Night time deer hunt this week...

[Mossy Bloke]

A friend of mine has a special DNR permit (that may not be the right term) to thin deer herds on specific farmer's land all year long. Apparently the peanut farmers around here have their crops decimated by the deer if they don't take action.

So...........this week I'm going with him. I'm excited about this like I haven't been in a long time.

The method used is the sweep a field with a light and find the eyes. Slip up as close as you can and then take one.

Pretty exciting! I'll let you know how it works.

 

[Smoke]

Where are you located? This is a new deal to me...legal night hunting?

We used to hunt rabbits at night, always saw lots of deer. Game Wardens rather frowned upon shooting at them though.

Are you thinning any deer you see or just does or what?

Good luck.

Smoke

 

[jeffsig220]

i've done this before. i'll never do it again though. we were allowed to shoot till 10 pm with the aid of spotlights. i shot a big doe and she was pregnant with twin fawns. the farmer gutted it for me and threw the fawns in the manure spreader. turned me right off! i know that is the reason why we were out there but, it still did not seem the right thing to do. i think this should be done durring the regular hunting season when the yearling could at least be consumed by the hunter. most of the deer that were shot on this farm were just wasted.

 

[Mossy Bloke]

I felt sick just reading your post

That is not the case here. If so, I wouldn't be going.

When I lived in NC I was told that if you had this permit you couldn't move the deer you'd shot. You had to let it lie. Don't know if it's true or not, but you can count me out on that one.

 

[jeffsig220]

i kept the doe and ate every bit of it. a couple of my friends kept thier deer too. the ones that were just left were shot by the farmer. he hates deer because they cost him tens of thousands of dollars every year in crop damage. the lease we have is all farm land and the farmer gives us dmap(deer management assistance program) permits and each hunter is allowed 2 antlerless only deer. that's the way it should be done(in my opinion) so as not to shoot a pregnant doe. i know that right now,all fawns are out of thier mothers but do depend on them for nurishment. it just does not feel right shooting deer in the summer.

 

[Art Eatman]

When I moved back to the old family place (230 acres) outside Austin, Texas, in 1968, the place was overrun with deer. Small and scraggly. I went out one night and saw over 50 sets of eyes in the spotlight.

For three years I did my own herd thinning. I shot does, scraggle-horn bucks, and mature spike bucks. I dunno. Maybe 15 deer a year, outside of hunting season. (Gutting a deer in August in Texas ain't fun.) I had freinds hunt for free during the season...

By the fourth year, body weights were up an average of some 30% and more. The bucks were growing decent racks.

Game wardens would have buried me under the jail, of course. However, some years later, the wildlife biologists "discovered" that deer grow big and healthy if they don't overload the habitat. That learning experience cost the taxpayer several million dollars. My learning experience was free, 25 years earlier, from listening to my grandfather explain about carrying capacity of land.

A farmer needs all the help he can get, because the school-tax people will happily seize and sell the land to a hobby-farming anti-hunter if the taxes aren't paid. And the deer shouldn't be allowed to overload the habitat.

Art