wolc123

I am sorry to hear about your dad. He has been in my prayers since you let us know of his illness back in October. I even sent a few, from up on a certain Adirondack ridge, where almost all my other prayers had been answered. It is hard to imagine a better way to go than doing what you love with your boy's by your side. Nobody can take those memories away. Hang in there, be strong, and keep the Faith.

This is one of the problems with low fur prices, not enough trapping and rabies breaks out.

Last weekend was the fist since opening of cross-bow that I did not see at least one deer. My mistake was over-hunting too small of an area. (3) hunts on less than 40 acres in two days was too much. I should have left our own farm for at least one of them. My folks always like to see me and they have over 60 acres of decent hunting ground. This weekend, I will be paying them a visit or two. I have one, long 3-day weekend left and two DMP's for adjacent zones. I took a vacation day Friday and had been planning a combination squirrel/bear crossbow hunt at my friends camp in the Southern Tier (no DMP's for there and no buck tags left) but the weather looks iffy for that and my wife's family decided to have an early Christmas party on Saturday night. They are leaving for their new Adirondack house to spend Christmas up there later next week. My new goals for this weekend are: 1) Kill squirrel(s) with crossbow 2) Fill DMP(s) with crossbow 3) Don't make any mistakes. If I can pull off any of those, from Friday thru Sunday, it would be the first time for me.

Stay on him. Maybe, if the cold weather holds, he will drop them antlers before the end of ML and you can use your DMP on him. You might even get lucky and find the sheds. That way you could legally have your "3-buck" year, shoulder mount and all. Many years ago, I missed a chip-shot on a big buck ,that had already dropped one of his antlers, on the last day of ML. My cap went off but the charge did not as he passed under my tree-stand. He looked up and then ran off, unharmed. Too bad in-lines were not legal back then.

No, but I have had a couple of hits that could have easily been taken as misses, based on all the evidence I saw. Each time there was excellent tracking snow on the ground, but it did not help me find one of the bucks. I think I hit that one close to where I aimed, with my 50 cal ML, from a range of about 175 yards. I had a good rest, a good scope, quartering away standing deer, and was very confident in making the shot. He showed no sign of being hit, but ran thru a creek and across a field, then crossed the road and ran into another half-overgrown field. I walked over to where he stood at the shot and there was not a drop of blood, or any hair on the fresh snow there. I picked up his trail on the other side of the creek in the snow and I followed his tracks for about 300 yards before loosing them amoung many other tracks. The whole way, not a drop of blood on the fresh snow. I circled wider and wider, for about 2 hours, from where I lost the trail, finding nothing. The next week I ran in to a neighbor who was hunting the back of that big field across the road. He said "I saw that doe run by me that you missed" (the buck had pushed the doe out of a cornfield below my stand). When he told me he did not see the buck, I knew he was dead somewhere. I found him in a clump of brush, half eaten by coyotes, with the help of the crows, a few days later, about 50 yards beyond the widest circle I had made. Probably a single-lung hit, based on the 500 or so yards he traveled after taking the hit. With my ML, the accuracy was there but the energy was lacking at that range. A little more and he probably would have shown some sign of a hit or left a little blood. The other one was a Button buck that I shot with an old, solid lead 12 gauge sabot from about 70 yards. He was standing broadside, feeding on clover, and I had a great rest - chip shot if there ever was one. At the shot, he bolted into some heavy cover. I walked immediately to the trail, expecting to see blood, but did not find a drop on the fresh snow. I backtracked to where he had been standing. Looking very carefully, I found a single drop the size of a pin-head. I got on his track and found him piled up in a little clearing, 30 yards into the brush, right next to the gut-pile of his momma, who I had killed 1 week earlier. It was a high, center lung hit and all the bleeding was internal. My money say's your doe is probably dead and was probably hit similarly. Sometimes snow makes it harder to find deer because their white belly does not show up as well when they are upended.

Thanks for bringing Him up Belo. None of the other stuff really matters that much in comparison. The Bible says that "He knows where every sparrow falls" and that "Man should eat animals with split, cloven hoofs that chew their cud" (sounds like deer to me). That tells me that He can put them deer wherever He wants to. Keeping things right with Him has been working out very well for me to insure that He puts them in my families food supply. Receiving blessings from Him beats the heck out of fighting the crowds at the grocery store or raising beef cattle (I have done those and they are not always fun).

