dbHunterNY

posted full story in the live from the woods thread. took a doe. totally forgot about the contest and didn't get a photo with the doe. recorded harvest data for QDM co-op and then broke her down to prep for going in the freezer. 123 lbs dressed (minus a pound or so of off a hind quarter from the bast$%# yote). 5.5 yrs old. still have the carcass tag and everything but only picture of her i could take now would be with totes full of meat ready to be vac packed. lol

so i had more house stuff at the new house that had to get done. then had some work at the farm with clients getting hay bales. finally had a break in schedule to hunt Sunday morning. sometime before 8am had two doe and a fawn come into the stand. took the oldest one of the group at something around 15 yards. she finally crashed down hill in the bottom of a brushy hole below the stand. still in plain sight. thought she wasn't done as i saw movement. looked through the 6x rangefinder to find a coyote over her not 10 seconds after she hit the dirt. i watched it and yelled and got rowdy in the stand but it was intent on lowering it's head and getting into MY deer. i quickly as possible lower my bow, racing out of the stand, and then sprinted down to the deer and coyote. at 35 ish yards i was coming in hot and the yote figured he wanted to live to see another day, idk. it was gone in a flash and never stopped. within that short period of time it got through the hide and just into the roast on the one hind quarter. stood guard waiting for my dad to come with the UTV as i had everything to field dress it back at the truck. mean while a doe came in off an overgrown pasture. she came in quick to 15 yards saw me that looked off and trotted away. i ducked behind a tree and spotted it had a buck in tow that hung up in the brush at the pasture edge/fence at close to 50 yards. at first it didn't look big and couldn't see much of it. then it started turning its head and got a lot bigger. it he decided without the doe there wasn't much reason to go toward me so he turned around and walked back into the thick pasture. he was much bigger and wider then i thought. i worked toward the pasture edge minutes later but he was gone. probably after that doe. half hour later dad showed up to get me and the doe. then spent the rest of the day doing more house stuff and getting the doe processed for the freezer. that hole has always been hard to hunt with inconsistent winds but while there in that one spot it seemed to work. i think i might get my climber down in there to test it it out. needs that particular prevailing WNW wind though with morning thermals carry scent up the ridge out of there. fate seems to be a funny thing.

At a newer local pub grabbing some pizza and wings. Fiddlehead ipa while I wait. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

in the southern zone i've been asked and have pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to them. i layer and have multiple sets of camo. not all have grommets for the tag holder pin. i'm not ruining expensive clothing to have it visible. no ECO has given me a hard time. if i was doing stuff wrong he might though. if given a ticket i'd fight it in court that i presented it upon request and that it's an arbitrary and antiquated regulation. if not required in the northern zone then it doesn't have to be required in the southern zone.

so i've been surfing the net looking for deals on more of a easy draw bow. just bought appliances for new house and a mitter saw. bows i've got now will stay the same for another season.

is there a dealer around? doesn't seem so from their dealer search link.

ARs will get more deer to see a season or two to kick the ignorance and better elude some hunters. i agree though antler restrictions whether minimum regulatory ones or more restrictive voluntary ones won't really get you beyond 3.5 yrs old. the traditional outfitter with a B&C score restriction might be different but it really just takes self control/will power and a buck's ability to stay out of trouble to get that old.

left my bow on top of the car roof one early and dark morning. unknowingly tried driving to my spot without putting it in the car. couple times i've leaned my rifle against a tree and then took multiple steps to p*ss. only to have a deer i'd take traveling by. lowered my gun a little to see better but kept it close. breathed on it the whole time, so when i picked it up to finally shoot i couldn't see anything. dropped things out of the stand. first buck with a bow i shook so hard i dropped my cell phone out of my hand with someone on the other end. dragged deer and equipment out of the woods from the end of the blood trail only to realize i forgot my climber back at the tree. didn't fasten the top climber section to the tree or cinched to the bottom section. went to get in position bow in hand, and knocked the top section free. it fell onto the bottom section with a loud metal on metal bang, which meant no deer when i looked back up. other things i know of others doing. one guy rested his high scoped gun on the back of a pickup bed. shot across his bed but the bullet didn't make it to the deer. it was partially sticking out the other side of the truck bed. someone else shot a fence post. same individual used scent a-way soap instead of field spray in the early morning darkness. went on pretty thick. some else missed deer during a whole day of driving. ran out of bullets for their rifle and had to borrow someone elses gun. highlight was the hunter missing the pair of a buck mounting a doe. they continued to have it, while the hunter was still missing, until they finished and trotted off. while my uncle glassed some deer from the truck my young cousin got excited and ended up dumping a whole bottle of Tink's doe estrous between the seats.

