to set up to kill tomorrow morning. Let me give you an analogy that will help solve this puzzle of who's home area it was. The young 6 pointer was probably 2 1/2 years old based on what I saw of him today, so we'll equate him to about a 16-18 year old human, not quite in his prime but getting there. The old 6 pointer is probably 5 1/2 or 6 1/2 so we'll equate him to a 50 year old human, slightly past his prime. And the 4 pointer is basically just a human child. As I discussed before, during the pre rut the testosterone production of bucks is going through the roof. So the young 6 pointer, equated to a 16-18 year old man, is a good looking young stud with his hormone levels through the roof.  He wants to mate, badly, but does aren't yet in estrus. So all of his sexual frustrations have to be taken out somehow, what better way than to scrape the hell out of the ground every few feet and rub your antlers against trees as if they stole something from you. This impresses does, so once they are in estrus or "in heat" he'll be in a good position to obtain a lot of mates. That's the name of the game for a 16-18 year old human. The old 6 pointer, equated to a 50 year old human, has far less testosterone production at his age, but perhaps more importantly he has been around the block, he's seen it all. He doesn't need to spend his time scraping or rubbing as much, he knows mates will come to him, and he's right. Females just can't resist his gray hair and his "swagger" from having been around so long and having so many mates in the past. The young 4 pointer, equated to a human child, has hormones raging but no real shot at mating this year. He still has alot to learn. Unless the does greatly outnumber the bucks and begin to get desperate, he'll spend the rut watching and learning. Not to mention if he tried to control prime territory, an older buck would run him off and take over. So using this information, I think it's very safe to say that the young 6 pointer lays claim to this land and I can probably bet I'll  be seeing him again in this area, hopefully tomorrow morning. Thanks for reading :)