How Many Rubs Does a Buck Make?

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Not seeing many rubs and scrapes in your area? This may be directly related to an absence of older bucks. Just how many rubs does a whitetail buck make each year? That depends on the buck’s age, and older bucks make more rubs. According to the University of Georgia’s Dr. Karl V. Miller, one mature …

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Bucks Shedding Velvet Early

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Like so much that happens in the cycle of the whitetail’s year, the timing of bucks shedding their antler velvet is closely tied to photoperiod (the number of hours of daylight in a day). Decreasing photoperiod in late summer triggers increasing testosterone levels, which leads to antler hardening and then velvet shedding. Interestingly, bucks began …

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The Case of the Vanishing Wisconsin Deer Genetics

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“We’ve got big whitetails because this area was restocked with deer from Wisconsin.” I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a statement like this one, and if you hunt in the South like I do, you’ve heard it too. There’s probably no genetic connection whatsoever between Wisconsin stockers and present-day deer, …

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Deer Hunting In June

| By Tanner Tedeschi
I just got back from a deer hunt… in June. Wait – don’t dial the Turn-in-Poachers Hotline. I was the guest of University of Georgia researchers who were darting deer and fitting them with GPS-tracking collars so they can study their movements. Getting a first-hand look at deer research in the field was a blast, …

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Know the Signs of HD: Hemorrhagic Disease

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During the summer of 2011, regional outbreaks of hemorrhagic disease (HD) in white-tailed deer stole the headlines throughout portions of the Unites States. This – occurring just four years after the HD epidemic in 2007, the worst year for the disease in at least 50 years – helped to affirm it as the most significant …

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