That is a great point on the mechanicals. There are pros and cons to just about everything and that is surely a con for them. What type of broadhead you used, should certainly play a role in your decision to start a "hot pursuit", or back out and wait. I don't think the mechanical was invented yet when I struck low and forward on that BB (I used a 3-blade, 125 gr fixed Wasp). I killed an 8-point buck with my shotgun, about 9 years ago, that had a mechanical broadhead and about 4" of shaft stuck under the skin on the outboard side. The arrow had nearly passed thru, just above the spine and just behind the shoulder. I lost about 6 chops on that buck, trimming out the questionable looking stuff around the wound. Being a meat hunter, that pissed me off a bit and made me wish that I had shot the smaller buck that came in with it, and had offered me a closer shot. I was thankful that it was a mechanical though, because I probably would have got some nasty cuts on my hands while skinning if it had been a fixed.

I think we all have suffered a bit from that one, known more commonly as "buck fever". The way I got over it was to immediately look away from the antlers and at the hair I wanted to hit, after making the quick decision that it was a "shooter". I may not have shot the 2-1/2 year old I did this year with my crossbow, if I had stayed focused on his rack. His body was big and he looked like a solid 8 when I first saw him (turned out to be a busted up 5). No big deal, because I am a meat hunter primarily. I am thankful the bolt hit very near the hair I wanted, from a somewhat difficult angle.

That brings up another mistake, actually more of an accident that I had a few years ago. The rope broke while I was lifting my shotgun up into my treestand (while unloaded of coarse). It fell down about 15 feet, landing on the scope and shearing the base-mount bolts clean off. I had to go up to the house and grab a backup gun for that hunt. I drilled and retapped the holes a size larger (were #10, and I went with 1/4".) Maybe the smaller ones were designed to shear and save the scope, but it is a cheapo anyhow (Bushnell Banner). It has always been very clear and easy to adjust. I am looking for an excuse to upgrade it but have not really had one yet. That gun/scope has got the job done every time, with only two "2nd shots" required that were not on different deer. I did have to shim a little under the base, while bore-sighting, to get the crosshairs close to the barrel bore after the remount. I always make sure all the scope and base mounting screws are torqued well prior to sighting in.

I can't judge that one, because I don't recall ever trying a doe fawn. I have been blessed with a BB, almost every other year since I started hunting 35 years ago, including my first deer with a gun, and first with a bow. I have also eaten several that were struck by autos. I really can't explain the lack of doe fawns other than the fact that I always target the largest antlerless deer first, when filling DMP tags. That often means that momma gets the first shot and big brother the second. Little sister gets away I guess. Approximately 25% of my antlerless tags have been used on BB's. This season I was blessed again when I transffered a DMP to a friend from work, who promptly used it on a BB, which he gave to me (he does not like venison). That is definitely why I rate ruffed grouse high and turkey low. It is the only bird I have tried where the white meat has a good, rich, nutty flavor. To me turkey and chicken are flavorless, almost like eating cardboard.

My neighbor's nephew shot one on Thanksgiving morning that looked almost exactly like that one, but he had a little sticker point off the spike on one side. The odd thing was, that little buck had almost begged me to shoot him on an earlier hunt, with my crossbow. He walked fifteen yards from my stand, in an open hay field, stood broadside, and turned away. He stood there like that for about 5 minutes, then walked right over to the spot where I heard the two gunshots that marked his demise on Thanksgiving morning. 5 minutes after he dissappeared, a much larger bodied deer appeared from the same trail that the little guy had first approached on. It was almost like that larger, 2-1/2 year buck sent his younger brother out first, to make sure the coast was clear. He traveled a slightly different path however, detouring thru a standing corn field on the other side of the hedge-row that my stand is on. That might explain his much larger body size (about 1.5X). I could hear him munching on the corn as he worked his way thru and got a good whiff of that rutting buck smell when he got closer. When he stepped out of the corn, he was 20 yards from my stand and I put a bolt diagonally thru, from chest to butt. He staggered 50 or so yards out into an open field and dropped over in sight. The bolt had passed thru and stuck a couple inches into the ground. Days later, when I heard those two shots Thanksgiving morning, I was wondering if it was the little guy. We drove by the neighbors house, later that morning, on our way up the my wife's families place in the Adirondacks. I caught a glimpse of a small deer laying next to a jeep out by the road. I ran into the neighbor's nephews, who hunt his place, last week while I tossing the carcass of my Adirondack rifle buck back on my "coyote bait" pile. One of them confirmed that it was him who shot the little 3-point when I asked about the two shots I heard Thanksgiving morning. He did not look to happy about it, and said he thought it was a doe. I bet it was very good eating anyhow, probably almost as good as a BB.

