I was cruising through Peterson’s Bowhunting today when I ran into an article on page 28 regarding the influence moon phase has on whitetail movement. I really had no idea this was such a hot topic until I started surfing a bit in preparation for this post…
I’ve always assumed moon phase had absolutely nothing to do with deer movement for the same reason some people do. Namely, when I was learning to deer hunt my grandfather said it didn’t matter. I suspect if you take 100 average believers you’d discover than 99 of them had a father or grandfather tell them it was an important factor. Once that idea is entrenched it’s simply a matter of selective memory and a failure by the average hunter to collect a scientifically valuable set of data. I’ve never kept data of any type but I’ve also never noticed any correlation.
Anyway, a handful of researchers published a study called, “Measuring Fine-scale White-tailed Deer Movements and Environmental Influences Using GPS Collars”. In it they studied different variables in connection with deer movement. To quote them, “Moon phase had no effect on daily, nocturnal and diurnal deer movements.”
Now do you think this will dissuade believers? I somehow doubt it. For whatever reason traditional hand-me-down knowledge is very slow to change in the hunting world, particularly the deer hunting world.
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