2022 Deer Pics/Chatter/Excuses

[kirk1978]

Grandson 2nd season. Took the first one he saw View attachment 321778

Congrats to the kid!

 

[kirk1978]

Well, I’m sad to report that shortly after the video was made this buck received a fatal gunshot wound from my neighbor to the north.

Well that stinks! To be honest, If I'm the neighbor I also would shoot him.

 

[kirk1978]

Hunted hard yesterday morning, climbed up the side of a good sized mountain and stayed until 11:30. Saw tons of deer and shot 2 hogs, who oddly enough were way up on the very top of the mountain above me. I didn’t plan to hunt yesterday evening, but the farmers hired hand called and said he had gathered cattle off one of their places and he watched a BUNCH of deerrun onto their other property. My son pestered me until I agreed to grab my gear and head out.

My stand at the property is in a draw, between a pond and a wheat field. I have to cross a large wheat field in the truck to get to the area where the farmer likes me to park. Because I arrived late in the afternoon, there were already 25+ deer on the wheat, including 2 nice bucks. I pulled through the gate, parked in the shade, and started glassing to see what the deer were in the field. Right away I spotted 2 nice bucks and one of them was a definite shooter, but they were a long ways from me. My wind was blowing directly to ALL the deer I could see, and I had no clue how to get closer. I kinda thought to myself “what the heck, let’s see what happens” so I pulled my truck next to an abandoned house just inside the property, got out and began putting on all my orange…. Getting my gun out of the truck and loading it….. grabbing my binoculars again…… and the big shooter was still there. My rangefinder wouldn’t give me a reading, so I used onX to getting an approximate distance to the buck. 375 was my best guess. I knew I had no prayer of getting any closer, so I laid down on my belly, flipped out my bipods, and let the 300wsm bark. The big buck and 2 does ran east about 100 yards when I shot, and I immediately thought I missed. I racked another shell into my gun, and got back on the scope. When I found him again in the scope, he turned around and began going west again and I could plainly see blood spewing profusely from his side. He got wobbly in his backend and went down. He’s by far my biggest buck. Gross green score 170 4/8” and this is the first time we had ever seen him. No pictures of him (we’re running 3 cell cams in the area) and no sightings of any kind. I’m super proud of him, obviously. My wife not so much…. This is taxidermy bill #3 for our family this year but I wouldn’t change any of it for the world.View attachment 321829View attachment 321830

WOW, what an awesome deer. Congrats!

 

[retrieverman]

Started the day slow only seeing 4 does and 4 bucks but ended pretty decent seeing 10 does and 4 bucks.

 

[kwaynem]

Started the day slow only seeing 4 does and 4 bucks but ended pretty decent seeing 10 does and 4 bucks.

 

[Hirschkopf]

I’m new to hunting Whitetail (other than limited success with Coues) and opted to fix that by buying my own property near Checotah - 1050 miles away from my home in Arizona. I managed to get a fenced corn feeder and a game camera installed in between rainstorms in June. The deer’s response to corn was very underwhelming. Recently, there was about one deer on camera in the daylight every other day, and the best buck was a smallish 3x3. That’s nowhere near the deer I saw when touring the place in March, or on the Realtor’s game camera tab. Perhaps the many deer that had been there were mooching off of the cattle food that was present then. Anyway, I drove back for rifle season knowing I was going to do my best not to get “skunked”. Long story, short, I managed to harvest a decent sized 2x2 and a huge doe on Sunday, and today, respectively. I’m definitely not a trophy hunter and young buck and doe may be the ticket for getting my family used to eating venison. I’ve no massive racks to photograph, but picked two interesting photos. The hanging sides photo shows what 6.5 Creedmoor Hornady 143 gr ELD-X Precision Hunter does to a young bucks’s chest wall. The shot is a bit high and forward, but he flopped right there. I’d been sitting in a blind for three hours of AM feeder failure, and decided to do a wood’s walk praying for deaf deer, or at least to learn my new place better. This was after the wind picked up and was blowing from me to the feeder. I’d put my rifle outside of the blind and went back in to get my pack and then noted the buck in the brush beyond what I’d cleared. Between the man-stink blowing in his face and the commotion in the blind I knew I was busted. I launched my “not getting skunked” round as quickly as I could after seeing he was not a spike. My rifle is set for 3” high at 100 yards; it’s either that or my haste, prevents a perfect heart shot, but it worked. I did not see anything in comfortable shooting distance on Monday. Today, after several more hours of sitting at an ignored feeder, I went for another walk. I ran into a few doe and harvested one with a frontal head shot. She was as much as an average dude in his 7th decade could lift by himself into a Kawasaki Mule bed. Tomorrow I get to sleep in and then start deboning the deer as I can’t take bone-in cervid into Arizona.

 

[bill allen]

I hunted earlier this evening and had 4 unaccompanied fawns, 4 bucks and 4 does on this sit. At last light about 9 hogs came in. I dropped one in its tracks. A good evening on my place. I expect it to slow down soon.

I was hunting a food plot with a corn feeder.

 

[kwaynem]

Congrats on the buck and doe on your new place!

 

[undeg01]

Hunted hard yesterday morning, climbed up the side of a good sized mountain and stayed until 11:30. Saw tons of deer and shot 2 hogs, who oddly enough were way up on the very top of the mountain above me. I didn’t plan to hunt yesterday evening, but the farmers hired hand called and said he had gathered cattle off one of their places and he watched a BUNCH of deerrun onto their other property. My son pestered me until I agreed to grab my gear and head out.

My stand at the property is in a draw, between a pond and a wheat field. I have to cross a large wheat field in the truck to get to the area where the farmer likes me to park. Because I arrived late in the afternoon, there were already 25+ deer on the wheat, including 2 nice bucks. I pulled through the gate, parked in the shade, and started glassing to see what the deer were in the field. Right away I spotted 2 nice bucks and one of them was a definite shooter, but they were a long ways from me. My wind was blowing directly to ALL the deer I could see, and I had no clue how to get closer. I kinda thought to myself “what the heck, let’s see what happens” so I pulled my truck next to an abandoned house just inside the property, got out and began putting on all my orange…. Getting my gun out of the truck and loading it….. grabbing my binoculars again…… and the big shooter was still there. My rangefinder wouldn’t give me a reading, so I used onX to getting an approximate distance to the buck. 375 was my best guess. I knew I had no prayer of getting any closer, so I laid down on my belly, flipped out my bipods, and let the 300wsm bark. The big buck and 2 does ran east about 100 yards when I shot, and I immediately thought I missed. I racked another shell into my gun, and got back on the scope. When I found him again in the scope, he turned around and began going west again and I could plainly see blood spewing profusely from his side. He got wobbly in his backend and went down. He’s by far my biggest buck. Gross green score 170 4/8” and this is the first time we had ever seen him. No pictures of him (we’re running 3 cell cams in the area) and no sightings of any kind. I’m super proud of him, obviously. My wife not so much…. This is taxidermy bill #3 for our family this year but I wouldn’t change any of it for the world.View attachment 321829View attachment 321830

What a deer! Congrats!

 

[undeg01]

I pulled camera cards today so my daughter and I were checking out pics this evening when she pointed to the wide buck and said, “Your buck looks different.” I started comparing and sure enough! I shot the wrong buck!

Check out the brow tines, fork on the right main beam and the mass as compared to the buck I shot. Granted I had about 1.8 seconds to sum up the buck, shoulder the rifle, acquire the target and pull the trigger. Not much time to make a detailed analysis. And truth be known, I would have shot it anyway. But still….