So how smart are they?

[Doc]

I have always wondered just how smart bucks are. Are they hard to get because they are so smart, or are they simply a lot rarer because they are the prime target of hunters and there simply are fewer. I have to admit that I have seen some rather big bucks do some absolutely dumb things. Usually that is related to the rut when they are controlled by their sexual needs.

Yes, I have seen some things over the decades that show that some bigger bucks do that appear to be intelligent, but I have seen old does do smart things too. So the question is, just because a deer has made it through several seasons and has a lot of bone on its head, does that mean that these big old goats are super smart? 

From an elevated spot, I have watched a big buck lay on it's belly with it's head pressed against the ground in a swamp when a hunter walked within a few feet of him. That shows some real smarts. He didn't jump up and risk the flying lead. But I also saw a doe holding tight in a tangle of grape vines next to our driveway just a few feet away from me waiting for me to keep on walking. I'm sure that she had done that many times in her lifetime rather than jumping up and running and risking getting shot at. So she was pretty smart too. probably as smart as that buck in the swamp.

What have you all seen that impressed you with the intelligence of bucks or does.

[wolc123]

This old Adirondack doe was the smartest deer that I’ve ever hunted.  Certainly way ahead of most of the mature bucks that I’ve taken.  I pursued her for several years.  Im guessing that she was 4-1/2 years old, when I finally managed to bring her down.  
 

Our first encounter was during the late ML season, when she was probably 2-1/2 years old and had a single fawn.  I should have had her that time, when she offered me a 40 yard broadside shot.  A hidden branch deflected my ML bullet, and saved her.  
 

She had (2) fawns the next year, when she managed to thwart me on every attempt during the early ML week.  She usually fed in the shooting range meadow, near my in-laws lake house, every evening.  She seemed to recognize the danger and patterned me, getting the best of me 2 or 3 times that week.  
 

She did the same on our first encounter the following year.  I had learned that she always went up to a ridge to feed on nuts, after she left the meadow.  I got up there before her, about a full hour before sunrise, the last time.  
 

I had a favorable wind and I was able to get into position up there completely undetected.  She usually always monitored the lake house door, just before sunrise.  My extra early rise tricked her.  

As the sun started to light up the woods up on the ridge, I caught some flash of her white tail.  She held her tail out, then moved about 50 yards, then repeated the process, getting closer and closer.  I was downwind of the best mast trees up there.  She eventually offered an easy, broadside 30 yard shot and I was able to connect with her shoulder blade.  
 

It was only after she was down, that I saw the two fawns which she had been signalling with her tail and masterfully leading up the ridge to the food.  

I may have started the whole process over again last year, on what was probably one of those fawns.  I missed her with the same ML, in almost the same place where I missed her mother, due to the same cause -probable branch strike.  This time, it was during the early ML week, and again the doe had just one fawn with her.  It’s pretty cool how history repeats itself.  
 

Only one, of the dozen or so mature bucks that I’ve killed, has particularly impressed me with his smarts.  Most of the rest were easily outwitted during the peak two weeks of the rut.  
 

That one smartie was hanging with a flock of turkeys, likely taking advantage of their superior vision, to help evade hunters.  God Himself assisted me on that one causing me to drop the Bible I had been reading up on my stand.  I climbed down from my tree stand (leaving my 16 ga slug gun loaded) to pick it up, with 5 minutes of legal light remaining.  
 

I was wearing my orange camo jacket which that flock of turkeys could have seen from a mile away had I still been exposed up in that stand.  They didn’t do this cagey old 8-pointer any good, when they and he stepped into the little patch of brush under my tree.  

Edited 23 minutes ago by wolc123