Go back and get that liver if the foxes have not already snatched it up. That right there is about as good of eating as you will find in a wild animal, just one notch below moose tongue.

SSS, perpetuate the myth

I always wanted to try one of them but most that I take are in the summer when they are eating the sweetcorn in my garden. The NY state regulations state that coon taken outside of trapping season must be buried or cremated immediately (is that why you say not to eat them?). I suppose I could legally grab a bite during the cremation process. I never tried that but there is so much fat on them that a little squirt of charcoal lighter and a match would probably be enough to burn them up completely when they are freshly killed. If I ever did try one (after trapping season opens) I plan on putting it in the crockpot with plenty of bbq sauce and cayane pepper. I am guessing it might taste a little like pulled pork? Mid October in central CO about 15 years ago. The local we hunted with out there loves to come to NY for whitetails because they taste so much better. The Elk out there were fantastic tasting however (we did a combination hunt), but I still give a slight edge in flavor to corn-fed NY whitetail, and the BB's are definitely in a class by themselves. It is a good thing all of us hunters have different tastes or one particular species that was universally the best would get wiped out.

I doubt that aging has any effect of the flavor, but it sure does change the texture. In red meat, whether it be beef, moose, elk, or whitetail, riggermortice starts within a couple hours of the kill. That is what makes the legs stick straight out on the road-kills when you see them on the shoulder. You got to be very fast with your processing if you want to get ahead of it. If you process them later the same day or early the next, then freeze, you are just about maxing out the "toughness" of the meat. Even the grind is chewier if you do that. The old refrigerator makes controlling aging fairly easy but I still like it when the outside temps are predicted to be in the 30 - 50 degree range over the week to 10 day aging period. Then I can just hang them, inside my insulated garage, with the hide on until the day prior to processing. That hide does a great job of insulating against daily temperature extremes and keeps the meat from drying out (except for the tenderloins which should always be removed the day of he kill and put in the fridge for a day or two before consumption).

They do real well on 3 legs but not so good on two. That 3 legged buck I killed was showing no sign of injury when I took my first shot.

Top 3: Moose tongue, Whitetail Button Buck Liver, Ruffed Grouse Worst: Mule deer, second worst: wild Turkey (I don't even like the tame farm-raised stuff)

Many years ago I harvested a 3-legged buck just like the one you are describing. I had to check the date to make sure it was not the same one. That remains the largest-antlered deer I have killed (I am a pure meat hunter), and the second heaviest. I made a mistake on it, but the mistake the guy made a week earlier cancelled out my own. I was many years younger and a lot faster back then and was easily able to catch up to the buck who had only two good legs, after my first shot hit high on a front leg breaking the bone. He stumbled thru the thick bush, hindered by his very wide rack, broken front upper leg and shot off rear hoof (the other guy did that). After my first shot, my scope fogged over and I emptied the magazine as he stumbled by, close under my stand, not touching him with the other 4 shots. I got down, reloaded, and caught up to him in the brush, using my last slug on his neck from point blank range. I have been carrying 10 bullets ever since that. I have not used more than three in over 20 years since, but you never know. When mistakes are made, two things should be done: First is to minimize the damage, and second is to learn from it so it is not repeated. I minimized the damage on that doe this year by delivering a second shot ASAP. Next season I will sight that gun in properly so it is not repeated, even if it takes a few more of the $3.00 each slugs. I minimized the damage on that heavy buck two years ago by taking two more shots ($1.00 ea bullets), finally connecting on the last. I prevented a possible repeat this year by hunting areas where closer shots were more likely.

I am not overly enthused about my last hunt with the shotgun in 9F this afternoon, as I sit here in the house by the woodstove. It is mighty cold and windy out there. I still have a DMP for here and there are still way too many deer around. Having a full freezer and no buck tag takes most of the wind out of my sails in this kind of weather. I will just bundle up with my warmest gear and sit it out. I will get out of the wind inside what has been my most productive blind this season. A couple hot-hands in the muff and a thermos of hot cider should make it bearable. Hopefully a doe or better yet, a fat BB will present a good shot. Getting your hands into a fresh deer is the best way to warm them up.

