Regional conditions matter....but tend not to be consistent.This will make you paranoid (at least it does me).I live in the northeast and this is supposed to be short range timber shooting,but the biggest buck I have killed here had to be shotat 300 yards across a swamp....two years ago at 330 yards;and before that at maybe 15 yards in the woods.
Out west,again it depends and mylast two "worth it" mule deer bucks were at 330 and about 80.On the breaks of the Peace River,you see bucks in the farm fields (long range),but the big ones don't linger there long,and the breaks themselves are steep,and thickly timbered.....you can't see far generally and have to get into the trees with them much of the time,so distances can be short,and the biggest one I have seen in recent years was at about 20 feet.
Bottom line for mule deer (at least where I hunt them) is that the bigger,older bucks tend never to be far from cover or terrain that hides them, and distances even in open country tend to be moderate,which is why I have gotten away with killing most of them with a 4X scope....I didn't really know how handicapped I was.
