My experience with WT is from eastern WA pine/tamarac forests and not the dense habitats of the east coast. Contrasting with W WA BTs, the BTs generally have smaller home ranges, in which they find most of their food and cover. I hunt habitats where forage is most abundant; for BTs that's usually in stands 5-10 years post-clearcutting, but they also have an affinity for older mixed stand >30 yrs (mature Douglas fir, alder, big leaf and vine maple with understory plants like sword fern and salmonberry); wild or trailing blackberry is one of the most abundant year round forage for BTs. My preferred sites have a mix of habitat types and I hunt the edges from stands, ground hides or I still hunt the mature stuff particularly on the rainy days. Deer are browsers, so unless a field has been planted with deer in mind, the grasses found in most ag fields on the west side are not that attractive to BTs; on the east side you might find a couple of hundred deer in a single ag planting. I have rattled in a couple of nice bucks, but never used calls or decoys. I don't think BTs move as much as WTs. Where WTs show a tendency to move from feeding to bedding sites and back again sometimes a fair distance, BTs tend to eat and sleep within a much smaller area. Also, WTs tend to be more flighty than BTs. BTs use cover and concealment to "hide" from hunters. If they think they aren't detected, bucks will stand motionless until the threat passes; make eye contact and their gone. Because they hide so well and their habitat provides good cover, glassing with binos carefully is a must to find those big bucks. Hope this helps!