What did you do wrong this year and why? We all like reading the stories and seeing the happy faces when everything goes right but stuff rarely works out perfect and we could all do better. It takes some guts to admit mistakes on a public forum and I thank those who already have or will because it gives all of us a cheap way to learn those lessons without having to make the same mistakes ourselves. That is the best thing I see about this site. I will start it out: The doe I killed on opening day of gun season suffered for about 40 seconds longer than she should have. More "prime" meat was destroyed than should have been by my first shot, which was outside of the vitals, and a second shot was required to put her down. My first shot from a rest at 100 yards with a 12 ga sabot slug using a bolt action rifled shotgun and a fixed 4 power scope hit her high, above the lungs, and broke her back. She clawed her way into a ditch and I immediately closed the distance and put a second shot into her brain. I claim 100% responsibility for that mistake. The root cause was that the gun was sighted in 5" high at that range and I knew it but was too cheap to use the extra slugs and dial it in closer. I remember thinking that the 5" high would be ok because it would enable longer shots without holdover but I would not have done it had I known it would cause that doe to suffer longer than she should have, and the loss of about 6 good chops. I think I also discovered this season, the root cause of a mistake I made two years ago where I missed the largest bodied buck I have ever seen while hunting on my first shot (I also missed him on my second shot but fortunately the third one was on the mark). I was high up on a mountain ridge and I fired that first shot at a 300 +/- 20 yard range from a well rested position with my 30/06 with the scope dialed up to 9X, at the buck down in the valley below. He was stopped when I fired but started walking immediately after the shot. I assumed a hit (I had previously learned the hard way to assume every shot is a hit until proven otherwise). There was fresh snow and visibility was excellent. I follwed him parallel from up there and fired a second shot offhand when he reached another opening. He must have heard that one and stopped walking. I rested the heavy rifle on a tree and fired the third lethal shot, dropping him there in his tracks. At first I thought that first miss was caused by firing the shot from an oiled barrel. I verified that was not the case on the range last summer, finding that my bullets hit within an inch of the same place from an oiled barrel or one that has fired two shots at 100 yards. This fall I got back up on that ridge and noted some branches that may have caused the deflection of that first bullet. Even though I took my largest deer ever from that spot, I did not hunt it this year because I did not want to repeat the same mistake. I found a better spot, where the shots would be closer, and was rewarded with an almost perfect one-shot kill on my rifle buck this fall. I did take about three pages of flack on here for taking that shot but those folks were not there to see it and I would take it again in a heartbeat if it were ever offered.

Keep us posted how it turns out. The slow death and old age are not in your favor when it comes to taste and texture. I have am old GE non-frost free refrigerator/freezer from the 1950's in the garage that does a good job of aging venison without drying it out too much. I think a modern frost-free one might not work as well. I have removed all the internal racks and installed hooks on the top. In warm weather (when the long range forcast is predicted to be above 50 degrees for extended periods), I skin the deer ASAP and remove the rear section with a saw. I rest the front part on the neck against the bottom of the fridge and hang the rear from the tendons by the hooks on the top. Close the door, leave it in there for a week for a 1-1/2 year old deer or 10 days for an older one. Then you are ready to process, all the riggermortise is out of the meat, and it is not dried out at all like those pictures up above.

I was a few years older when I killed my first antlered deer (18 or so I think). No beer was involved but tobacco (chew) was. I got up in a tree-stand my cousin had built at the back of our farm about an hour before daybreak on opening day. He and the rest of the hunters in our family were down at Allegheny state park for the opener. I could not go because I had an important test at college that day. Opening day in the park was a family tradition. I had gone the year before and killed a button buck down there with his dad, my godfather. I was not going to put the slugs in my gun until legal sunrise and I had my grandads old bottom-feed Ithaca 37, 16 gauge. There was snow on the ground and it seemed quite bright for a while before sunrise. I was spitting my Hawken into the snow below my stand, trying to hit the same spot and watching it get bigger. Shortly before sunrise, I heard something crashing thru the brush in the overgrown field adjacent to my stand. I looked at my watch, and just a few seconds after legal sun-up, a busted up 6-point (was a 7 before the fight) stepped out of the brush and stuck his nose right into that tobacco stain. At that point, I would have much rather had the side feeding Remington 870 that I have now, but I shoved a slug up from the bottom and hoped that it went into the chamber when I brought the action forward. I aimed down at the base of his neck and thankfully there was a bang when I pulled the trigger. He break-danced around a bit there on the ground then layed still. I gutted him quick and made it to class in plenty of time for the test. I passed it, but not by much. That was one of the last times I chewed tobacco. A week or so later, during a little snowball fight at work, I took one on the chin and swallowed a big mouthfull of chew. That was not too pleasant and caused me to drop the habit. Maybe someday I will buy some again, mix it with water and try it as a deer lure. A funny thing about that buck was that I had seen him twice during archery season, but well out of range. He had all 7 points on him those times. I guess maybe 7 really is a lucky number because his ran out when he got down to 6.

