The Forestry Forum

Our modern gun deer season opens saturday is anyone a whitetail hunters ? 8)

Our Gun deer season opens the 15th. I am torn on whether to hunt the old farm by myself where there are deer or go to the cabin with my sister as she has asked where there are very few deer.

If I go to the cabin in the U.P. It will befun but the odds of getting a deer are very slim. The cabin is great for bear. What ta do what ta do.

Go for the Fun Jeff.  If you catch fish you have to clean them and if you get a deer you have to dress it.  Go to the camp and carve another rabbit. :)

Jeff, go to the camp. Here deer season is more of a tradition with family and friends. We will have 15 people at our camp. My wife and I have all ready got a 8pt and a 7pt bucks Muzzleloading season. So the pressure is off. My goal is to get my fourteen year old son on one it will be his first deer. Have fun its vacation week! 8)

Opening day is the 16th here.  My brother and nephew have come down for the last 10 years.  Someone always gets one.  Often we all bag one and my freezer gets filled.
This year may be the last for the nephew for awhile.  He graduates from marine boot camp this weekend and will be home on leave for opening day.

 Opening day in WV, where I hunt, is the 25th.  I usualy go up Sunday before, get Dad settled in, hunt opening day then come back for Thanksgiving and through the weekend.

Last year the White Tails were so pleantyful I spent more time butchering, cooking (smoking) and working hides than I did hunting. That was ok last year but this year I'v got a new 45/70 to try out. I'll be in the woods!

I used to hunt and killed more than my share of whitetails.  Now I work for the Wildlife Div. of the DNR and spend most all of deer season working in a Deer Check Station, aging, removing antlers, collecting heads for TB and CWD testing and handing out successful hunter patches.  This year I'm scheduled for four days off all season and more than likely won't even buy a license.  Normally I don't miss the hunt but I watched some of Real Tree Outdoors this morning that had some pretty cool hunts and some REAL big bucks.  It made me want to go kill one or should I be politically correct and say harvest?

Yes, my favorite hunting season and starting to get ready.

I quit several years ago.  Didn't like to hunt at the same time as all the drugged up idiots that used to be too common in our neighborhood.  I hunted a couple weeks before they did for a few seasons but the boys got big enough----the old bad example thing.  Now we have pretty good hunters on our place.  They always ask and I assign them spots.  I shoot varmits and will start hunting with a camera if I ever get time.  Could have had some nice shots at a Bald Eagle the other day (with the camera) it was  the first I've seen this fall.  

Noble

I'll be out there again this year. My wife says I have to `cause meat's expensive. :)

This year in WNY with the right license you can bag up to 5 deer and then get two more using someone else's tags, first time they allowed that. I guess the insurance companies are putting pressure on the state to get the deer population down.

   I went and had the best nap since last year. :D  My tree lounge sleeps so good that I did not get up till a squirrel found me and started barking.  Saw two does on the way out and there is no telling how many big bucks walked by while I was resting.  Tons of acorns this year so it is hard to locate many deer in 100,000 acres of oak trees as they do not have to move far to get a belly full.
(https://forestryforum.com/smile/antlers.gif)     (https://forestryforum.com/smile/rifle.gif)

  
ARKANSAWYER  

Our Gun season just finished,the group I hunt with got 4 deer for 5 hunters I am the youngest member of the group by 24 years and i am thirty six.can you buy geratol by the case? Heard of one deer from the Belleville area that dressed out at 309lbs,another at 280 and a couple at 250lbs.Our best was an eight point that dressed 194.Hope everyone enjoy's there season as much as I did.This was my 21st year to hunt with my father, and the same group.   DonT

Great success and "big" deer. You must know their territory.

Thanks Ron,Yes we had a good year.We are still only allowed one deer a piece.This will probably change next year.Antlerless permits used to be issued through a random draw with about 30% of hunters applying receiving tags.Now all that apply get a tag.The problem is that with an increased deer herd more hunters are shooting bucks only,this has created a large buck to doe ratio.Our Ministry of natural resources has tried differant strategies to change this but none seem to be working real well.As I may have mentioned before we hunt on our family property behind my parents house, "camp" is the garage that we meet in every morning and where we eat our lunch.I have found the key to deer hunting to be knowing the area that you hunt very well,and understanding how the deer relate to the type of terrain you are hunting.I realize that many outdoor writers see hunting as much more complex than this,but sometimes we as a society try and make things more complicated than they need to be.I hope everyone else from the forum going out this year has as a safe and successful hunt.   DonT

I like ARKANSAWYER's idea. I too have a Tree Lounger, it is the Wood Mizer of tree stands. I spent 7 hrs in the tree last Saturday, probably slept 5 of it. Didn't see any deer either  :o. My wife did see two spikes and a doe from the back deck of our house. I drove two hours up into ARKANSAWYER's neck of the woods. Could have stayed home and got the doe. But oh well it was time well spent. The two hours I was awake, got to see the sun rise and the animals wake up. It is kinda like looking at or being with God, I spent those two hours in prayer and awe.

SawBilly

If I had spent the dark:thirty early morning hours tied in a seat strapped to the upper reaches of a tree, I would have prayed too. :D

Tom,
you have got to check out www.treelounge.com, I dont know how to make it a link yet, i just got my second TREE!!!!

the treelounger is like hauling a lite-weight Lazy-Boy up in the tree and just relaxin.