in all fairness most hunters don't have all the pieces to the puzzle to know or see the difference. many 3.5 yr old bucks are killed and mounted on the wall. 3.5+ just becomes a "big buck". only in the past several years have a really figured out the difference.

i got an insanely silly idea of taking my daughters fisher price house and using it as a rifle blind. that'd be funny. a little small for bow though.

use of "mature" being subjective. it's my opinion that they still have a lot more growing to do after 3.5 yrs old. they can add on 40lbs or more of weight and 25+ inches out this way where they top off compared to the other end of the state. what you've seen is what you've seen out that way is what it is though.

top two seem right. bottom one is older than 4.5 years old. how much older is pointless. it's mature. the antlers make sense but wouldn't effect my decision unless i was really on the fence, which i'm not. keep the legs down to the hooves in the photos though. helps with aging.

i use a set of electronic ear muffs. can hear but the microphone cuts out with anything past a certain dB level. use them for pistol competition to hear range master instructions better. eliminates a set when the moment of truth arrives. i don't double up with ear plugs for hunting though.

multiple spots to enter. if hunting the edge pick a side downwind with activity. other setup a blind. where a lot of deer activity is in the grapes you can sometimes concentrate them to a spot if there's grapes left and you use twine or survey tape to create a funnel for traffic. sounds odd but it works.

i've got a doe tag so eventually i'm going to make it there. despite everyone says it's over crowded and not the place for big bucks. it served me well when i lived close by and hunted it.

i don't think it's a piebald but could be slightly. they vary a ton. we must have a doe with the right genes to produce them. she had a buck fawn last year that's all white except the head. this year she had a doe fawn that made it and it's more like an antelope. both are runt deer though. normal yearling bucks dwarf the white buck. they often have internal issues which to varying degrees puts a damper on digestion and taking in nutrition available. we had another doe that lived to maturity years ago. it's home range was tiny like the others. also she didn't make it past 7 years old. other doe that don't get taken seem to easily make it past that. didn't get tagged because everyone would've very likely heard if someone did. can't hide much around this small town.

house closings all done. work kind of a bumper. leave at dark and get home at dark. can't wait for this weekend.

what i mean is if you're looking down hill or uphill they're for the most part broadsided. i meant there body being pointed in a direction. not their head, that's on a 360 degree swivel. lol

it's best to cautiously enhance locations already used for bedding. deer are finicky though and each one has a different preference. best to give deer multiple options (view from different directions and for different winds). also doe family groups and bucks don't want to be together during different times of the year. another huge mistake myself and others have made is thinking it needs to have overhead hinged canopy and be thick. if deer think they're too constricted without multiple escape routes they won't use it. on a slope you know deer will bed pointing perpendicular to the slope though.

not saying its bad down there but i identify with anything north of westchester on a good day. on a bad day it's anything north of columbia county, not including any major city, especially albany.

wicked good post Dave. not saying it was evil. just wicked good.

it was a hard sell for me to buy a vac master and spend close to or over $1k. i've used a big one in a butcher shop that could do like 6 large bags at once. definitely sealed tight and well. I had a basic food saver model and killed it within a couple years. different bags from ziploc and others had wrinkles that wouldn't seal well too. I used coupons and Cabelas bucks and got their commercial grade 12" vac sealer. changed the look but features seem to be the same. had it now for several years. seems to pump harder, has an extended double seal, manual seal, tube for containers, and other wet seal options. also has a bulk roll tray with a cutter bar on it. works as good as the day i got it. thought about getting the seal replacement kit for it as i'm afraid it'll be so long from now that when it breaks they won't have one to offer anymore. i do at least a few deer, handful of shopping bags worth of veggies from the garden, and things like leftovers and store sale meat every year. i buy Cabelas bulk rolls too and use the cutter bar to cut a bag only to the length that i need.

you're not alone. a lot of people do it.

haven't even registered the sled yet.

missed the "y" when typing i guess. we do not have the same inlaws to my knowledge. my wife is from the southern tier. however, she's was raised in a suburbia.