 A
BUCK PICKS HIS CORE AREA
Identifying A Buck's Core Area
Editor’s Note: If you can find the core of a
buck's home range, you'll enjoy much-better odds of
taking him, since he'll spend most of his time in daylight
hours there. But what does the core of a buck's home
range look like, what ingredients must that core area
have to hold a buck and how can you find or create a
core area to take more big bucks each season? To learn
the answers to these questions and others, we've interviewed
some of the nation's leading biologists and deer hunters.
"A deer must have three elements in its core area:
food, water and cover, with cover being the most important,"
Dr. Grant Woods, wildlife biologist and avid deer hunter
from Missouri, says. Woods believes many hunters have
an incorrect perception of  cover.
"Most hunters believe cover is thick, dense underbrush,
a 4- or a 5-year-old clear cut, a cane thicket or any
place where you can barely see more than 8 to 10 yards
in front of you. But, I define cover as a place where
a deer feels very secure and can avoid predation. I
define predation not as a saber-tooth tiger that's going
to eat that buck, or a hunter that will shoot him. I
define predation as any type of disturbance that disrupts
a buck by making him uneasy or raising his metabolic
rate -- like dogs running through a region, hunters
walking in an area, or anything that a deer views as
a predator and thinks may harm him.” We've all
seen big bucks in state parks that human presence and
yapping dogs don't seem to affect. But Woods says that
deer in these places don't perceive dogs or humans as
threats. However, where a deer perceives a human or
a dog as a threat, the deer will seek to avoid human
or dog contact.
 Besides
these must-have elements in a core area, constant wind
direction also influences the site a buck chooses for
his core area. Deer use their noses more than their
eyes to protect them from danger. “When we've
put GPS collars on deer, especially big bucks, we've
noticed that in hilly or mountainous country, the biggest
bucks generally will bed just over the top of a hill
or mountain, usually on the east side," Woods reports,
"probably because most of the time the wind currents
come from the west. If a west wind hits the mountain,
goes up and over the top of the mountain and swirls
like a whirlpool, it will create an air cone that picks
up and carries scent from all directions." For
example, if you've ever seen water flowing through a
stream, you'll notice that when the water hits a boulder
in the stream and goes over or around the boulder, it
creates an eddy just behind the boulder. That eddy pulls
water toward the boulder from downstream as well as
upstream. That's why if a trophy buck sets up its core
area just over a lip of a hill or a mountain on the
east-facing side of that hill, he can smell everything
moving toward him from each direction.
 "I'm
not going to bow hunt in an eddy-like air-current situation,
because I know that the deer will smell me," Woods
advises. "The only way to take a buck bedding like
this is to take a stand site where you can see him before
he reaches this core area or when he's going away from
it." Although most hunters consider the deer's
nose its most-critical defense mechanism, Woods differs
with this opinion. "I believe that the number-one
defense mechanism of a deer is its rumen. Because the
deer has a big belly, he can consume a lot of food in
a short time. Then, he can go back to his core area,
regurgitate that food, chew it and digest it. So, a
trophy buck doesn't have to leave his core area or his
bedding site for very long. A buck's core area is usually
an impenetrable fortress. The more time the buck can
spend there, and the less time he has to spend searching
for food, the better his chances for survival."
TOMORROW: DETERMINING IF
THE CORE AREA HAS MOVED AND FINDING THE NORTHERN CORE
AREA
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