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Post by M4Madness on Dec 3, 2017 14:22:19 GMT -5
I know of two good bucks shot on the same farm in the past week with .308's in the ribcage. Neither left a bloodtrail and luckily both were found visually. One was this morning.
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 3, 2017 14:16:07 GMT -5
Nice buck. What county you in? He now lives in Kentucky, but his lease is in Switzerland County. So that buck cost him a non-resident license. Lol! Not bad at all when you consider this weekend was his only time to gun hunt this season.
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 3, 2017 10:53:57 GMT -5
Congratulations, Alex!
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 3, 2017 10:35:14 GMT -5
I just had a doe and two big fawns come from behind me at 10:25 AM and pass at 22 yards. I about had a heart attack when I peaked back over my left shoulder when I heard footsteps and saw the doe and caught more movement behind her out of the corner of my eye. I'd have bet money that it was a big buck and not fawns. Lol!
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 3, 2017 9:42:51 GMT -5
I got to this tree a full hour before shooting light, as I was determined to beat those deer to their beds. Well, either they bedded somewhere else, or they were earlier than I. Lol! It turns out that my suspicions were correct last night -- this is the only unlogged section of the farm remaining. The trees are marked, so it's coming soon.
I'll hunt until about noon, then check all the overgrown field sinkholes on the walk out. That buck I saw last night may be locked down with that young doe he was following.
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 3, 2017 5:08:26 GMT -5
I'm making one final go of it this morning to finish out firearms season. I'm hoping that the deer that I saw last night are still in the field that I saw them in, and that I can slip into the woods behind them undetected from the highway. The woodlot is west of the field, and the Weather Channel says zero wind until 10:00 AM, then SSE at 1 MPH. We'll see. I have an old hang-on stand up there where this woodlot meets another in a pinch point at the top of the field, but that section was logged this season. I "think" that this western woodlot has not been touched yet. Hunting in there means packing my climber up that huge hill. Lol!
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 2, 2017 20:17:03 GMT -5
Yes, I'd need something for very late season -- like possibly the last weekend of firearms and then muzzleloader. I'd have to find a spot far from property lines to keep others from benefitting from my labor. Lol! I understand that a person's best bet would be to avoid the plot during early archery and to only kill a buck off it. How big a plot would I need, and of what would it consist? (Sorry for the hijack.)
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 2, 2017 20:05:29 GMT -5
They'll continue to be down if he keeps killing all the fawns. Last year I was covered up in deer -- 15+ on quite a few occasions. This year has been a struggle to say the least. I took a doe with my bow in October, but with a liver hit, I didn't find her until the next day when she was already wasted due to the heat. I didn't mention it here at the time, but feel it is relevant now. I quit bowhunting evenings due to that loss. I took a large doe with my rifle, so that's all the does I'm taking this year, especially with everyone else around shooting them too. I got well over a dozen bucks on camera in a two-week period in August, with two being what I personally consider shooters. I have seen neither in person. In fact, I'm not sure that any of the small bucks I've seen while hunting are my camera bucks. Now two of my farms are being logged, so there goes my hundreds of acorn producers. Then another farm I hunt got destroyed by a tornado. I'm being punished for something. Lol!
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 2, 2017 19:39:46 GMT -5
Good luck on your search. You guys have about convinced me to try a foodplot. Lol! I resisted field sitting for over 20 years until this firearms season, but it's still been merely hay fields with one sit over cut corn. I've never had any inclination to sit over a foodplot before, but now I'm getting desperate. I've never killed a buck this late in the year.
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 2, 2017 19:31:56 GMT -5
Well, I walked back onto the farm behind my house tonight to cut across it to the farm that is being logged. Guess what? That farm is being logged too! And to make matters worse, I saw a hunter in a new ladder stand and slipped on past behind them on a fresh, quiet logging road. Then I came upon the ladder stand that I did know was back there, and there was someone in it too. I walked up and apologized for disrupting a hunt and introduced myself. I knew that I'd lost sole permission back there in 2013 after I arrowed a 164" buck just over the fenceline on the farm I was headed to tonight, but never knew that the guy was bringing others. It turns out that there were three hunters in there tonight. The guy told me that none had killed a deer this year. As soon as I left him and climbed the fence, I found a fresh fawn leg, so more than likely one of them in the last week shot one but didn't recover it.
