Blackfork
Member
Hunt with game cams all year and have had them up for four years so I get a look at what is going on on the property. I just have five acres but it's contiguous with a creek bottom and several thousand acres of prime habitat. When we bought the lakehouse in the 60s there weren't any deer there. Now we have some very nice bucks and a healthy population. Except for a kid up the creek who hunts year round with a bow we haven't had any real problems. I share photo and info with the rancher next door and the extended family whose land backs up to lake property across the creek.
This year I have hunted pretty hard. Last year I didn't hunt at all, waiting on several bucks to mature. There is a dominant buck I won't shoot at all and I won't shoot little bucks. I also lay off the dumb 2 1/2 year olds who have grown their first big rack, though they have a high mortality rate due to folks who will shoot anything.
I hunted my usual pasture this year. It was left uncut and full of chest high grass. The deer love it. It's got cover, feed, a crown to make it interesting and lots of wood lines. Many scrapes under the edges of the trees and constant sign. I used a ground blind and big pine with climbing steps and a limb to sit on.
In the pine yesterday. I passed several very good 21/2 or 3 1/2 year olds early. I saw one of the big bucks but didn't get a shot. I saw the big dominant buck and he looked bigger than ever. He's got a massive six on one side and a palmated antler that goes straight up on the other. He tore one side off fighting when he was 2 1/2 and the socket was damaged. Not a trophy but great genetics. He's 5 1/2 now. Rare to see him but I got a long look just before dawn a few weeks ago.
From my pine I was watching the pasture and a very active scrape. All the little scrapes have shut down and just the big ones operating. A doe and fawn came through at 7:30. The does haven't been with the fawns- having left them during the peak of the rut, so the rut is winding down here. I was about to unload when I looked across the pasture and a BIG buck was on his hind legs, looking about ten feet tall, sniffing the licking branch at an old abandoned scrape.
I could tell he wasn't Big Ten and he wasn't the nice 8-point I passed up. With Big bucks you have to get on the gun fast because usually you just have a few seconds to see them. He dug up the scrape and turned around and I shot him once with a 7mm Mauser 130 Sierra GameKing. He went down in place, kicked a couple of times and was done. Offhand while sitting on a branch. 130 yards or so. Had the scope set on 6X.
Field dressed 160 on my scale. Must have gone over 200 on the hoof. Eight points, nice mass. Good deer. Interestingly I have NOT seen him on the cam this year. He had just dug up an old scrape so he could have been travelling through.
Here's a couple of photos of the deer I was after and the deer I shot instead.
This year I have hunted pretty hard. Last year I didn't hunt at all, waiting on several bucks to mature. There is a dominant buck I won't shoot at all and I won't shoot little bucks. I also lay off the dumb 2 1/2 year olds who have grown their first big rack, though they have a high mortality rate due to folks who will shoot anything.
I hunted my usual pasture this year. It was left uncut and full of chest high grass. The deer love it. It's got cover, feed, a crown to make it interesting and lots of wood lines. Many scrapes under the edges of the trees and constant sign. I used a ground blind and big pine with climbing steps and a limb to sit on.
In the pine yesterday. I passed several very good 21/2 or 3 1/2 year olds early. I saw one of the big bucks but didn't get a shot. I saw the big dominant buck and he looked bigger than ever. He's got a massive six on one side and a palmated antler that goes straight up on the other. He tore one side off fighting when he was 2 1/2 and the socket was damaged. Not a trophy but great genetics. He's 5 1/2 now. Rare to see him but I got a long look just before dawn a few weeks ago.
From my pine I was watching the pasture and a very active scrape. All the little scrapes have shut down and just the big ones operating. A doe and fawn came through at 7:30. The does haven't been with the fawns- having left them during the peak of the rut, so the rut is winding down here. I was about to unload when I looked across the pasture and a BIG buck was on his hind legs, looking about ten feet tall, sniffing the licking branch at an old abandoned scrape.
I could tell he wasn't Big Ten and he wasn't the nice 8-point I passed up. With Big bucks you have to get on the gun fast because usually you just have a few seconds to see them. He dug up the scrape and turned around and I shot him once with a 7mm Mauser 130 Sierra GameKing. He went down in place, kicked a couple of times and was done. Offhand while sitting on a branch. 130 yards or so. Had the scope set on 6X.
Field dressed 160 on my scale. Must have gone over 200 on the hoof. Eight points, nice mass. Good deer. Interestingly I have NOT seen him on the cam this year. He had just dug up an old scrape so he could have been travelling through.
Here's a couple of photos of the deer I was after and the deer I shot instead.
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