as I walked by the briar-and-poison-ivychoked island - probably no more than 15 yards wide - a huge buck plowed out from within and raced across the surrounding openness. At 150 yards, his rack still stood out. This big buck was a hideout specialist and taught me that deer will go wherever they must to feel unthreatened. Those places vary from the rocky heads of mountains and impenetrable thickets to alongside highways and even against outbuildings and trailers. Such places often don't appeal to hunters as areas they want to hunt for aesthetic reasons or because of the challenges to access them. But they hold deer! If you've ever had the chance to check out how whitetails are hunted in our Special Regulations Areas, you'd see tree stands in backyards, along busy roads - places you might never look for deer let alone hunt them. But these suburban areas are loaded with deer that have learned to use what cover the land provides to reach feeding and bedding areas. Consequently, hunters wait where they must, but their strategy has been successful for decades. ADAPTING different? Are all deer the same, or are all deer If your encounters with deer are limited, it's easy to start making incorrect assumptions about their capabilities and behavior. But if there's one rule to which you can hold fast, it's that all whitetails are not the same and all whitetails aren't necessarily different. Their age, home range JUNE 2022 39 Jacob Dingel