wolc123

I lost your number Tacs, with my old smart phone. I’m trying to take better care of this one. Good Bill’s game last night, except for the injury’s. I said a few prayers for the guys who were injured. It was different, watching that game in a bar full of unfocused cheeseheads. I think it’s going to be GB and Buffalo in the super bowl this year, and Buffalo will win. Remember that you heard it here first. If I see Biz tomorrow in Chicago, I’ll see what he thinks of that.

Would you take cash ? How much for those little bastards ?

It’s not, it was all just a joke. This is what happens in the brief lull between actual deer hunting in NY. Four Seasons would probably eat a plate full of high-fence button buck balls before he let chef on his ranch. I bet their livers would be even more tender if he nutted them.

Ya think ?

I am flying United, but won’t be time for the club. Maybe time for a $25 shot of Yeager ? I’ll pm you my departure gate number on Wed and we could meet at the closest airport terminal bar.

I’ll be up on the NW corner, on the wmu 6c/6f border. 6f is open again for does this year, same as it was last year, for the first time in many years. There’s about 6.5 million acres of park between us, so I shouldn’t spook any down your way. Someday, I’d like to kill a deer from a tent camp, but it’s tough to give up the accommodations at my in-laws place. My mother in law’s cooking is phenomenal, and my father in law loves hauling the deer carcasses out for me. They are also depending on me to help get their place ready for winter.

Are you flying into O’Hare this time ? My layover on return this Wed will be about 1:00-2:00 pm , if all goes well with the rest of the work out here in WI. We could maybe do a late lunch at the airport, if the timing works out. It looked like there were lots of fancy places to eat at that airport.

At least we have a 13 day break from deer hunting in upstate NY right now, so I can get some other work done, like hauling in enough firewood for winter:

Does chef need to pack a lunch or are meals included ? It sounds like he might be a fussy eater. How much time are you giving him inside the fence to complete the mission ? Can he keep any of the meat or the antlers if he succeeds ?

Cool, I have an uncle who has been up on Oak Island in the Atlantic, off Canada, looking for the Holy Grail since the early 1970’s. I think all those who were up there longer have now passed away. I always get a kick out of the British guy, with the metal detector on that show: “ooh, top pocket find”.

Just landed, will be off to GB in a couple minutes. Flight out of Buffalo got delayed 30 min, so no time for breakfast in Chicago. I will have to go for an extra large lunch in GB. The mood there should be good after the pummeling the packers just gave the bears.

I didn’t see any deer on my last early antlerless hunt at my parents last night. I did succeed on my primary mission over there: Brought them a bushel of fresh picked Silver Queen sweetcorn and help process and freeze it. I also garbage picked a decent looking 18 speed Asian mountain bike on the way over there. I aired up the tires and WD/40’d the chain and shifters and everything seems to work on it. After I get home from the work trip that I am on now, I’ll use that to check my coon traps back in the sweetcorn, give the Durango a break, and get some “free” workouts. No more deer hunting for me until early NZ ML opens on Saturday October 15.

I am in Buffalo and about to get on plane to Chicago right now, then off to upper Wisconsin 3 days for work. Glad to have gotten a few hours of rest. I think I have enough venison in the freezer for a year (first doe made 17 packs of grind and 4 packs of backstrap), but I’ll start working on the next (3) tags up in the northern zone on the October 15 ML opener. A little “extra” meat vacuum-sealed in the freezer, never goes to waste.

I will go back for two more 9F’s on November 1. I will hit Walmart, because Runnings wasn’t able to figure out how to take a $ 10 donation for the venison coalition when I picked up my first two this year. Walmart was able to do that for me last year, when I went back for the 2 extra tags. Here is proof that it can be done: The key words are: “Support Venison Donation”. That money is used to pay for processing deer that hunters donate to participating processors. Ordinarily, there is no charge for those extra tags.

No deer seen tonight. I quit 15 minutes before sunset, because I didn’t feel like dealing with another deer carcass tonight, after staying up till midnight butchering a doe last night. Also, I have to take an early flight for work in the morning and needed some time to pack for that. There was a little mishap on my walk out. I had to shoot the pellet gun to unload it and a chipmunk showed up at the wrong place and the wrong time. I wanted to use its tail for making fishing jigs. The .177 pellet looked like it passed thru behind the shoulder and a little high, from about 20 yards away. That temporarily stunned it. Right after I took this picture, it awoke suddenly and scampered into the rock wall, never to be seen again. No tail for me. I guess I should have reloaded and stuck my muzzle in its eye looking for a blink like I ALWAYS do with deer when I walk up to them. I thought I could skip that step with a chipmunk. I re-learned the same lesson that a buddy learned when he dropped a small antlered buck with a high back hit at my place a few years ago. He used his trigger finger to text me that he “had one down”. Too bad he didn’t use it on his trigger instead. That buck got up and got away, never to be seen again.