If you took some popcorn and saw two bucks tangling, it would be just like a ballgame(https://forestryforum.com/smile/wiggle.gif) do the wave!!!

sorry when I previewed it, it made the link all by itself
 8)

That's one of the neat features on the forum.  You can paste the address bar of the site into the message or just type it.  the software recognizes an address and will make a link out of it.  'Course it has to be a valid one. :D

Two Trees!!  Holy Cow !!  It won't be long your gonna want a skidder. :D

Well its off to the cabin and Detour Village for me tomorrow. I have picked family and cards, the Raber Bay Bar, comfortable deer shacks and not a snowballs chance in hell of getting a buck over staying home and hunting.

I believe I have made a wise choice. Maybe I'll sneak over to Sault St. Marie and pitch snowballs at Kevin. ;D

Still wondering, should I take my gun?

Yep and your camera :)

Our gun season starts Sat.  Bow season has been open for a week or two.  I've already got a turkey(Butterball) and a ham, sometimes bag bar-b-q ribs and salt cured Kent. ham.  Like I mentioned before, we have good hunters.

We have a new one this year.  A young janitor at the school where my wife teaches.  His grandfather was raised by a family who used to own part of our place and he has asked me in the past to take him to the old house and buildings.  The buildings are in remarkable shape although you now have to walk to get to them.  I assigned him to that area although he doesn't know it.  I want to see if he finds them.  He told my wife today that he went up the hollow that is his north boundary and found where there had been an old housesite.  If he had gone another eighth mile, he would have found his grandad's old home.

We have four other hunters who have roots on or near our land.  They like to come back and live a little in the past as much as they like hunting.  I sometimes get tired of the deer stories, but I never get tired of listening to them remember back when.

Noble

QuoteMaybe I'll sneak over to Sault St. Marie

I don`t have enough health insurance to visit with you twice in one year.   :D

Son Chris got a fawn yesterday with the bow and arrow.  I about got a big doe this morning with my 94 Buick Roadmaser.  It was just at the crest of one of the steepest little hills on that stretch of road.  She walked out of a yard right into the blacktop before I saw her.  In that split second I could see she was "going for it" and I slapped on the binders. I guess the squalling tires changed her mind and she wheeled back around.  It was close. Real close.

So far I've hit three deer hard enough to kill them.  Two did considerable damage to the car but the third I was almost to a stop when I hit it and it only left some hair on the front license plate bolts.  The little spike buck was deader'n a doorknob.  The postmortem showed it only had a couple of cracked ribs.  I've bumped a couple more that didn't look like they were hurt too bad and didn't hurt the car or truck.  Had too many close calls to count.  This time of the year I drive with one eye looking left and one looking right.  Hard to drive cross-eyed!  :o

Did an unscientific survey in the office one fall and although there were a lot of hunters,  more people killed deer with their car then the hunters took. Many were hit well within the city limits.

P.S.  They advise here in Missouri to not to try to take the ditch or go over into the oncoming lane to avoid a deer.  A lot of loss of life accidents has happened this way.  The fist deer I hit I went into the oncoming lane trying to avoid it but it turned and jumped in front of me anyway.  The second two incidents I had really no choice but to break and hope for the best as I ran smack into a heard of them.

Vacation is over , got to go to work on Monday . Had 7 bucks killed at our camp . We are only shooting bucks this year . Didnt get one myself . Going back to work to rest up . Will try it again thanksgiving week . Hope everyone had better luck than I did . But what fun I had and I gained 10 Lbs. from all the good food . 8)

Don Staples emailed this too me to post here.
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Jeff, thought this would be of interest to you hunters up north.  I no longer  have the ability to adjust the size of a JPG I send, will correct that shortly.
 
This is opening day of an intensely managed hunting lease in east Texas.  High dollar set up.
(https://forestryforum.com/images/YaBBImages/userpics/Inland%20Bucks.jpg)

Wow!  That ought to slow them down.

Just thought I would post a pic of my scrub nine point that I got on the first day of PA deer season.

A nice PA deer. We had a lot of deer up on the Allegheny NF, but it was hard to find a nice buck. Many anterless deer. That was back in the mid 70's.

Deer season has been going since the first weekend of Dec., here, they upped the number of tags landowners get from 1 to 3, two of them having to be anterless. The first weekend my two sons came up and hunted with me. Each of them got a doe and I got a nice 8 point buck. After that weekend I hunt by myself for a couple of hours before dark. I hunt in an area that had a tornado go through in 1988. I like to just sit there and look at the trees and how the forest has regenerated since then, twice I have been sitting daydreaming with my head up in the trees when I'll hear something and have a deer almost in my lap. It's comical how the deer and I will spot each other at the same instance, I got so flustered the first time I pulled the gun up and the deer took off, I shot from the hip, shot about three foot behind the deer. My son laughed when I told him and commented " so shooting from the shoulder not hard enough for you".

I was informed today at a family  Christmas dinner that the nice buck that everyone around the house was watching all summer was taken the first saturday of season it was a 10 point with a 26" spread. It was taken on my Grandmothers farm which joins our property and is less than a mile from my house. My cousin said he has pics of this deer when it was still alive and if i can get him to print it out i will post it, and i will post a few more pics of a couple more bucks that were taken on our farm later.

Doug