Whitetails are just about everywhere in this country and volumes have been written about them mostly by people trying to meet a deadline, trying to make money or in some cases just an illiterate wanting attention. I have a special place in my heart for those writers in hunting magazines during the 60's and 70's, and it is very dark. Their irresponsible, unfounded conclusions presented as fact, cost me countless thousands insect bites and hundreds of hours sitting uncomfortably watching an area that will probably see a legal buck once a month and then only at midnight. Herein, I am going to disinter and examine in the light of hard won, painfully extracted knowledge, some of the more blatant examples of misinformation. Today, the search for truths, in the unraveling of the lifestyle of this puzzling animal, has provided a reasonably accurate basic profile, although some of the myths still breathe. Nevertheless, for at least the first decade we hunted, research proven facts on Whitetails were literally non-existent.

Beginning with the adage that;

"BUCK RUBS ARE THE RESULT OF DEER TRYING TO REMOVE THE VELVET FROM THEIR ANTLERS"

It took several seasons of wondering why those bucks still couldn't get their antlers clean by December, before suspecting something must be amiss. Another thing pondered was those small pawwed areas found near rubs and along edges. These clear spots always had tracks in them, and sometimes they smelled terribly.

"RUT,CAME IN DECEMBER AND CAUSED TREMENDOUS NECK SWELLING, FOUL ODOR, DEATH RESULTING WEIGHT LOSS AND DROVE ALL SELF REPECTING BUCKS TO SEARCH OUT A BUSY HIGHWAY FOR REGULAR TRAVELING ."

Before laying to rest this little gem, many campfire sesions were devoted to ,"Just what would the neck of a buck in rut look like?" If they got much bigger than the ones we were killing in November, the animal would have o look like a walrus. Maybe that was why we couldn't recognize a rutting buck, none of us had ever seen a walrus. Further, why were bucks chasing does before the rut in November. Maybe they were practicing?

"A BUCK'S FIRST SET OF ANTLERS WERE SPIKES."

This was a matter of undisputed fact and he had to be 1 1/2 years old before he grew them. For several years we took bucks and they were all 4 to 8 pointers. Not only did we not kill a spike, we never even saw one. Does and fawns were abundant and an amazing thing was that one of the button bucks seemed to have small points projecting from his buttons. Could it be that our herd was undernourished and this little buck was 1 1/2 years old? Imagine our surprise when guys at the Vet School aged our harvested bucks and found they were 1 1/2 years old, with up to 8 points and weighing 150 pounds. It was a miracle, or they had some mule deer genes.

About this time the ever growing discrepancies between what we read and what we saw was causing reflection. You just can't pee on a guy and tell him it's raining forever. Evidently they sensed that the smoke from their screen was thinning, because about this time these perpetrators of misery came up with some brand new material to bolster their sagging deception. Please be advised, none of this was presentedas theory, opinion or assumption. Nope, this was absolute FACT, presented by world renowned authorities according to the magazines. Our blind acceptance of this blarney is reminiscent of the reverence which Huck and Tom held for "Kings and Dukes". Just like one of Ole Huck's catfish, we swallowed their offerings "hook, line and sinker"

"SCRAPES ARE THE ACHILLES HEEL OF ALL BUCKS."

this new revelation breathed life into their faltering con game. Due to overpowering lust, the animal was drawn helplessly to predetermined tryst locations marked by a small pawwed spot which he had scented with urine, together with secretions from a gland in the corner of his eye.these scrapes were located on an established routewhich the buck followed until one of them was responded to by a doe in oestrus, whereupon he trailed the doe down using the scent left by a gland in the cleft of her hooves. The hunting method was foolproof and simple. Find a scrape and wait for the inevtitable arrival of the buck.

Immediately we inventoried all the scrapeson the two hundred acres, which was made easier because they seemed to be in a line and in locaations predicted by the articles. A slight problemarose when we discovered there were about ten times as many scrapes as we had hunters, and the the line of scrapes continued off our property, leading who knows where. well, we chose the best looking scrapes in good cover, built more stands and began the vigil. On and on it went, deer we saw, bucks we didn't. Clearly the bucks were still present, for the scrapes were regularly freshened, but always when no one was around. Perhaps someone would have succeeded with a 24 hour watch; the scrapes were in prime habitat. I can truthfully say that we never killed a single buck over a scrape. However, bucks were taken in the vicinity of the scrapes, posing the proposition that the scrapes were the reason why they were there, but these deer could have just as easily been harvested from stands well removed from the scrape line. The scrapes were evidently not a buck magnet as portrayed.

Several years of serious huntingand the multitudes of discrepancies convinced us that these writers didn't know what they were writing about, at least not in Georgia. elements of evidenced fact were always present in their articles, usually just enough to confuse the issue. Our conclusion was that they didn't know any more, if as much as we did about the principles underlying buck movement. If these principles were going to be found we would have to discern them for ourselves.