I was doing a little paper work, part of my preseason routine, that involves plotting shot distances on aerial maps from some permanent stands. In the process, I happened to calculate the total area I could effectively hunt from these stands. It was just a curiosity, but it brought home to me the importance of hunting as many hours as you can.
I hunt mostly brushy country, mixed mesquite, oak, and elm aldjacent to drainages. My average area covered by a stand is about 7 acres. Our buck age structure is about 25% 3+ year-old bucks (potential trophies). The average home range of a mature whitetail buck in this country is around 1 1/2 square miles (960 acres). During the rut, the older bucks expand this range quite a bit searching for receptive does, so let's increase that modestly to 1400 acres. Based on our land layout and the buck age structure above, somewhere between 3 and 5 3+ year-old bucks are likely to have a range that includes the hunting area of my stand. Let's take the average and say it's 4.
Big bucks move a lot during the rut, but the majority of their activity is at night, so let's say that only 40% of their activity occurs during shooting hours. In addition, we must account for the fact that a buck is only going to be active about 60% of any 24-hour period. That leaves us with only a 24% chance that the buck will be moving within its range during shooting hours.
Let's also assume completely random movement uniformly throughout their range (which is never actually the case, but without specific data for each deer, we must assume the random uniform movement). This means that the chance for any movement within my stand area for any given buck is 7acres/1400acres = 0.5% chance of movement through my stand area, x4 bucks in range (from above) = 2%. This must be modified by the activity factor in the paragraph above (24% chance of daylight activity), so the net result is about 0.5% chance of seeing a 3+ year-old buck on any given day. To be statistically assurred of seeing one of these bucks, I would need to hunt all day for 200 days!
Of course, stand placement, concentrated movement patterns, etc. increase these odds, sometimes dramatically. But the point is, we are fighting an uphill battle against the odds. If we only hunt half the daylight hours, we will decrease our odds of seeing the good bucks by 50%. I have aother theory that if you skip the middle daylight hours @ 10 am to 2 pm, you will reduce your odds quite a bit more. Stay out there as long as you can!
