wolc123

After zeroing my ML and 30/30 this afternoon, I drove around back to look for coyotes (that season opened today) and I saw the 1.5 year old “scout” doe that was with the old boss for that I shot a couple weeks ago. I wondered if she would hang around. Hopefully, she stays around till crossbow opens and I can reunite her with her boss/mother in the freezer. I should have (3) more wmu 9F dmp tags by then. I doubt I’ll have any corn left by then. I checked my 2 acre plot out today and it is about 3/4 wiped out. The adjacent old clover, tall tine tubers, and fresh wheat/clover/alfalfa plots are looking very good though.

Sounds like a gut hit, I would call deer search and get a dog on it. Gut hits give out a ton of scent and are the easiest type of hit for dogs to find.

Congrats, on the kill. Bucks are always considerably faster for me to butcher than does, no matter how big their racks are, because there is always a lot less fat to be trimmed from the meat. I’ll bet that one is going to taste great. You should be healed up enough to to get back out after another one by the end of gun season and for sure by late and Holiday ML seasons, and now you have plenty of meat to last till then.

I got my ML and 30/30 zeroed this afternoon. Each needed a little tweaking, and (2) shots. The ML is now hitting exactly where I want it (1/2” high at 50 yards). My last shot with the open-sighted 30/30 was 1/2” to the left, which is close enough for me. That impact with the basement floor rug, nocked the ML off about 1-3/4 “ to the right and 1-1/2” low. I don’t know how the 30/30 got off a little farther than that. I don’t think I checked it last year, due to the ammo shortage. Had I not rechecked the ML, I probably wouldn’t have checked the 30/30 this year, so I am thankful that I dropped the ML, even though it cost me two 30/30 bullets and two more ML. I like to know that I can hit close to the hair that I aim at. I am down to just (4) 150 gr Federal 30/30, but I have a full box of (20) Winchester Super X 150’s, and I think my father in law has a box and a half or so of Federal 150’s. I gave him a box of .410 # 6’s for squirrels, so I am sure he won’t mind giving me some 30/30 ammo. I’ll use his scoped Marlin up there if it’s not raining. Adjusting the scope on the ML was east (2 clicks left and two up) using the ground down 1” blade on my edc knife as a screwdriver. The open fiber optic sights on the 30/30 was a little trickier. Fortunately, a little multi tool on the Durango key chain had a screwdriver just barely small enough to fit the tiny screws in the rear sight, and my first guess at how far up and how far left to move that was good.

I hope I don’t piss any bow hunters off too bad checking the zero on my ML and 30/30 after supper. If only I wouldn’t have dropped the ML on the carpet last time I cleaned it, I could skip that step. Hopefully, one shot each from my 50 yard bench, and I’ll be good to go. Normally, I try to complete all sighting in prior to Labor Day.

Wow, that is one the best looking bucks that I ever saw posted on this forum. Awesome colored rack, super clean cape and not dinged up at all. That’s one of the best things about getting them early . Good, solid 2.5 year old at least and definitely worthy of the “red wall” treatment. Make sure to cape it out, starting from well behind the shoulder, if you decide to get a mount. Not to often that a taxidermist gets as nice of a cape to work with as that one has.

I saw that yesterday afternoon at our place. The town came thru and bush-hogged the creek banks, about 25 yards back on each side, in the morning. There were (3) bucks together checking out the mowing job. One of them was this nice “shooter” 2.5 year old, which I have now seen back there at least a half a dozen times. Here he is, lined up with a window of my pop up blind at 20 yards, for a perfect Texas heart shot the last time I hunted back there during the early antlerless gun season: That almost makes me want to pick up my bow again (which I haven’t touched since 2013). Good luck to all the bow hunters out there. That “hay” is mostly cattails and weeds in the creek bed itself, but nice clover and Timothy on each side.

The town finally bush-hogged my creek banks today. It seems like they push that job back just a little later every year. When I walked back to check it out, at 6:45 pm, I saw that the 3 buck bachelor group was back together, consisting of a “just shooter” 2.5 yr 8-point, and (2) 1.5 yr olds. I was surprised to see that the half-rack 1.5 was back in the group. They must be playing nice now. They were in the old mowed clover plot, just to the left of the creek. They dissapeared into the tall hay, further to the left, before I could get a picture. They must have wanted to check out the town’s mowing job also. Hopefully, that 8-point hangs around till crossbow opens for the last two weeks (if I don’t fill that tag up north during early ML first). The odds are good that he will, because the old boss doe is in my freezer now, She won’t be giving him the boot.

Don’t forget your drag handle (aka butt-out):

Pretty good in fresh Cortland apples:

You just need to cook up a little medium-rare, free-range, “organic” fillet-mignon with it if you want fancy.

This big guy preferred smooth for his last meal:

I decided to tote my ML for the early September antlerless gun season this year. My target doe’s luck ran out on Tuesday the 13th, when I ambushed her from behind a patch of poison ivy, on her way to dinner in my 2 acre rr corn plot. Her prior year’s fawn came by first, prompting me to shoulder my T/C Omega 50 cal, so that I could deliver a quick, broadside, 15-yard heart shot, when she popped out from behind the cover. She spent the next (4) days in my deer fridge, and I stayed up till Midnight processing her on Saturday night. She must have lost this year’s fawn(s) to coyotes, because she didn’t have any milk in her, and lots of fat. It took me a lot of extra time, trimming as much of that out of the meat as I could, before grinding. Her tenderloins were very good and much more tender than those from the older doe that I killed last year in the NZ early ML season. I am guessing that she was 3.4 years old. Her burger is spectacular. My wife made meat sauce for spaghetti squash from the 1st of (17) quart-sized zip-lock bags of that last week. This doe was #1 on my hit-list, because she did considerable damage to my sweetcorn this year, taking out much of the early plantings, soon after it sprouted. She also had the best developed back straps that I ever seen on a doe.

