I am able to spend a lot of time in the woods because my camp is located just outside my work. Because of this I witnessed something that nobody else seems to ever seen before.
One night in the fall while riding 4-wheelers with some family and friends around midnight. We were climbing a hill into a open field and as we approached the crest of the hill, we smelled this very strong over powering urine musk smell. it was horrible smelling. When we broke the crest and entered the field, we all still swear that there were at least 75 to 80 deer in the field as our headlights shone on them. And to this day, we swear that each and everyone of them was bucks. We never told the story to anyone from fear of nobody believing this sighting. Well, one afternoon on my land, a few years later, I walked out back at lunch time to look around my treestand for buck sign, hadn't seen any up till this time. Standing under my treestand was 15 deer, all 15 were bucks. The next day, I started seeing buck rubs and scraps throughout the property. Because I never seen this before, and having the other experience on the 4-wheelers a few years before I felt I had seen something of nature that is very rare. One night I decided to share this experience in the local bar with some other local hunters from around here. As I expected, they all laughed, and most had never even heard of bachelor groups. The few that had heard of them, wasn't of this magnitude. Well standing nearby listening as I told the story and nodding his head as I spoke was the landowner of the field I spoke about. He approached the table and said that him and his wife had spotlighted that same field each season for years and over a ten year period, twice they had witness the same, with that many deer and all were bucks. This obviously slowed down the laughter. Now after years of studying rubs and when they start appearing, I'm convince that there is a certain day, one day, out of all the others, that the bucks meet, to determine the dominate buck, or as they say, the pecking order. Because I am in the woods 365 days a year, I was one of the few that was able to witness this act of nature. Has anybody else ever seen bachelor groups of this size? I read on groups of 6 to 8, hanging together, for periods of time, but we're talking 50 to 75 or more, meeting only one night in the fall, just before the start of the rut. Any input?