dave6x6

Dave, i personally agree with what you said and i think you said it well. Thats why i will continue to encourage people to persue whatever it is they desire in the deer woods. If it's just getting your first deer with bow or filling your freezer for yourself and your family then i will be right there saying nice job when you drag that one in. For myself though, i will continue to let the small ones go, shoot does when i can and hunt only mature deer that i can score and put on the wall. And i will encourage everyone who has that as their desire to do the same. Whatever advice or tactics i have learned over the years or by other members on this forum will be given so that they can know the pleasure of reaching a big deer dream.

The answer to your question is yes. Deer do take some time to warm up to some plots but there may be other factors coming into play. The location and lay-out of your plot may have something to do with it as well. Contrary to what some might think, if the plot is not fairly close to cover or in an area that deer are used to being in, you can put out filet mignon and they're not going to eat it . Especially during daylight hrs. Not sure if that is coming into play with your situation but try to keep that in mind for future sites. I really just think they are finding other food sources right now that are more appealing to them. It's aweful hard to compete with corn but once they get that cleaned up they may start hitting yours next.

My father doesn't bother with the horns, he just goes right for the backstraps.. If he knows that deer hasn't been there only a few hrs or if it's been cold, he's got no problem yankin the straps for dinner..

Accman, i would agree with you mostly but big bucks don't always play by the rules and i believe the really smart ones will pattern you alot easier than you will pattern them. They learn pretty quickly what your car door sound like, and they know if they see you traveling in on the same path at 5;30 that they should just hunker down til you come out again. On that same path by the way. Big bucks will also get back to cover much earlier than the does and small bucks. You may think your getting in there early enough but i'm not so sure you and the big guys are not heading into cover about the same time. You would be surprised to find how effective sneaking in to the outer fringe of a bucks core area from a different access and a different time can really catch them off guard.

Fletch, Thanks for the clarification. I'm following you now.. Dave, the problem with some of your comments are that they have nothing to do with Newbreed and the situation that he raised. He has seen a big buck, he has seen little bucks, he has seen does, and he has shot plenty of young bucks and wants to reach for higher goals. The opportunity to shoot a big buck is not a problem for him. It's right before him right now. Geno is giving him his opinion on this situation alone, but you keep turning it around with your own experiences that have nothing to do with newbreed. Thats what is puzzling.

Well put Doc..

NJG, your probably right that my post may have been uncalled for.. Sorry for your feelings getting hurt. The original poster did throw the number out there though and seems to me that a comment is not out of line. I need to get banned from posting after 11 pm. Nothing good happens after that. LOL.

Don't we all kinda look like that this time of yr.. Too many 4 am wake-ups with work and family sqeezed in as well. LOL . Because there are so many patterns that will do just fine, I pick the outfit that has the qualities i'm looking for first. Quiet, warm, protected, comfortable outerwear will keep you in the stand longer and you'll tend to sit still better as well. I don't skimp on the quality of my gear. To me it's just as important as my bow.

Ya 17 deer is pretty much slightly better than normal day in 8H. As long as you have a decent size chunk of turf and some agr. on it.

i think it's a great buck but it's no where near 180" and this breakdown has some serious flaws in it as well. No where near 5 in. circum. and the g-3 at 14''? come on. Funny thing is when you add your totals up chief it comes out to 182 . (assuming you meant 5" average circ.). Im guessing it's going to shrink about 14 inches in the next 90 days somehow.

I'm satisfied with the outlook. Can't remember the last opening day that didn't have something miserable about it. Should be quite a bit better than opening bow was..

Just a quick update. Still no home for Bailey yet. Couple leads this week fell through. One friend of a co-worker looked great because she just lost her ole' timer dog and was feeling lonely, but her job just changed and has to be in Boston a couple times a month so she said maybe down the road when she gets settled in. We do have a local trainer who has volenteered to come to the house once a week for free. Not only to work with Bailey to make sure she is ready for her new owner but to take her out for a few hrs so we can get things done. Have not hunted in 2 weeks. Doesn't look good for opening gun either. Still a bunch of people helping to look so thank you all..

Ya i gotta get off this thread. Your killin' me..

Do mostly tree stand hunting so i've become a big fan of Mossy oaks tree stand pattern. Works amazingly well in snow as well. Mountain Mimicry is another favorite. Sitka used it until they went digital but now i see in Cabelas some other company has picked up the pattern. Not a big fan of digital or army type patterns. No offence but i don't mind the sticks and leaves patterns. When i go into the woods i just don't feel like looking like Rambo or some army Ranger. Sounds stupid but i go in to be closer to nature and since they all pretty much do as much as you can expect them to do, I'd rather spend it looking like a tree. I also find it much easier to find the more specialized materials in the more popular patterns.(gore-tex, soft shell, 4 way stretch ect.) Cotton-poly blend just isn't a super choice in our climate most of the time.

