Great question, Bill, and not a "gotcha" at all. I maybe should have stressed it more, but providing the answer was one of the reasons I included the aerial and marked the things I did on it. As it applies to this ?, that's precisely why I included the cam locations that I got his pics from.
As noted, I only included cams where I got his pics. On the larger properties (240 acres or more), I use a ridiculous number of cams. As I get the improvements done (edge feathering w gaps, blockades, sidewalks, clover snake trails and so on), the odds of getting pics of deer using that area increase pretty dramatically. I don't use a ton of cams for hunting, though they certainly help. I use them for educating myself on mature buck tendencies, home ranges, core areas and so on. In a later chapter, you will see the home range and core areas for a bunch of mature bucks and how they relate to each other. That was determined from a truly ridiculous number of cams on 1550 acres of ground, and placing way more than I'd normally be comfortable with in higher impact locations. That's another story though.
At the same time, I'd managed that piece for 4 years already. Through foot scouting each spring, pics and observations, you find that mature bucks gravitate hard to the best big buck bedding spots. I find those spots simply by putting the pieces of the puzzle together, no different than what I did on Tweenie.
In the case of where Tweenie was bedding, historically I'm almost always getting pics of mature bucks leaving those pockets in late Aft/early evening and going back into it in the AM, but pretty rarely popping out on that or another cam in the AMs. Then, add in spring foot scouting showing those pockets literally tore up with buck sign every year and a few, large depressions from repeated bedding. Top that off with having made a habit of squatting down in every bed I've found over the last 30ish years and asking "why are deer bedding here" as I look around at their level and you get a pretty darn good feel for where bucks bed.
So add it all together now. I already know that mature bucks love bedding there based on history (each time you kill one, odds are high another will take over...killed Tweenie last year and this year a 5.5 named Curves slipped in. Before Tweenie it was Tank, a 6.5 year old tank bodied buck. With Curves now dead, I'm really hoping that Mace, a stud 4.5 that somewhat frequents the general area slips in there, as bucks that bed in this area offer very low risk of being killed by anyone but us), which makes perfect sense because of what an awesome view it provides and they're almost never disturbed there (two traits you figure out they really like from squatting and asking why). Right off the bat that makes it one of the areas you believe he is most likely to be bedding in, as he's the stud and the stud almost always takes the best of what the ground offers. Now, add in that the pics you are getting of him around there have a high tendency to be leaving in the afternoon/early evening and coming back in, in the AM (and tend not to be exiting in the AM). You think he's bedding there?
Not trying to be a smart acre. It really is that simple. For soooooooooooooo long soooooooooooo many have tried to make $$$$$$$$$$ off of us by overcomplicating things to sell stuff or sell themselves that we have a hard time seeing how simple things can be, particularly when we manipulate the habitat to work for us. That said, I still put the one cam in the middle of the "sheet" just to make dang sure (not a great idea, tbh, but I really am every bit as focused on learning each season as killing). On any given day that I got his pic on that high impact cam, it was typically the last pic I got of him in the AM and the first in the PM, with a couple rogue middle of the night pics. To me, that removed any doubt he was bedding there.
History of mature buck bedding + area screaming prime buck bedding + 1st pics in the PM + last pics in the AM = extremely high odds he's bedding there
Unlike the risky move I made with the one cam placement (minimized by timing the cam setup and chip swap for super windy days, with the "right" wind direction, but still risky), a person doesn't need definitive proof. In fact, getting it is a needless risk. A solid educated guess is very often enough to allow us to kill a buck in most cases.
All that said, is that any chance he ever bedded anywhere else? On the home range/core area portion you'll come to later, is there any chance that the boundaries aren't exactly as drawn? The answer is an obvious yes to both. In fact, I'd be shocked if both weren't the case. However, I'm supremely confident that the home range and core area boundaries are pretty darn accurate (more than accurate enough to make the point in that chapter) and that Tweenie bedded where I said way more often than not. I'm afraid that's is accurate as we can ever really get, but it's plenty accurate for our hunting and management purposes.
