Originally posted by Gundummer:
Buck46, I am in the sometimes I am outsmarted by the deer and had a really good time stage.
Good for you. I hunt deer primarily with handguns. I am in the "glad the good lord gave me another fall in the woods" stage. Used to be I too shot a lot of scrub horns. Got a 55 gallon drum full of little baskets. Last few I shot, I felt worse takin' them home than goin' home empty handed. Didn't feel like I was successful, but failed. Lotta potential going to waste. Opportunities for others and a good buck for next year denied because of my greed. Then I got selective. Found out that lettin' that scrub horn walk made me feel good, and made the hunt successful, even if I went home with nuttin' in the truck. The buck I told about that I passed on in a previous post was shot the next day by a 14 year old neighbor kid. His first buck and he was proud as hell. His dad had told him I had passed on him earlier and the kid came over with the buck, showed me the good shot he had made and thanked me for lettin' him walk. That made it one of my best seasons I ever had outta 46. As I said before, success isn't always determined by the amount of blood on your knife.
Originally posted by Gundummer:
I have let doe walk when meat hunting because I was looking for something heavier.
Again, good for you. Not that hard to be patient and wait for a good shot at something worthwhile. Maybe it was a year you ended up with one of those monster 80 pound nubbin' bucks, eh?
Originally posted by Gundummer:
Anybody that thinks they have all the time in the world to just sit and have a deer walk up to them is in the daydream stage.
Kinda what deer huntin' is all about ain't it? As I said before, very few, if any of us here are deer hunting to survive. We hunt deer because we enjoy the challenge and the thrill of the hunt. Bein' outdoors and sharing the experience with friends and family. Goin' back to that spot in the woods where we got our first buck 40 years ago and relivin' it in our mind. Rememberin' that good one that we missed. To me this is more deer huntin' than takin' a hurried shot at an animal we have not identified because we fear we might go home empty handed today. To me that is better than lookin' at a dead button buck we shot by mistake......again.
Originally posted by Gundummer:
Buck46, if I were you I would lose the cocky, know it all attitude. Accidents can happen to the safest person. We had a safety instructor with an attitude just like yours around here and he lost a son to a gun related incident. Accidents involving guns are nothing to joke about and unfortunately seem to happen to people that think they are safer than anyone else.
I take hunting safely very seriously. One reason I involve myself in Hunter Education. I never joked about hunting accidents, only implied that folks takin hurried shots at a flash of brown runnin' thru the woods were breakin' one of the fundamental rules of gun safety.
Identifying your target and what is beyond it. Snap shooting at a deer so quickly you cannot identify it's sex or approximate age means one is not waiting for a proper shot to present itself and that they are not lookin' beyond the brown flash to make sure they are takin' a safe shot. This is why I said the woods was better of without them.......believe me, it is no joke. You on the other hand almost seem to imply the "safety instructor with an attitude just like yours around here" deserved to have his son shot.
Originally posted by Tom Matiska:
They note yearling spikers can catch up to yearling 6 pointers at the 4.5 year point, but is that too long in the gene pool? .....
Tom, one mistake many hunters make is assuming a spike is a spike solely because of genetics and will always be an inferior animal. Truth is, and proved in studies, that the first antlers a buck grows is no indication of what he will be later in life....none. Antler size and shape is dictated by many factors including genetics. Age, health and available food supply make a more dramatic impact on antler growth. Many spikes are late fawns born to does that got skipped their first estrous or didn't take till they got bred during a second estrous. Because these fawns are a month later than their cousins, their bodies put more energy in developing their bodies to catch up the first 15 months of their lives, leaving less energy to develop antlers when they are only 1 1/2 years old.
I do not claim to know "it all". I do know that deer management for the general public is not an easy task. Trying to keep numbers high enough to keep hunters happy while keeping them low enough to keep car/motorcycle/deer collisions to a minimum and to keep crop damage under control. I know in my state it is an ongoing process with minor or major changes made every year. As was mentioned before, one of the issues is large management zones. These are areas where habitat and pressure can vary the most with those in fringe or marginal areas within that large zone affected the most. I also know most F&Gs/DNRs are doin' their best to maintain a huntable deer herd for generations to come, so that my grandkids and yours can hopefully experience a quality hunt themselves.