Bumping bucks

Ok. So I've been having this debate with a couple people. I'd love to here your guys answers.

Bumping a buck out of his bed /bedding area. Will he return? If so how long? Or do you think he will pick up shop to never return to that location.

I think the first time he is bumped,he will return. It might be a week or more. Bump him again and no promises. This is assuming he is maintaining a small core area. A vagrant buck with a large core area will probably not show for a long time if at all. This is just my observation and they all have personalities and can react differently.

I have surprised a young whitetail buck and had it hang around (go off a hundred yards, snort, try to sneak back), during squirrel season. Every mature buck I've bumped has gotten the hell out of there, and the bigger ones get out faster and run further. In my experience.

Whitetails have a home range but it's pretty big... several square miles. They can have different ranges depending on the time of the year, as well. Some of the biggest bucks I've seen have been bedded close to roads and spotted as I was driving... most hunters want to go deep into the woods to where the deer hole up, and the deer have figured this out and stay close to busy roads during the daytime.

I want to preface that it depends what "bump" means as well as other factors like, like deers experience and age, pressure and the such.

Depends on the place and what type of deer.
White tail. No idea.

Mule deer…depends.

Mule deer on summer range in openish country, they will not return to that bed if you hear a blow.
They don't usually sleep in any particular bed anyways, often they are always moving and are in a general area.

In decadent brush, I have no idea because that's not prevalent mule deer habitat in any significant number. Bumping summer bucks can send them to a different county and to never return.

In wintering and transitional ranges, yes. They will walk a circle and come right back if they think they are in the clear. That circle can be a mile or so, or the size of the canopy cover of the bed.

Coues often return to the general area as long especially if it's just a soft bump.

@Jahnny thank you very much for starting this thread. I am enjoying the answers.

I don't believe a deer sleeps in a specific bed all the time. It all depends on wind and pressure (whether human or predator). I do believe a deer will absolutely return to an area after being bumped out regardless of how he was bumped. Camera's prove that. If you bump a great deer say a really nice mature buck, and he just up and never returns…chances are he was already out of his core area/home range. Here in North Florida, dog hunting is king and I've seen deer come back the same day after being ran by hounds and shot at. Same as our leases in the Midwest…had a mature buck get pushed off our place (1,000 acres) by some beagles and a guy rabbit hunting without permission…I was in the stands to see him run by and he was back on camera the same evening. But I believe deer in say big open country behave differently than say a south eastern deer. Habitat is just so different and what a deer experiences everyday is different. But my experience says if he is bumped/shot at/ran out he will be "back" if in fact it's that deer's home area. He may not sleep in the exact spot again but it's more based on wind than anything else.

I honestly think it depends on a lot of factors and species of deer. Growing up hunting the brushy foothills in northern California my grandpa always use to say 9 times outta 10 if you jump a good buck out of a brush patch he'll be back there that afternoon. I have personally seen it on a few occasions. Hiking in first thing in the morning if we jumped a buck out of a brush patch we'd hit it coming back down the mountain that afternoon / evening. Now it wasn't 9 times outta 10, but we did kick up the same buck in the exact same spot on a few occasions. They'd use the exact same escape route as they did in the morning as well.
I've seen it where I live now in northern Florida just not to the same extent. Last season I missed a buck mid afternoon with my muzzle loader when we were scouting a new area. Kicked him up out of his bed. Next morning I sat in a tree right above where he was bedded. Around 0830 he came working in headed to the same spot. Didn't miss that time.

They call it "bump and dump" for a reason. They'll come back.

We bump bucks every night coonhunting with dogs and the next day they are right back on our cameras, doesnt really seem to affect them, not sure if bumping them with dogs makes anymore difference then a person bumping them though

I'm also in NW Florida and in my experience most bucks seem to prefer a few favorite places depending on wind. Many times when dog hunting we would take careful note of where the dogs actually jumped the buck and the next time we were in that area we would walk the dogs into that exact same spot and often jump that buck or at least another one.

When I walked and stalked I didn't find that to be true nearly as often. I always thought that they spooked a lot more if I actually walked up on them and they smelled, heard or saw me up close. Hard to say though and I don't stalk hunt as much as I used to.

Another thing... I honestly think that older smarter bucks pattern hunters and that's why novices often blunder up on huge bucks and kill them. We are all creatures of habit and therefore easily patterned.

My home backs up to a pretty big tract of state forest where no hunting is allowed and the bucks in there are way less wary and spooky than deer in heavily hunted forests.

I've often thought that although game cameras often reveal huge mature bucks that are never killed, or at least if they were nobody ever showed up bragging about killing them, they often die of old age once they get really smart about understanding the habits of hunters and the times of the year they hunt.

One more thing... I've always thought that deer can read your body language very well and if you're sneaking along looking all about you they fear you but if you walk along seeming oblivious to your surroundings and not obviously looking around they don't fear you nearly as much. Hence the stories of hikers seeing big bucks that often just stand and stare at them and hunters having a hard time believing them.

They will come back. I purposely bump whitetail bucks sometimes so I can find them. I think of bedding areas not specific beds. I'm archery hunting a buck that's bedding in about a 20 acre area right now. Camera data and observations show he's in there most of the time.

At some point they will be back. The fact that they escaped proved to them that the bedding location worked to avoid predation. Bump them again and it may be over for that spot.

I have no experience with anything other than whitetail, and after hunting them for over forty years I can tell you that you just never know what an individual buck will do. I bumped a mature buck one season from his bed and hunted somewhere else the next day. My buddy killed that deer within yards of where I jumped him the next morning. Mature deer around here are notoriously nocturnal, and if you see them in daylight hours it is rare. I've got a buck here on my place I have hundreds of pictures of, but only one in daylight. I've never seen him, and there is no pressure here. We're well into season, and I have not hunted a single time. I only hunt my stands a few times each year, and I wait until the rut or right before or after. Whitetail are funny critters.

Critter Picker said:

I think the first time he is bumped,he will return. It might be a week or more. Bump him again and no promises. This is assuming he is maintaining a small core area. A vagrant buck with a large core area will probably not show for a long time if at all. This is just my observation and they all have personalities and can react differently.

Click to expand...

From my experience in my area I agree with this.