One of my stated hunting goals is to kill a buck of my desired age class every year. While I don’t specifically define my desired age class in these articles, suffice it to say I’m happy with a deer who has only been alive for one or two Tom Brady Super Bowl wins. As a basic hunter, this standard allows me to take advantage of hunting strategies that mature buck killers might not be able to use – such as understanding the satellite buck.
Let me start with how the satellite buck strategy meshes with a lot of what you may already read in mainstream whitetail content; namely, you still have to hunt where the deer actually are and find the hot doe during the rut. For me, this focuses on two main areas: downwind of doe bedding and near food sources. I want to be downwind of doe bedding because bucks will cruise downwind of doe bedding areas. The reason they are downwind is because a hot doe will give off an estrous scent, signaling to any passers-by that she is ready to conceive.
Bucks will also scent check trails leading into doe bedding areas that are not downwind, but if you have the option, being downwind increases your chances of connecting with a cruising buck. Evening food sources also follow the same mindset of doe bedding – bucks are checking areas they know does frequently congregate, which are the bedroom and the kitchen.
The Local Rut and the Regional Rut
In recent years, I have come to find that the rut has two meanings – a broader, regional meaning and an actionable, local meaning. When people talk about the rut in a regional manner, they are referring to the general timeframe when does goes into heat. If you looked at all the does over a span of many miles, the rut occurs when the largest majority of does are in heat. This allows hunters from Wisconsin to New Jersey to talk in terms that everyone understands.
The local rut is much more impactful for making tactical hunting decisions. The local rut means there is a hot doe on or near a property you have access to hunt. What I’ve noticed is that the rut can be absolutely rocking on one property, and be absolutely dead on a property that is one mile away. If you think of the rut only in regional terms, you would think that the rut is a switch that is turned on everywhere. That is just simply not true – when we think of crazy chasing, bucks fighting, and guttural buck grunts, we need to understand that hot does are like magnets.
Animal Magnetism
Hot does are like magnets in that they will attract every local testosterone-filled buck who happens to come near her. If a buck is cruising along and senses that a hot doe is in the area, he will essentially stop cruising for miles across the countryside and start looking intently for the hot doe in a much smaller area. As more and more bucks cruise by a hot doe’s area, she will ensnare more and more bucks.
This may look differently in different areas depending on the buck-to-doe ratio in your area. The more does there are compared to bucks, the shorter distance a buck has to travel to find a hot doe and the more selection he has. Conversely, if you have more bucks compared to does, the laws of supply and demand dictate there will be more competition for the hot does.
Let’s say that three bucks have encountered a hot doe. One of the bucks is two years old, one of the bucks is three years old, and one of the bucks is five years old. Assuming normal genetics across all three bucks, the five year old buck will most likely stake his claim to the hot doe. He is bigger and stronger and can fend off the younger bucks. He’s like the guy who’s dating the attractive bar tender – he better be ready to fight off a parade of suitors. He’s the stud buck in the area.
This is where the divergence occurs between the big buck hunters and the basic hunters. A big buck hunter will generally want to kill the five year old buck. That goal comes with its own set of tactics and challenges. The two and three year old bucks are what I call the satellite bucks. They are decidedly not the biggest and the strongest and that’s perfectly fine by me.
These satellite bucks will not just up and leave a hot doe. They’ll stay 50+ yards away from where the big buck and hot doe are bedded, waiting for their chance. Maybe the hot doe gets away from the big buck, or maybe the big buck will take care of his business and move on. Either way, these satellite bucks will generally stick around and orbit the area of the hot doe.
That’s where a basic hunter will set up – in a cruising area just outside of the hot doe’s bed. This can generally be accomplished by knowing ahead of time where there is doe bedding because a buck will most likely want to hole up with her in the best bedding area. Having rut stands in areas where you historically know will hold hot does at some point is a great start. That being said, if you see rutting activity going on further away than you expect, be ready to move into that 100+ yard range of the hot doe. You don’t want to be so close that you spook her and send your magnet running, because all of the bucks will follow her.
Satellite Buck Encounters
My first encounter with a true rut hunt was by pure luck my first year of archery hunting. I had rifle hunted for deer for a decade leading up to that point as a kid, but my state’s rifle season begins at the very tail end of the rut. A friend had pointed me to a spot where he had historically had good rut encounters during archery season. I had heard about the rut and academically understood what it meant, but experiencing the rut in a tree is a whole different ballgame.
As I walked into the spot that morning before dawn, I was almost run over by a doe being chased by a buck. She stopped within ten yards of me, kept looking behind her, and decided that turning around to run back where she came from was not an option. I must have seemed to be less threatening than the ‘roided out freak chasing her, because she ran right past me. I heard crashing in the woods not long after.
That morning was absolute Looney Toons. I saw nine(!) different bucks that morning. The hot doe was chased under my tree multiple times. The stud seven point who was clearly the boss running the show, did as much work corralling the hot doe as he did fending off all of the other bucks. I’d see one buck challenge him outright in a small clearing. I’d see another one sneaking toward the doe in the tall brush. As soon as he’d taken care of the first challenger, it was on to the next. While I didn’t get a shot at a legal buck that day, it opened my eyes to what the rut actually meant.
I have seen this phenomenon a few times since then. Fast forward to this past hunting season when I killed a smaller eight point buck. I had developed my theory and tactic of the satellite buck and recognized the situation in early November in one of my doe bedding spots. A cell camera picture came in late at night with an absolute giant randomly running through the field in multiple directions. I knew I had a hot doe in the area.
I climbed into my stand downwind of the doe bedding in a small ATV trail that I’ve cleared over the years on this permission farm. Shortly after dawn, I had a small, non-legal buck cruise through – a textbook satellite buck. Not legal for me to shoot, but a great sign nonetheless. A few minutes went by and I heard crashing and grunting that sounded like a feral hog coming from the doe bedding area. The big boy was in there with the hot doe. The little buck came scampering out of there a few moments later. Better luck next time, pal.
I grunted a couple of times to try to draw out the monster buck. I’d have loved to get a shot at him. As a basic hunter, though, he is far from my only target in the area. I couldn’t have been more than 100 yards away from where they were bedded, and I was in a known cruising area downwind of them. As long as I wasn’t stupidly aggressive to scare them off and I had patience, I was confident I would get a shot.
My patience and uncharacteristic lack of stupidity paid off. An hour later, a different eight point buck came walking down the cruising path. He kept looking into the bedding area and pausing every few steps like he was trying to figure out a way to get the girl’s attention without also getting her goon boyfriend’s attention as well. In all of his planning and thinking and walking, he gave me a 25-yard broadside shot. I sent an arrow his way. The shot and track job are a story for another time, but I can gratefully say I found him dead later that evening. Satellite buck down.