CR Sam:
You may be on to something there. Through out all you know about the typical South Texas hunt or Iowa corn field shoot and imagine hunting in a creek bottom that is covered in Oaks never cut. Then imagine working your way out of the bottoms up a pine field that is managed by a professional forrester and it's just full of young pine trees. Think of a mature pine field with huge towering pines in every direction up on a hill. Finally imagine behind the pine field in another bottom, a dense thicket teaming with briars and undergrowth and you will have the exact description of the place I hunt in Bradley County Arkansas which is in the extreme southern part of the state.
Never have I heard a Buck that I killed. They always are seen within 40 to 60 yards slipping. There is no time to use a rangefinder and adjusting a variable scope is simply not an option. Thus my penchant for the 4X scope. I can shoot a buck at 30 yards or 100 yards and have a good line of sight. There is no margin of error and a strong caliber is needed to bring the deer down. If they run too far, you'll never find em' in the dense undergrowth. The longest shot I have ever made is 60 yards!
For years, the economy was so bad down there, everyone shot any thing that moved and as such there were just no big bucks. That is changing and the deer are getting bigger in size and in number of points. If you've never hunted in this environment make sure you have plenty of medicene on hand if hypertension is an issue-------------there's nothing like it.
