Buckmaster7600

They come caliber specific, never had an issue with the powder going by the bullet. If you’re using blackhorn make sure you get the magnum sized ones. The regular sized ones won’t hold a max charge and a bullet. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I use a Barnes bullet but not the ones they make specifically for muzzleloaders it’s a .451 bullet designed for the 450 bushmaster and I use them in a harvestor sabot. Of the 20 or 30 bullet sabot combos I’ve tried these are the best! They load easy when especially when using blackhorn and they put huge holes in deer. these are the speed loaders I use. I carry 3 loads in 1 pocket and another in the other pocket with primers in them. If you need a bullet starter you need to pick a different sabot because there’s no need for one with modern guns and bullets.

Jeepers people recommending the Baffins and it hasn’t even gotten to single digits yet. Baffins are the best cold weather boot I’ve ever worn but you don’t want to walk very far in them. Mine stay in the closet until we have below zero temps. They’re too warm to wear otherwise. I don’t have the ones moog posted they might be better in the warmer days than mine. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not for protection from the wind but for eye protection while hunting I wear clear or amber oakley M frames. You can get prescription lenses for them. Not cheap but I don’t step in the woods without them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Back when I hunted a shotgun I hunted with a 20ga. I don’t have that gun anymore, if I enjoy this trip I’ll have another 20ga for sure! If it still snowing Monday I’ll be carrying my 20 with a smooth bore and rifled slugs setup with a peep sight. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

870 with cantilever riffled barrel. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Little range action for the old meat getter. I had almost forgot how much I hate shooting slug guns but was quickly reminded! She’s dialed in don’t know what slugs I want to shoot. Those are the only two types I could find around. The SST’s shot a bit better right around 2” and the whitetails shot about 3” groups. I doped the scope for both so when I decide what ones I’ll dial her in. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I know they shoot some pretty good bucks, from what I’m reading I can shoot 2 bucks so I’ll still be able to go back for muzzleloader if I get one. Should be fun always like covering new ground. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Never hunted Mass before but with snow coming this weekend I think I’m heading there Monday morning found a few big pieces of public land that should give me room to track. It’s shotgun only so I’m going to dust of the slug gun today although I swore I would never do it again. Anyone ever hunted over there? License prices aren’t bad at all and it’s a lot closer than Maine and New Hampshire. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s what it’s all about!!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My girlfriend bought one and other than tater tots everything that comes out of it sucks! I wouldn’t risk ruining fish in there. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Happy thanksgiving to all! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Looks awesome! Enjoy your family time and best of luck in the woods! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You guys crack me up, I refuse to mow before June 1st or after oct 1st. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’m not very techy but I tried doing this on a map to show the way I try to follow terrain in areas that I think a buck would cross. I try to avoid areas where I would think a buck would follow because if you’re walking the same route a buck would because you can be 10yds from his track and not see it. I always want to put myself on a path to cross his expected travel route. I almost always start heading up if at all possible, I don’t like being low for a couple reasons. Number 1 I don’t like being wet if I don’t have to be and number 2 most bucks will bed up high if they can and aren’t with a doe. Although a lot of people think people make deer nocturnal I don’t think this is the case at all. Most of the deer I’m hunting have probably never seen a human before yet they do most of their traveling at night. Ideally I always want to cut the track on his way back up to bed in the early morning not on his way down likely the afternoon or night before. this is a route I would take if I was hunting this mountain tomorrow with tracking snow. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I wish I was that good! Problem is usually when you jump a deer when diddling through the woods I never see the deer, just come on a bed and get mad at myself for not seeing the signs that they were going to bed down. When they slow down is another topic that could be 50 pages long. I always look for something different. After following a buck for 1/4 of a mile you learn a lot about him. The way he walks, terrain he follows, terrain he avoids etc. After following the buck for a while you are going to have his stride, stagger and print engrained in your head so when he does something different it should stand out to you. Anything out of his normal walk is a sign he may be slowing down. There are obvious things you have to be always looking for such as feeding whether he’s pawing in the snow or nipping a bud or eating moss or mushrooms off a tree. Another obvious thing you have to for is a change in direction. Usually a buck will have some kind of a general direction they’re heading. So if you’ve been on his track for a couple miles heading north and for no obvious reasons he turns 90 degrees and heads west you need to put on the breaks and start looking for signs of him keeping going or other signs the hell bed. 95% of the time a buck will feed and piss before he beds down. The problem is by the time you see that it might be too late because he’s probably already gone from his bed. You need to be able to pick up on the small subtle signs before he does those things. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I shoot a lot! Thousands of rounds a year from deer rifles. Other than the hand full of shots it takes to sight in and confirm I’m sighted in I shoot steel targets. Every time I shoot I do speed drills. From a one handed carry position to a shot off in 3 seconds. I have 4”-10” steel plates setup from 20-80yds in my yard. Another thing we do every year is go to an old shale pit and put balloons or a piece of cardboard in a tire and role it down the hill and someone shoots at it while it’s rolling down the hill. That is an awesome way to practice shooting at running/moving deer. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I had never saw a pair before last week when my buddy showed up with a set, I think they were Sitka’s, I think he said they were over a hundred dollars. He started out with them on and after a while of following me on a track he realized how much more noise he was making than I was. He took them off and put them in his backpack and it did help some. When we crossed a stream that was about knee high he put them back on and when we got to the other side he said his feet were wet. He was wearing goretex boots but I don’t remember the brand. He sent me a text the other day asking me what boots I was wearing so I’m guessing he getting a pair of lacrosse’s. They would be perfect if they made them in a quieter material but when I looked them up after every pair I found was gortex and would be way too loud for tracking. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I could type from now until next season on aging tracks and still not cover it all. But I’ll give it a shot. If I’m at camp I’ll make sure to make a foot print in fresh untouched snow before I go to bed. If I get up to pee in the middle of night I’ll make sure to make another print besides the first one. As soon as I wake up I always have to take a leak and put another track beside the others. Before I get in the truck for the morning I study those tracks if it snowed I’ll make note of how much Snow is in the tracks and Take mental notes. If it didn’t snow I’ll feel each track with my bare hand and see how frozen they are. Unfortunately I don’t live up there so often I leave my house at 2am and drive up to where I’m hunting. The fresher the track the more crisp it will look, the edges will be sharp the corners will be sharp. The older the track the more “blurry” they get. The edges will be rounded the corners will be rounded. Another thing I always do is put my bare fingers “another reason why I wear fingerless gloves” down in the track to see how it feels then I’ll push my fist down in the snow and compare my print to the track and see how similar they feel. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For someone new to the game I always recommend someone start from one side of a road and never from the end of a road. If you start hunting from the side of a road and the road goes east and west and you step off from north side of the road no matter what happens or how far you go as long as you don’t cross the road if you head south you’ll end up back on the road you started. It’s that simple you might be a couple miles from your rig but I’d rather walk 10 miles by road than a mile through the woods in the dark. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tucking them into the boots is the worst thing you can do, that let’s all the water run into the boots. You can’t tie boots water tight. If anything tape your pants on the outside of your boots. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