I sat in the same field stand that I killed the big doe from on Black Friday, and right about sunset, I saw deer across the valley on the far hill. I looked through my rangefinder and saw four deer, but not much detail at 6X at 750 yards. Lol! I switched to the scope at 10X, and one of the bucks actually looked like it might be a shooter. He followed a doe around from one brushy sinkhole to another, and his body size and the way he carried himself told me that he's probably mature. There was no way I could climb down, race downhill, cross a creek, then climb that other hill in time to beat the shooting light deadline. So, I just watched them slowly work in my general direction. At last light, they were at 543 yards. Tomorrow morning will find me trying to slip to the top of that field hill undetected under a full moon, as well as beat the wind.
Tonight at the general store, I ran into the grandson of a neighboring landowner who hunts a small woodlot that borders the main farm I've been hunting this year. He told me he killed two doe fawns tonight. Probably two of the three doe fawns I saw being trailed by an 8-pointer past my stand Thanksgiving morning. He said he took one with a bow back in October too. I guess that's why my deer sightings are down this year. Lol!
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 2, 2017 9:22:59 GMT -5
Dead here. I saw three turkeys earlier and that's been it so far.
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 1, 2017 18:34:58 GMT -5
New York hunters can only hunt until sunset, unlike Hoosiers who can hunt 30 minutes after sunset. So, it may have still been legal time had he been in Indiana. I think the shooting occurred at 5:25 PM. Not sure what time sunset was at his location on that date. Obviously he shot after legal time, but it may not have been "dark" yet.
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Post by M4Madness on Dec 1, 2017 18:21:31 GMT -5
Found a tree for tomorrow and left my climber on it, which I very rarely do. I then walked back to my Jeep and set up a 100 yards or so beyond it on the ground. I didn't see any deer, but I picked three crawling ticks off me! December 1st! Ticks! I never sit on the ground, so maybe they're always like that. Lol!
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 30, 2017 19:47:16 GMT -5
Thanks for taking the time to type that out, and once again, congratulations to your dad.
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 30, 2017 18:57:03 GMT -5
Congratulations to Becca!
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 30, 2017 18:56:16 GMT -5
I've experimented a few times by sitting on field edges this firearms season, which is what I tried tonight on a hay field. Just before sunset, I noticed a deer already out in the field, so who knows exactly what time it stepped out. It was a buck, and I ranged it at 586 yards. Lol! Even on 10X on my scope, I couldn't judge the rack, but I'm pretty sure that it was a 2.5 year old 8-pointer.
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 30, 2017 16:26:39 GMT -5
I got off work, hurried home, then drove over to the farm I decided to hunt without even showering and packed my climber all the way up this hill. Just got situated in a tree. I can't believe I'd go to the trouble of hunting for what amounts to an hour, but it paid off before on this very farm 11 years ago under the exact same circumstances.
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 29, 2017 12:21:29 GMT -5
They certainly may have, Greg, but that's not related to the one buck rule, since gun hunters were restricted to one buck pre-OBR (except for a season or two very long ago. Right, Woody? Lol!)
Don't get me wrong. I'm pro-OBR now that crossbows are in the mix.
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 29, 2017 11:39:59 GMT -5
I feel sorry for any archer that had to pass this one up due to being tagged out. But not for a firearms hunter that had already filled his buck tag and had to let it walk? The statewide two buck rule only worked for archers. In other words, the only way for the OBR to be responsible for this buck's size would be an archer letting him walk.
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Post by M4Madness on Nov 29, 2017 10:10:51 GMT -5
I feel sorry for any archer that had to pass this one up due to being tagged out.
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