I learned a lot from being around the World Record Lovstuen buck (biggest shot by a hunter) during the year after Tony Lovstuen shot him.  I had a number of opportunities to interview the hunters involved in the three year quest for this buck.  They had so much documentation of this deer based on trail camera photos, that it was easy to draw certain conclusions about the buck.

One of the main conclusions I drew was the fact that this buck's home range kept shrinking each of the three years the hunters pursued him.  At first, the buck roamed a good bit.  They worked hard to find him with their cameras because he was somewhat unpredictable.   They even hung cameras on posts that they placed in open fields to see if he was crossing from one patch of timber to the other.  They would get him here and there, but never consistently in one area.

In the end, by year three, the buck was spending all his time in an area of about 120 acres.  In fact, Doug Lovstuen told me that he could almost always find the buck in a single draw whenever he wanted to get a photo of him.  Toward the third season of pursuit, the group began spending less time in that specific area, knowing that they had the buck pegged and there was little more to gain. 

When Tony shot the buck in late September of 2003, during Iowa's early youth season, the deer was coming from that very draw and heading toward a pond, presumably to get a drink before venturing out to feed. 

There are two reasons the buck's range might have been shrinking.  First, it may have been in reaction to hunting pressure on surrounding farms.  While this is possible, it never stopped him from roaming in prior years.  The second reason his range likely shrunk is due to his progressing age.  I have seen this before on bucks on our farm.  I often see the same old bucks in the same places week after week and even season after season.  

This information may be useful and then again it may not.  It only helps if you have one of these old bucks around that you are hunting.   If you do, and you simply can't seem to see him like you could in other years, it may be that his range has shrunk and he just isn't going to the same spots he used to visit.  I have a couple of bucks like that and my strategy this year is to move the cameras carefully in smaller increments in an effort to keep from "skipping" right over him in my quest to find him. 

As the season appraoches, I'll update you on how well that is working.  There are definitely a couple of bucks I need to pin down really soon or they are likely to die of old age. 

Have a great day.