Your right but don't use it as an excuse to not get in early. I've said many time, i see the biggest deer moving from 9- 12noon. But that doesn't mean i'm sleeping in til then. Still think your best bet is getting in an hr. before and staying put. During the hard chasing i do still hunt to my best rut stand quite often. And i have a great set-up that requires a walk across a 40 acre field. That stand has become much better since we quit going in the dark.

Elmo, I'm not even going to re-quote that last statement because i don't even want anyone to read it again. We just fought that one through the dirt and the mud for the last week or so. As a bow and gun hunter alike i would just respectfully say that to be proficient with both takes equal amounts of skill and discipline. They are just different skills.

Boy i hope this is somehow therapudic because it sure is painful to write. Lets start with the good news. With a shotgun i have never pulled the trigger on a deer and not killed and recovered it. I am a one shot, make it count kind of gun hunter and am probably more cautious with my shot selection with a gun than i am with the bow. That and i'm fortunate to have a tack driver that seems to find the boilermaker most every time. Actually i did miss once on a doe from 20 yrds a couple seasons back. Both of us were so suprised that she was still alive that we both froze. Finally i racked another one and dropped her right there. All in all probably about 25 deer. Now the bad. I wounded two deer with my bow last season and never recovered them. The first, a doe, was an bone head rookie mistake. Bought a new bow before the season with all new bells and whistles. Well i forgot to tighten the sights down and every time i set it down on a hard surface, it moved it just a smidge. When a doe stood broadside at 10 yrds, i missed my target by 11 inches a punched her through the guts. Let her lay over night and came back in the morning to find the yotes had dragged body parts all over the field. Two weeks later i mis-judged the distance on a monster 10 and grazed his under belly or brisket. Nothing but fat on the arrow and white hair on the ground. Good news was he hardly new what happened. Flicked his tail a couple times and off he went. We searched for 4 hrs finding little spots of blood but clearly was not a fatal wound. The good thing is, those two misses really have changed thing for me as a bow hunter. I was getting a little too full of myself and thought i could make any shot. It was a very humbleing thing and forced me to practice harder and dial back my range just a bit..

In this case and in the question you raised in your first paragraph, i would say yes it would be wrong to shoot the 1.5yr old. The original poster stated that he has a goal to shoot a big deer and has even gotten a bit tired of small 1.5's and 2.5's so i think he should hang tough and do all he can to reach his big deer goal. And as far as farmers agreeing with you to shoot the 1.5, i would disagree. Both antler hunters and Farmers would much rather see you take a doe and leave the buck. (Of course the farmer would prefer you take both). But shooting the young buck instead helps neither group. He won't be around to grow another yr. and the doe will be here to drop a couple more fawns into his fields to eat. If i mis-understood your statement, i apologize, but big deer hunters and farmers are usually in agreement on shooting does.

Your probably right Joe, I'm just a youngster so i don't remember much before 1975.. But now that you mention it, i do remember the town being a buzz when my dad his best deer.

Ya i got on too late to catch the stuff that was deleted but i read enough before and in the past few weeks

What do you mean you gave Orvisman the name of a farmer in Walworth !! LOL !! Is that all you have to do on here is put up a post. Well here is mine.. Looking for land to hunt. Must be trophy area. Low pressure preferred. 300 acres min. Farmer must have at least 3 widowed daughters who have moved back in to help run the farm. Farmer must be blind and doesn't believe in violence. Hope this works..

Boy I'm so jealous. I spent the day shootin' jerkey. Should be done in another two hrs or so. But making sausage myself is something i have been putting off for years. I do breakfast sausage but i just do the patties and then freeze them but i have to finally bite the bullet and get to stuffin some links. I'll try to remember to try the Eastmans when i get around to it. Also i'll have to pick your brain about adding the cheese to them. Thats the way i like it..

I would agree with you NY but i can relate to WNY's point. I worked for about 10yrs in my youth(oh my god i can't believe i just used that phrase), on a farm near my house. The manager had worked there 30 yrs and our families saw each other all the time. He lived in a caretakers house on the one end of the property and one day asked me to run over to the house and get some tools he had on the back porch. When i got there i peaked in the window to the living room and there were 5 absolute slobs on the wall. Two were Booners and over 180". He had shot them in the 70's and never really spoke much about them. Today things are much different though and word gets out very quickly. No one can take a deer without someone at least getting a cell phone pic of it. If its over 140" its going to get passed along to someone, not to mention if its pushing 185 like this one.

Thanks to the moderators for yankin' this dip weed. So glad i don't have to read his non-sence on here ever again. Ya'll will have more time for MY non-sence now.. LOL

WNY, the one i saw is probably concidered Honeoye Falls. Off Corby rd near where the railroad tracks were, that is now a walking trail system. He also was a pretty good buck. My brother used to see him hunting close to there but has since lost that piece..