To some extent, white-tailed deer are creatures of habit.
Does, in particular, can often be seen in the same areas at the same times over and over again.
Then again, they can often be less predictable in their behavior. Especially bucks.
Well, there’s a buck in Washington County that has a keen sense of timing. Check out today’s trail camera photos submitted by Austin Tenney of Harrington.
“The spot is a spot my family uses every year. We have killed a few nice deer out of the exact spot,” Tenney said.
Tenney was reviewing his trail camera photos recently when he noticed something familiar. A nice buck, which appears to be a healthy, long-tined eight-pointer, was captured on the right-hand side of the frame.
The photo, from the Cherryfield area, was snapped at 7:22 p.m. on Oct. 27, 2021.
Thinking the deer looked awfully familiar, Tenney went into search mode.
“[I] looked back through my old pictures and found that I had the exact same buck on camera a year later to the day, almost the same time!” Tenney said.
Sure enough, a photo from the same trail camera dated Oct. 27, 2020, shows what looks like the same buck, in the same location.
The time stamp reads 6:58 p.m. — one year and 24 minutes prior to the deer’s reappearance.
“I haven’t seen the deer while hunting,” Tenney said. “I’ve only had the two pictures of the deer, so I’d say he just travels through around the same time of year!”
Nathan Bieber, deer biologist for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said deer have been known to pop up on camera multiple times over a period of years.
“I would say it’s coincidence that it was that precise in terms of when it showed up,” Bieber said, “but deer are very predictable like that and it’s not at all unusual to have the same buck on camera around the same time every year for its entire life, until it gets shot or hit by a car or dies of old age.”
While it is impossible to predict when, or if, the buck might come back to the spot, Tenney at least knows it is in the neighborhood.
Thanks, Austin, for sharing the photos of the on-time buck!
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