I am in for my last early antlerless hunt, ready for a doe or a bushytail. The rain finally stopped, but the west wind is pretty gusty. Don’t know if anything will be moving. My parents saw deer back here, the last few evenings. I am going to give it till 7:28 (10 min past sunset in this location).

I butchered a doe fawn and a 2.5 year old buck that were both shot by a neighbor with a .243. The fawn was shot thru the lungs and the buck was shot in the hip and the shoulder blade. The fawn produced about 20 pounds of useable meat and so did the buck. I have hit adult deer in the shoulder blade many times with shotgun slugs and lost very little meat in comparison to what that .243 did to that buck’s front end. I also hit one in the hip once with a 12 ga sabot and lost very little meat in comparison. If you can limit yourself to broadside lung shots at deer, then a .243 is adequate. Ask g-man what he thinks of folks using .243’s for deer, when it comes to recovery percentage. I was very thankful that this incident occurred while I was contemplating buying a .243. That was more than enough to take it off my list. First hand experience carries a lot more weight with me that internet heresay. The only way that I would use a .243 for deer is if someone had one pointed at me, and I had no better choice.

Mowin is still mad at me because I don’t like .243’s as a deer rife (too much meat damage from them and that’s my primary concern). Give me a big diameter, heavy bullet and I can still eat the chop that it passes thru sometimes. I ain’t into grape jello.

I average every other year on the babies, so seeing how I killed one in 2021, and another in 2022, I am trying to hold off until 2025 for my next one. I killed 3.5 year old bucks (two of which you say you’d have taken if certain conditions were met) on 4 of the last 5 seasons. I assume you liked the top one and three down the best. What about the 4th one down, if you got it before it broke two points off ? I think it would have had a higher net B & C score, as a symmetric 8-point, than my 9-point from last year. It also had a slightly larger body. I see most of the deer you raise have “lots of junk” on their horns. Do you not appreciate typical racks ? Is it mostly about gross antler score for you and your customers ? Just asking for general knowledge, having no dog in this hunt myself. It really is ALL about the meat for me. Sometimes that meat comes with drag handles, and I like keeping the euros to remember the hunts. That, larger average body size, and much less fat to trim, give me a slight preference of bucks over does. The bulk of the time I spent up till midnight last night was trimming doe-fat. There is nothing worse than that waxy crap sticking to the roof of your mouth while you are trying to enjoy a taco.

Especially if it’s a mature doe. A mature buck, not so much. They are very distracted for roughly two weeks of every year, providing an opening where almost anyone (myself included) can score with a minimal deer hunting skill set.

I blame the OP and chef for more of the vomit/diarrhea. FSW at least has a foot in the game and some valuable (to some) trophy hunting knowledge to offer. Those other two are just trolling, one admittedly so (the OP).

I know how that goes. I gave away a lot of what I had left in the freezer to provide added incentive. That table, and another just like it, was with a bunch of stuff that my sister and brother-in-law stored in one of my old barns, when they moved to their new house. They decided that they didn’t want any of it back. I use the other one, back on the range, for my 100 yard shooting bench. They have heavy iron pedestal bases that are very stable. The porcelain, east-cleanup top has been gone off the one back on the range, for the last 10 years or so. The one in the garage is fully intact. I should have had another doe yesterday morning, but I picked the wrong gun. A big doe was briefly broadside at 175 yards. That shot would have been very doable with my ML or my Marlin 512 slug master, from the shooting sticks, but was 75 yards too far to try with my smooth bore, open sighted 870. I am going to try again tomorrow, over at my parents place, with my Ithaca 16 gauge. That will be it for me, until the October 15, NZ ML opener. I am already getting ready for that. I picked up supplies at Runnings yesterday (scent free soap and deoderant). Scent control is more important up there, where there are not as many people around for the deer to smell. I also need to recheck the zero on my ML, since I dropped it while cleaning Tuesday night. Had I not done that, there likely would be another doe in the deer fridge right now. Hopefully, I can get that checked, and sight in my two crossbows, next Saturday. I will check my 30/30 also, but they still didn’t have any ammo for that at Runnings or Walmart, so I need to conserve what I have. Hopefully, one shot from 5O yards will be good.