Sorry grow, I will have to look it up. I thought it was legal for a landowner to kill coons that are damaging crops. I certainly am far from perfect. I even missed a couple shots at a deer a couple years ago. Fortunately I brought him down in his tracks with the third one. They were all safe, because I was up on a ridge and he was in the valley below. I could clearly see my target and what was beyond. Could you see what was beyond that ten the other day? Hang in there, you might get him yet. Next year, I would put a scope on that shotgun. That makes it a lot easier to hit them as we get older, or wait for a nice close, standing shot. You still got all of ML season also. Does yours have a scope on it? Good luck the rest of the season. I checked the regs and verified that it is legal for a landowner to trap and kill coons that are damaging crops, gardens, or landscaping. No DEC permit is required for that. The only stipulation is that the carcass should be buried or burned if trapping season is not open. Most of mine this fall were taken after coon season opened, but I may not have buried a few that I took earlier. Now that I know it is required, I will make sure I do in the future. Thanks for the tip.

Yes they were skinned. The last one was a big male and my cousin tanned the hide for me. I vividly remember turning that dried up, untouched carcass under in the spring when I plowed the ground for a corn plot.

At this time, glysophate (gly for short) is considered safe. No one knows what the future holds. At one time, agent orange was considered safe. I compromise by using gly very sparingly. Now that Monsanto's patent has expired, you can buy Roundup much cheaper than it used to be, and knock-off brands cheaper yet. Glysophate is a non-selective herbicide, which are generally safer than selective types. The application of gly allows much higher yields of corn by eliminating the weed competition. Almost all corn is RR (or gly restistant) these days, including the feed corn you can buy at Tractor supply. I don't recommend planting that because it is illegal and there are even cheaper ways to plant RR corn legally. If you are going to break the law, where do you draw the line? Why not just shoot deer at night with a spotlight over a pile of feed corn and skip the planting? Corn seed contains very little oil and will continue to germinate for many years, if stored properly (in a dry place at relatively constant temperature such as a high shelf in your basement). I clean out the big planters of area farmers at the end of planting season (late June), and use that seed the following year(s). I have planted up to 6 year old seed, stored that way, with no significant loss in germination. You can broadcast the seed, but a higher rate is required per acre if you do it that way (about twice as much seed) for comparable yield. I prefer to use a row planter on 36" rows, that also applies fertilizer (high nitrogen) at planting. That minimizes the input cost of seed (always free for me anyhow), fertilizer, and gly. The wide 36" rows can also be effectively hunted on windy days during archery season, while broadcast can not. Most of the nitrogen my RR corn needs for decent yields has been banked in the soil from white clover. I only put in corn on old clover plots where the grass is starting to take over, telling me the nitrogen has been building up in the ground. The corn puts that to good use, while grass is about the easiest weed there is for gly to eliminate. Besides using half the seed for the same yield, the row planter applies the starter fertilizer on the rows only, where it is needed by the corn. Broadcasting the fertilizer wastes a lot between the rows. The row planter also makes it easy to apply the gly only on the rows, where the fertilizer is, and where the weeds want to grow the heaviest. With a spot sprayer pointed at the rows and mounted on my cultivator tractor, i can mechanically take out the sparse weeds between the rows with the shovels, and completely eradicate the heavy weeds in the rows with the spray. I would consider my two row corn planter with fertilizer applicators to be my single most important piece of foodplotting equipment. It is the key to reducing input costs, such that the cost of boneless venison can come in at under $1.00 per pound. There is no other foodplot that offers the combination of carbs, and cover, just when they need it, and holds deer on your land as well thru the end of late ML season, during daylight hours. One last tip to get the most out of your corn, is to eliminate the raccoons. They get in the corn and knock over the stalks, tasting a little of the tender stuff at the end of each ear, before knocking over the next one. Fortunately, they are about the easiest furbearer there is to trap. A few rows of early ripening sweetcorn at the edge of your RR corn will draw them in. Those dog-proof traps that look like beer cans work great with a little cat food poured in the bottom. Box traps baited with marshmellows coated with peanut butter also work pretty well. The deer themselves are very efficient users of corn, eating all the kernals off an ear before moving on to the next one, without removing it from the stalk. I have never killed a deer on our farm that did not have a belly full of corn. A couple years ago, a couple little piles of corn was all that remained of the gut-pile a few days after I killed one. I picked up some of it and planted it in a tomato flat. Not a single one of the 12 kernals germinated. I wanted to see if it would sprout, and if it would retain the RR trait after passing thru a deer. It looks like the stomach acid must kill it all the way however.