phade

He shoots solid actually - I don't know how though. He looses more blood than the deer sometimes.

He doesn't like gun hunting because his Savage 220 bites back. That and the old reliable H&R I have has to show him how its done. You should have seen how tight he wrapped up that doe this weekend before it was gently placed upon the carpet. My doe simply was flopped into my truck bed.

I've heard of some deer that are darn near bullet proof at this time of year though. Eleventy billion is a lot.

Interesting you say that. In late MZ here, I actually don't hunt the first few days of that season. I most often take off the afternoon of that Thursday or Friday of the MZ season, and find that the few days of respite for the deer does wonders for their daytime activity.

I don't mind butchering, but it does become a bit of a pain. I've grown leery of shooting does on Sunday evening hunts, that's for sure. I don't like leaving them for a day or two either in the colder temps...it's just one more thing to get done at that point of the year. I'm at the point this year where I simply don't want to deal with it any longer this season. If it don't have antlers worth shooting, it ain't getting shot for the remainder of the season. Unless its a black squirrel, which I will have before squirrel season is out and it will be on my wall.

I use the SSTs in my Vortek UL. They shoot great, but I will say the blood trails haven't been great. Granted not much tracking has been needed, but still. We recovered an SST from a 12 gauge from a buck this opener that my FIL shot and it was the first time I got to look at one shroomed out. I was pleasantly surprised at how uniform it was with decent expansion. I'm not sure why I don't get those blood trails from the SSTs out of my ML. I'm pushing similar speeds. I am a big fan of Harvester - they have some great sabots and bullet options. I used to shoot their Scorpion line (cheap but similar to XTPs) with good results out of my CVA Wolf. I wish they were sold more commonly locally. When I go to Ohio to hunt, I load up from a store that carries their products. I plan to experiment more with them this summer. I do know that Barnes seem to just destroy deer, but they're expensive and delicate (needing special loading jags, etc.). SSTs and Harvesters are usually half the price.

I can say the biggest factor to me is the close of the season. Ohio has bow open until Feb. 1. It's more of a marathon than a sprint for that state's hunters. Short gun season placed correctly and a lengthy bow season. I don't want to get into what is right or wrong management wise, but the simple logistics of having a long bow season allows for one to "hunt" at one's own pace (if you bowhunt). With a long gun season that can really pressure the deer, and a quickly ending bow season thereafter, I start to get wore out.

very cool!

its not that hard to bowhunt in cold temps. most people just dont want to at this time of year. a few spots I have are bow only. bowhunting is eleventy billion times more enjoyable whether bow season or not for me. I also think bowhunting kills in gun season on ground thats not bow limited is impressive. deer get skittish this time of year with the pressure and sealing the deal is not easy.

Watching some football inside this afternoon taking care of the kiddo. Both me and moog shot some flatheads this weekend. Lots of late season activity starting to show up - bed to food.

sitting in a stand behind fils house. figured we might as well get out. crossed one fresh track so who knows.

The heaviest chasing I saw was on Nov. 2 with multiple aggressive mature bucks moving on the does.

Good news indeed!

I have a couple items in the crossfire line. the binos and the crossfire ll 3-9x40. I really like the value and peformance.

The panda is nice, but the light output and only 8 batteries kind of make it a 1A option to the Code Black. I run several Code Blacks and Coverts.

This is what I think. Getting pics like this while at work is fun and sucky at the same time. Pretty much gun season in a nutshell.

Yes. I suspect despite our level of disagreement online amongst us all we would all enjoy hunting and hanging out in person at some point. Such is life in the electronic age and distance.

I am. Pretty much your age within a few months or so I bet. Cringing at the math eh? I have an 11 mo old and a 19 yr old......................... My wife is only 13 mos older than me.

I know Chad and he's hunting on permission - not a dime spent on a lease or buying the ground. He will buy it someday, no doubt. Granted the place does hold nice bucks, but he's killed enough to make it clear he can have ice in his veins to make the shot and at the same time put him in position for the shot. He also doesn't have big bucks behind every tree either. Typically there's one good buck a season. He's pretty much bummed that buck has left his area, because that's really all he had to hunt book wise. Part of what you said is the problem - most people can't pass up 150 and 160 in deer. That's not a facet of geography, that's a facet of personal trigger restraint. People don't pass them because they think a 170 will step out, they pass them so they can turn into a 170 or 180 or 200. It's the hardest thing to do in hunting in my opinion, right or wrong. I know I can't.

Sure, hunter skill isn't a representation solely built on the size of deer they've harvested. However, people who haven't hunted in the area say they could come in and find a booner behind every tree in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, etc. simply are not taking into account the bullet list that really qualifies hunter skill. Face it most people in those states still don't shoot B/C caliber bucks. B/C bucks make up a tiny fraction of the overall herd in any of those states. Shooting a public land B/C, shooting one on opening day of bow season, and having a half dozen B/C bucks (all three of those who know of the buck) says something however. Getting one and lucky is one thing, having historically ability to seal the deal on world-class bucks on multiple occasions begins to shatter the premise that it is JUST all location and money, skill comes into play at some point. Location can make a bad hunter look good - it's the great mitigator - but when you start putting up bucks on the wall that were a common base away from shattering a world record after you've killed a handful of book bucks already, I'd say that boy can hunt, regardless if he were smack dab in the best Iowa county. It's like saying Peyton Manning was solely a benefactor of having good genes (from pops), having been consistently placed into a great pedigree atmosphere (UT), and then stating that his success in the NFL thus far is something that anyone could come in and do if they had the same path. At some level, skill comes into play. I beg to differ about the fact that shooting one in NY takes more skill. The guy who shot the borderline B/C buck we were following all season shot the buck out of pure luck. He was forced to take his stand off our hunting parcel the Wed before season opener. He ended up setting up a blind in the middle of a 90 acre corn field because he had no other place to go hunt because other hunters rung around the field edge with their stands. Guess what ran by across the street after being spooked by a car? Guess who shot it? Not the guys with more than 20 trail cam photos of it, nor the farmer's grandson who had hours of video of the buck in summer for three years...the guy with the bargain basement smoothbore and sluggers who set a blind based on no logic, and who had been cited for game violations in the past. He killed that deer by luck. Should he kill another two or three, I then start to believe he has more skill than what I can comprehend. Now, a hunter here with several 125+ in deer here could be equally skilled, that's not the point. I don't care how good of ground you have, when you start having your name in the book multiple times, you are doing something right when it comes to hunting.

The funny thing is all three people that vetted for the deer on that thread are hunting studs. They've all got B/C bucks on the wall. That buck is in the wrong area if he wants to live. The one guy who watched it via spotter all summer has a 200+ gross typical and I believe 6-8 bucks 170+. He's a hunting fool and been very blessed. I think he may have two bucks over 200".

Probably so. It's ugly anyway.

Getting ready to buy new tires for the wife's SUV. Step Daughter comes home from college and said the roads were bad. I asked her how the tires were on her car. She says..."I don't know." I go out and look. Ugh. Walk straight to the fridge for a beer.

If you have nothing to go on and can get out the final two weekends of gun season - I'd target doe areas where you've seen doe fawns. Chances are one or two will come into estrous in the "second rut" and could pull him out of cover.

Thanks for the replies, it's giving me a few ideas to look at. I thought maybe the thermocoupler, but if it lights upon initial try but not on subsequent re-fires (automatically) and I can smell/hear the propane coming out, I thought that may not be it. The pilot flame looked shorter but not by much, maybe that's the cause here...I guess I just don't get why it wouldn't reach the propane to fire in subsequent attempts but would on the first.