These are the ones that I killed the last (6) seasons, which one are you saying is halfway decent ? The third from top (last antlered buck that I killed on our farm in 2019) had a significantly higher scoring rack. The third from the bottom had a crappy rack but made the most meat and had the largest body. Age wise, from the bottom up, I am going with 2.5, 1.5, 3.5, 3.5, 3.5, 2.5, 3.5. Taste wise, they were all about the same. The little one on the dark wood is the only 1.5 yr (remember the Texas heart shot buck from up your way). An Adirondack (6) counts the same as a southern zone (12) to me. My meat supply is good now, so I will be holding out for a buck with at least (4) points on a side, or clearly a 3.5 year old, for the rest of the seasons this year. I will be doing my damnedest to fill my other (4) antlerless tags though. You will be happy to know that I will also be doing my damnedest to avoid button bucks with those remaining tags this year. With one of those killed on New Year’s Day, there’s still plenty of that “special occasion” vacuum sealed meat in the freezer. The main reason I am focusing on mature does this year, is that the deer population is too high in both areas where I hunt (wmu 9F, and 6C). As far as the bucks being easier, maybe that’s not true for you, but it is for me. I have killed just (4) mature does over the last (6) years, and (3) button bucks. I have averaged (1) of those, every other year from the start, so I am right around (20) on the “baby bucks” right now. That is simply the result of my using my antlerless tags on the largest “in range” deer at the earliest opportunity. Any other other practice leads to more unfilled tags. The DEC prefers that hunters fill those tags. The new early September antlerless, and Holiday ML seasons have afforded me the luxury of being more selective with my antlerless tags. Prior to that, filling antlerless tags was tough in my two local spots. The local farmers hit the antlerless deer hard on their nussance permits, prior to October 1, so that by the time bow season opens, the antlered to antlerless ratio has been averaging 4:1 over the last 35 years.

I was up till midnight processing BSM (back strap momma) last night. I named her that, after taking this picture of her in August. Normally, if don’t take me that long. That included all of the packaging and cleanup, which my wife usually does, but she is away. She was my number one target deer, ever since I caught her, red-handed in June, watching over me as I was hoeing my sweetcorn in June, having just finished cultivating it. She and her little friend chewed off quite a bit of that sweetcorn, soon after it sprouted. She was east to identify, because she was accompanied by last years fawn. I am thinking that the coyotes probably got this year’s. Normally, she was out front, with the smaller deer trailing. Fortunately, their order was reversed last Tuesday. The little one came thru first (5 yards from my natural blind), allowing me to raise my gun and get in position. That made it easy for me to painlessly send her to her final resting place, deer heaven (mankind’s food supply), with a quick 10 yard heart shot using my 50 cal ML. Her tenderloins were very tasty , and I trust that the other 60 ish pounds of edible yield will be also. Unfortunately, I had to trim away most of her left ventricle, where the 240 gr xtp passed thru. I will need to come up with a few more hearts for my wife to pickle for me on Valentine’s Day this season. Here are her fillets, cooked rare the way I like them, along with some of the sweetcorn that she didn’t manage to chew off early. I don’t remember killing a doe with longer, better developed back straps. That must be a result of loosing her fawn(s) early this year, and not needing to make so much milk over the summer. I feel very blessed that the Good Lord has allowed me to take my number one target deer on two consecutive seasons. Last year it was also a doe, another big momma up in the Adirondacks. I had been after that one for at least (4) years, missing her once, and having many close calls. I finally caught up with her last October, up near the top of a hardwood covered ridge, and got her with the same ML. I figure that old Adirondack doe was about 6-1/2 years old, based on previous encounters with her and how tough her tenderloins were. She had two fawns at the time, lots of milk in her, and somewhat poorly developed back straps. BLM’s tenderloins tasted like she was about 3.4 years old. No doubt there are trophy hunters who could not fathom how a doe could be someone’s “number one target deer”. That’s the way it goes for a meat hunter, until someone comes up with a good recipe for cooking antlers. I have killed my share of mature bucks over the years, and one thing I am certain of: They are way easier to outsmart and kill than mature does.