We’ve all heard it before and some of us may have even said it ourselves at some point: “That buck has gone nocturnal.” After capturing countless daylight trail-camera photos all summer long, those same cameras now reveal your target buck showing up in front of your treestand just after dark or right before daybreak. Those black-and-white infrared images can be disheartening, and it’s easy to assume the deer has completely changed his routine and is now moving only under the cover of night.
I am here to share some good news: There’s no such thing as a nocturnal buck! However, there are a lot of good explanations for why we believe a buck has gone nocturnal, and there are science-based strategies for finding him in daylight again. I even used them last season to catch my own “nocturnal” buck walking around under the sun.
Two Best Times to See Deer
Deer are crepuscular, not nocturnal. This means that whitetails are most active during the twilight hours of dawn and dusk, which is when most deer hunters, including myself, are out in the woods trying to fill their deer tag. We hunt then because it’s the time of day when the odds are most in our favor.
That’s not to say deer aren’t up and walking around in the middle of the night. They certainly are. But research has consistently shown they are most active around dawn and dusk, and this is when they tend to cover the greatest distance in a given day. Countless deer movement studies have shown this widespread, behavioral trait, from North to South.
The main takeaway? Every deer, even those elusive mature bucks, still move in daylight within legal shooting hours. The catch? They simply do so in places where we as hunters or our trusty trail-cameras aren’t watching. Let’s look at the three most likely reasons hunters believe in nocturnal bucks.
1. Deceptive Trail Cameras
Don’t get me wrong, trail cameras are an amazing tool, and provide a great way to survey deer populations, identify bucks and scout deer movement throughout the hunting season. With the right placement, cameras can reveal key patterns, and for many hunters, including myself, checking those SD cards or cell-camera updates has become almost as exciting as the hunt itself. However, as valuable as they are, they may not tell the whole story.
Just because your target buck showed up on your camera at midnight does not mean that he was not on his feet and moving for hours before that. It just means he was likely moving somewhere else outside your camera’s detection range. Hunting pressure, a new food source (more on these in a minute), or a doe in estrous all could easily steer the buck in a different direction away from your trail cameras or tree stands and off your radar. It’s important to remember that your cameras can’t see around every acre of your hunting property or capture what happens in the thick bedding cover where many deer often spend a majority of their time. In other words, trail cameras only capture a small picture of what’s truly happening in the woods.
2. Hunting Pressure Problems
It’s easy to fall into a routine and keep hunting the same stand over and over, especially if it has produced in the past or if you have trial-camera pictures of your target buck in the area. It’s easy to think, “If I just keep sitting here, eventually he’ll show up.” However, numerous research studies on deer movement and hunting pressure have shown the exact opposite to be true.
After just one hunt, deer begin to pick up on the clues of human intrusion, such as ground scent, noise, or visual disturbances. While they may not completely abandon the area, they reduced their overall movements, shifted toward areas of less pressure, and used those smaller areas more intensively. Hunting pressure also tends to shift daylight movements toward heavier cover and away from open areas.
So, if your target buck only appears on camera in front of your stand at night, it’s not because he’s become “nocturnal.” It’s likely because he knows when and where you’re hunting him and is avoiding those areas during the times when you are in the stand.
3. Changing Food Sources
No matter the season, deer consistently seek out the best available food sources that give them the biggest bang for their buck. In quality deer habitat with diverse forage species, they will choose nutrient-rich plants that taste good and have very high levels of digestibility, thereby maximizing intake of protein, energy and minerals with each bite. While this feeding behavior is perfectly logical from a deer’s perspective, it can make things challenging for hunters.
Statistics from numerous state agencies have shown that hunter success decreases during years when acorns are abundant. When the forest floor turns into an all-you-can-eat buffet of acorns, deer no longer need to visit predictable food plots or crop fields. With so many oak trees producing, they can feed almost anywhere, spreading out across the landscape and reducing daylight sightings.
During these bumper crop years, even the most seasoned hunters can struggle to pinpoint exactly which stand of oaks the deer are favoring. Your target buck might start showing up on camera after dark or vanish entirely from your usual hunting spots. But this doesn’t mean he’s gone “nocturnal.” It simply means he’s making the most of a plentiful mast crop, feeding where the food is the most abundant.
A Lesson Learned First Hand
After tagging my top target buck during a late-October bow hunt, I eagerly turned my attention to Missouri’s upcoming firearms season. This time, I had my sights set on a mature seven-pointer, a deer I knew well after passing him late in the 2023–24 season when he’d already shed one antler. This year, there was just one problem. My trail-cameras showed he wasn’t visiting my food plot or frequenting my favorite stand location during legal shooting hours.
In past seasons, this particular stand had produced great results, and I’d even had several encounters with this same buck during the 2022–23 season. So, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little discouraged. However, I was still confident I could fill my freezer and wrap my tag around his antlers during the Missouri firearms season. Still, I knew I could not rely on the same strategies as past seasons, so I decided to adjust my hunting game plan.
Instead of sitting on the edge of my clover food plot where the buck was not showing up in daylight, I decided to slip into a stand about 250 yards away, positioned along the edge of a thick bedding area. With that morning’s rain having muffled the sound of leaves underfoot and a perfect wind direction in the forecast, the conditions couldn’t have been better.
As I still-hunted my way toward the stand that afternoon, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was the mature 7-pointer moving through the brush. I raised my rifle, stopped the buck in an opening, and squeezed the trigger. After waiting for my dad to finish his evening hunt, we tracked and recovered the buck just a short distance away, and the celebration began.
Despite not having a single daylight photo of that deer all season, I ended up shooting him at 3:00 p.m., approximately two hours before the end of legal shooting light. The hunt filled my freezer, added another memory to share with my dad, and put the final nail in the coffin for the so-called “nocturnal buck” myth. My strategy for this hunt actually reflected the results of an Auburn University study that suggested ways to intercept bucks in daylight.
No Such Thing as a Nocturnal Buck
As a wise Missouri deer hunter once told me, “A mature buck walks past hundreds of trees and potential stand locations every single day.” As a hunter, we just have to be in one of those right spots during legal shooting hours in order to kill him.
Science backs up this piece of wisdom. Every deer, even those elusive mature bucks, still move in daylight within legal shooting hours. More often than not, a so-called “nocturnal” buck is simply one whose daylight movements you aren’t seeing from the stand or on your trail cameras. Whether that’s because your trail cameras aren’t offering the whole story, you’re over hunting your favorite stand, or you’re competing with a bumper acorn crop, the take home message remains the same.
There is no such thing as a nocturnal buck. Instead, it is time to adjust your hunting strategy, rethink your approach, and put yourself back in a position to fill your freezer and maybe even make that special trip to the taxidermist.