My mother in law just sent me a picture of the decent 6 or 8 pointer across the lake from their house. He looks like a solid 2.5 year old. Hopefully, he crosses over to our side in a couple weeks. He’s a shooter for me up there for sure either with my ML the first week or with my 30/30 the following weekend. I’ve got to recheck the zero on my ML this weekend, because I dropped it while cleaning it, after using it on a doe during the early SZ antlerless season a couple weeks ago. I’ll check my 30/30 also (hopefully one and done with that because I need to conserve ammo).

2.5

As long as I wash up, soon after touching it, it don’t bother me. I was going to spray that patch with roundup to kill it but maybe I won’t it the deer eat it.

That’s what I was hiding behind when I shot a doe a couple weeks ago.

I’d say that is at least the 6th skunk that got that treatment and the first that got out any spray. I actually watched it roll over and discharge. Nasty looking stream went up about 5ft. It looked clear, like water, maybe 6 - 10 fluid oz. Good thing for the steady wind.

Maybe “he” is really not a “he” but an antlered doe. They say that they do exist. Good way to save on pepper.

Bad to worse: I hit it with a 1950’s or 60’s Remington Express Kleenbore 16 gauge load to the head, from 10 yards upwind, and it sprayed anyways. First time that has happened. I suppose that load may have lost a little of its oomph, after 70 or so years in that paper shell. Good thing there was a steady west wind. I let it blow the plume away for about 20 minutes before I opened the trap and rolled the dead skunk into a pre-dug hole and threw a few shovelfuls of dirt over it. I’ll wait a few days before I clean out that trap though. My wife could smell it on me, when I walked into the house.

I do not intentionally target the button bucks, but the Good Lord had blessed me with about (20) of them, in my 40 deer seasons. That has resulted from my standard practice of targeting the largest antlerless deer in range at the earliest opportunity. Not doing that, would result in unfilled tags. In grossly overpopulated DMU’s (like 9F) where I do most of my hunting, a dead bb for the table beats the heck out of tag soup. For many years, those antlerless tags have been tough to punch at my spots, because the neighboring farmers hit them real hard, prior to October 1, with their nuisance permits. Most of the deer, that they kill on those, end up feeding coyotes. The new early September gun season has changed that situation, so now I can be a little more selective with my antlerless tags. Oddly enough, I have never killed a doe fawn. I did eat a couple, and they taste the same as bb’s, they just tend to run smaller in size. The meat that comes from deer, less than 9 months old, is in a whole different class than meat from older deer. It literally melts in your mouth, because it is so tender. I save that stuff (vacuum sealed in the freezer) for special occasions. I am very well stocked with that right now, with bb’s on two consecutive years (another reason I can now be more selective). When it is properly aged, I can’t tell the difference in the meat from 1.5 - 5.5 year old deer. A 1.5 year old needs to age (at 33-48F) about (4) days to get past rigor mortis, and a 5.5 about (2) weeks. I can certainly tell bb meat from any of that though. Deer under 9 months can be processed and froze immediately, but they also benefit a little, from a day of aging before freezing. When it comes to birds, turkey is my least favorite. I am getting a bit more tolerant of chicken, as I get older. I hated it as a kid, because it seems like that’s all our parents fed us. We raised meat birds and dad made us help butcher. I had the grand champion at the Erie county fair in 1974. When I moved out of the house, it was a long time till I ordered chicken at a food joint. My favorite bird is ruffed grouse, white meat that actually has some flavor.

Well doesn’t this suck. Nothing in the traps in weeks and I was planning on pulling them tonight. I brought my .22 and raincoat back “just in case” I had to kill and bury a coon. Now I got to drive back up for a shotgun.

That was the name another site member gave to the 50 pounder that I killed last September. His buttons hadn’t yet protruded though, he was talking about his legs in this picture: One of Stubby’s butt roasts made for the best Thanksgiving for me ever last year, when my wife used it to stuff a second Turkey, that she cooked for my extended family. I never liked Thanksgiving meal much (other than the “sides”) because I can’t stand the taste of turkey (it tastes like dry cardboard to me). That bb roast came out of that bird done perfect, all the way thru:

As the site expert on button bucks, having killed around a total of 20, I would say that protruding antlers up to about an inch, is almost always still this year’s fawn. The earliest that I have ever killed one, was mid-September last year, and that one weighed about 50 lbs field dressed. I killed this one on January 1 of this year, that probably just broke 100. It would have been heavier, but it was suffering from an antler goring wound to the chest. I witnessed that attack and I am not sure if that he would have made it thru the winter because of that. No matter, as I got to him in the Holiday season with my ML, before the coyotes could, and the rest of the meat was good. I discarded the pussy stuff around his brisket. I have killed several others in late November that were very healthy, well-fed and over 110 lbs, field dressed. Since I have now taken bb’s on two consecutive years, I am trying my best to hold off on another until at least 2025.

I used the new garbage picked “trap-checker” for the first time today. It worked well for that. There is a good suspension on it. Side benefits are: free workout and saves me gas. I need to rig up a shovel holder and gun rack for it. There were no coons in the traps today though. We picked and froze most of the remaining sweetcorn on Friday. I will probably move the traps to the 2 acre fieldcorn plot out back on Monday, with the Durango, if it stops raining. The coons haven’t touched that, but the deer have eaten about a third of it already. The chief culprit now rests comfortably in my freezer, so hopefully the remaining 2/3 makes it, at least till opening day of gun season. Keeping the coons trapped out of it will help a lot with that.