Weird Buck Activity?
I posted this in my team thread but also thought I'd post it here to see if anyone had any ideas on what this buck was doing.
Well, I went out yesterday evening to an overlook on our propertyto see if any shooters were moving. It's a perfect vantage point that I use regularly when I'm scouting preseason and even during season to set up spot and stock with my rifle or Muzzleloader. Well, it was about an hour till dark and I hadn't seen anything yet and I was getting a little discouraged when I spotted a deer across the field. He came out approx 700-800 yards on the other end of this field. At that distance I couldn't tell how good he was but I could tell he had a rack. He walked up the Eastern most fenceline to a percimon tree. As I watched he kept raising up on his hind legs and I guess he was eating percimons that were on the tree. After several minutes of feeding on the tree he proceded up the fenceline and rubbed a small tree. Then he slowly crossed the field and made another rub. By this time he was still about 4-500 yards out and I could tell he was a pretty nice buck. After making that second rub he did something strange. The field has recently been cut for hay. There was a small clump of grass and he walked over to it and started raking his antlers violently in the grass. Over the next 15 minutes as I watched him, he would walk off from this clump of grass but then he would go back to it and start raking his antlers violently in the grass again. It was getting close to dark now, and the buck finally started moving toward me. The closest he got was about 150 yards below me before he disapeared into the trees below me. I got a pretty good look in the deminishing light with my Bushnell 10x50's and he looked really good. I couldn't tell how many points he had as there wasn't enough light but I could tell he had good mass and was very tall. His width was at least as wide as his ears. As he entered the treeline below me, he walked within 30 yards of my stand hanging on the edge of the field. I've never seen this kind of behavior before, unless I was watching a buck make a scrape. This buck never pawed the ground, he just used his antlers and he never urinated that I could tell. Nevertheless, there's a good shooter hanging out right near my stand and I'm hoping he'll give me an oppurtunity on opening day. I marked the clump of grass and am going to go take a closer look at it tommorow evening. Anybody else got any Idea's on what he was doing? One other thing I'll mention, I have been seeing small bachelor groups of bucks in groups of two's and three's. This is the first buck I've seen by himself.