these are the gloves I wear and I love them! Always keep a 2nd pare in my back pocket Incase they get soaked. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just wait until it all comes together! I don’t like water proof anything because they make me sweat too much, I wear very thin merino wool gloves that still keep my hands warm when they’re wet. I don’t agree with the bino thing this is my first year wearing them and I don’t think I’ll ever be without them again. Even when I carried a scoped gun I still wore them and used them a lot. I think the only day I never looked through them after wearing them was the day I killed my buck. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good luck up there! I’ll be heading back “guiding” on Friday. I have a buddy that wants to track. It’s so hard to track with two people. Between them not being able to cover the ground and not having the eye to see the deer even with me trying to tell them where it is. I have brought 3 different people up with me since I got my buck and put all of them on deer that I could see and could have shot and none of them have been able to pull the trigger. It’s fun and keeps me in the woods but it sure is frustrating! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is only the second time in my life that I have killed a buck from a track I found on the road in NY. In Maine, New Hampshire and northern Vermont it’s much more common because they log their woods and have a much better road system. Usually I find a track in the woods. I like to follow terrain features be it a ridge or a trickle coming off a mountain. Something I figure a buck will cross in its daily “usually nightly” wonderings. Figuring out if the track is worth following is one of the hardest parts of tracking in New York because our deer are smaller than the other “tracking” states. When hunting Maine and New Hampshire it’s easy because their mature bucks tend to weigh north of 200lbs and a 200+ pounder usually has a huge track. In New York I have to use other information from the track to decide if it’s worth it. I still use the size but often a mature doe will have the same size track as a mature New York buck. I pay the most attention to width between the tracks “stagger” a mature bucks chest is wider than a does and I look for stride a mature buck has a longer body than a doe and his steps will longer. The biggest reason why I followed the one I killed this year is because 20yards off the road he came to a spot where two trees were growing 30”‘s apart and I could see where he intentionally walked around them so he didn’t have to go though that gap. He probably did that 100 times throughout that day so I knew he had a decent rack, to be honest I though he was going to have a lot wider rack than he did have based on the paths he was taking. When I’m tracking unless the buck gives me some idea that he’s slowing down I’m not quiet at all. I’m trying to cover country. I always call it the mall walkers pace, I don’t know if they do it other places but around here people will go to the malls early in the morning and walk during the winter for exercise and they’re usually going at a good clip. Depending on terrain I can usually keep about a 4 mile per hour pace while I’m on a track until he gives me an indication that he’s slowing down. When I’m in “mall walker” mode I’m not hunting I’m not worried about bumping deer or even seeing deer I’m only concerned with playing catch up. If I’m in the woods looking for a track I’m going about the same pace I’m not hunting deer I’m hunting a track. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk