Part of the MO deer study was done on our farm. Very interesting and educational to talk with them (which I tried to as much as possible). One buck south of here went on the move right before rifle season and traveled almost 200 miles in 21 days then stayed there. Among the items I learned (this is in NW MO): a buck spends 80% of his time on 200 acres, the rut always occurs at the same time(give one or two days), if a fawn can make it the first two weeks it has a really good chance, fawn mortality in the first two weeks was 40%-60%, if you want to help fawns kill the coyotes and bobcats at the end of May and month of June. Seeing the radio collared travel maps on computer was a learning experience. A fawn under 48 hours old you can just walk and pick up. Those radio collars sliding up and down on the does neck can rub all the hair off. A bare neck when it is below zero looks cold. One buck I shot had a little metal ear tag. His collar had been released before the rut to not cause issues with neck swelling. At 1.5 years old he was collared then traveled 2.5 miles to our farm where he stayed the next 3 years.

GREAT BUCK !! and it sounds like it was a very exciting hunt Lots of tense action packed events in a short time

Same thing happens here.

I like those Big 6's!

https://gon.com/news/mature-buck-travels-200-miles-8-1-2-miles-per-day-during-rut#:~:text=Radio%20telemetry%20documents%20remarkable%20dispersal,during%20three%20weeks%20in%20November.&text=Researchers%20have%20discovered%20the%20longest,in%20just%20over%20three%20weeks

here is a study

I think how many girl friends he has in an area and how much competition that plays a factor in how far he will travel.

An adult male deer has about a one square mile home range That is 640 acres .But THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT COVERS IT'S HOME RANGE in square miles It can and will cover that territory in any shape or form as it is so inclined to do .And that is it's home range meaning that deer spends the majority of it's time there .They can and will get on their feet and walk a long way in a general straight line .and be several miles from where it started it's walk earlier in the day . Plus some deer are more homebodies than others .At the same time deer are more inclined to become nocturnal if pressured .And another thing is in open country they are more likely to cover greatly amounts of landscape distances than what deer of the mountains and woodland to .So I always say the deer do what they want to do when they decide to do it .

The good news regarding the rut range of bucks is that it minimizes in breeding of the population.
The not so good news is that CWD is more commonly found in older deer, especially older males and they can move the disease a lot and spread it quite easily and quickly for that matter. Increasing the number of anterless permits is not a bad way to try to reach the "social carrying capacity" for a management area but probably not as good a way of slowing the spread of CWD as may have been hoped.

Bryce

All very good points In some of the studies they found that the young buck (button buck )disperse in the spring time and relocate their home range to help to avoid inbreeding That means if you kill a button buck in the fall hunting season he most likely would not have been there as a 1.5 year old buck .anyhow .Mother Nature does not play favorites Predators' disease and cars all kill what are available And trying to stockpile wildlife generally causes other issues later

Some of the early radio collars in Ontario had the deer moving 350 miles, well past the boundries they were managing the deer herd at.
It took 5 yeRS FOR THE OLD FART BIOS to wake up and change the herd management blocks
micro management at it finest
southern Ontario has lake effect snow so there is some movement that was known, but this opened up a whole can of worms some bios COULD NOT SWALLOW. at one time