ORIGINAL: shed33

David Morris (hunting trophy whitetails 1 and 2)offers up quite a bit of evidence out there in regards to super secretative bucks. Basically in his bookit boils down to low testosterone levels either genetic or from an adolecent injury. Shy bucks that spend their entire life making survival their number 1 priorty even during the rut. Year in and year out due to low levels of testosterone they opt out of the rut, they feed, sleep, eat and do the majority of it under the cover of darkness. When a buck opts out of the rut and shys away from pressures by hiding out hisentire lifehe gains aphysiological advantage of passing on manyfavorable nutrients to body health and antler growth,on the other hand;rutting bucks exhaust these nutrients year in and year out while rutting..... Many of the greatest nontypicals including the worlds Top 2 were found dead, not killed by hunters.

Most of the biggest most careful bucks end up getting killed during the rut, period, we all know why....testosterone becomes their demise, conversely take thatchemical away and the drive to breed away from a monster buckand give him a shy almost paranoid demeanor, you get a ghost like buck that (with the right antler genetics) can grow tofreakish proportions, still it's very rare, but studies and testosterone sampleshave indicated this in Morris findings. It is an interesting chapter.

I'm not a fan of how Morris hunts these days ... basically Ranch raised bucks in Texas, but the man does know whitetails inside and out as a biologist. He spent many years in Georgia and then Northwestern Montana before he became more well known hunting and killingbig woods private and public land pressuredbucks.