Summer bucks showing up....then vanishing...
 

I keep cameras out all year, and this year up till' late June, I really was just getting pictures of doe.
At the end of June, I moved one of my cameras to a new spot only about 100 yards from where it was previously.

I wound up getting pictures of 3 good bucks moving through all on June 30th.

Here's the kicker......

I haven't got a single picture of them since.

It's like they moved through this game trail ONE DAY....never to be seen again......or hopefully during the fall.

Any ideas on why they vanished?

I wish i've seen bucks, every time I head up to my deer land its 100 degrees and sunny so they're always down in the swamps...I think. Try finding the food source and set up there.

The same thing happens with alot of people I believe. I know it does for me alot of years. Where I live the corn is the biggest factor on the disappearance of good bucks. When the corn height is still small they are all over my cams but as soon as it gets tall enough to conceal their entire body they vanish except for 1 or 2 appearances if I'm lucky. I have found away around this and that was to put my cam in a small island of trees completely surrounded by the corn and realized these bucks hadn't gone far.Not sure if any of my findings or problems may pertain to your situation but I hope it might help you. If you look at my avatar pic you'll see the deer in the bed of my truck and he was one that did a vanishing act as well. Had tons of pics up until the middle to end of July and he disappeared never to have his pic taken again. I actually came home one night at about 2am from a card game and seen him in the headlights along my road in the cut corn that night so I decided to go out and try to catch him slipping back into the woods. At approximately 6:45am here he come right down the trail as if I had scripted it and I killed him on December 9th 2009. Don't mean to babble about my hunt but just wanted to give you some faith and confidence that just because you don't see them or get pics doesn't mean their not there. Good luck to you and I hope you find at least one of them and have a great season.

food and water is the only thing that controls where any wild animal goes during summer. in most cases if there is good food supplies near water they will stay on it.
bucks are very lazy anyway and sometimes don't travel much at all.

ivee had the same problem too, up until two weeks ago. i was getting only doe pictures by the thousands, then all of a sudden i got six to seven different bucks and they were all taken between july 27 and july 30th. why i dont know, i did notice on my camera we were in the last quarter moon phase and i think thats why there was a lot of movement plus weather is cooling off a little bit, not much though.

I had the same thing happen to me this year. Dont remember the date for sure, but it was around the first part of July. I had 2 really nice 8 points come thru, and had 2 of my cams about 100 yards apart, get pics of them. Since then, nothing. I have started getting a few other bucks the last couple of weeks, but nothing like those two 8 points.

I usually try and put my cameras by soybean fields. I usually get nice pictures right up to when the bucks rub off their velvet. Then they slowly disappear after that. This is usually due to their summer range. I just hope some of the monsters I get on camera will still be on the properties I hunt come the fall time.

Deer are an interesting critter. The more food and water they have in one area, the less they move.

Also, they can have different feeding areas depending on the time of year. They will move from one type of food to the next as the seasons move along. This way they leave their winter feeding area with as much feed as possible so they can eat and expend the least amount of energy during the winter as possible.

I am assuming you are moving your cameras? We sometimes get a single picture of a big buck and then no more until we move the camera again. Some deer avoid cameras, IR doesnt seem to make a difference.

I had been getting pictures regularly of a group of big bucks earlier this summer until about July 12th. They've dissappeared, but I think they're in the corn now like someone else mentioned. It's like they have a whole new forest to hide in and are less likely to be disturbed in the corn. I think there are fewer bugs for the deer to fight with in the corn as well. If you can find a corn field that has soybeans right next to it, watch the soybeans at dusk and I'll bet you find your bucks. I still get a lot of doe and young buck pictures however.