wolc123

I always clean my guns, within a day after the last hunt. I didn’t have to press the load and bullet out of my ML first this year, so it went a little quicker than usual. I finished butchering the button buck, that took care of that job for me, last night. I hope to have all the other stuff put away by the end of this weekend.

I would have taken both of those shots, where he missed, if I was in that guy’s shoes. If he didn’t kill that old worn-down, rutted-out buck, it’s odds of surviving the winter up on the Canadian border would have likely been well under 50 %. Better to at least give it a chance at making it to Heaven, rather than leave it for the vermin. Any blood at all, even from a bad hit, would have slowed it down further, and made it easier to finish. It is a lot harder with a ML and he makes no secret, about wishing he had a little more lead to throw, with his 3600. Get close and spray lead, when an opportunity presents itself and tracking conditions are good, is the name of the game. The end justifies the means. If you always want to wait for a perfect broadside shot, the best bet is to stick with the “ambush” technique, that is employed by the vast majority of hunters these days, and let the bucks come to you. I don’t begrudge the trackers at all. It’s seems like a cool way to hunt. Way to much stress and energy usage for me in my off time though. While I still have a “day job”, I like to “relax” while hunting. If I am physically able, I try some tracking, after I retire.

My favorite part of the video was the end where he thanks God for blessing him with the harvest. That is the part of hunting that too many ignore at their peril. All creatures, great and small, end up exactly where The Big Guy wants them to go. For a buck, sometimes, that is coyote excrement, and sometimes it is Heaven - mankind’s food supply.

Yesterday’s dinner and leftovers for lunch at work today: I only got one meal, from a 4 month old button buck liver last September, but his 7 month old twin made two. They both tasted equally delicious.

I can relate to that. Never been a big antler guy, but when I killed my biggest bodied deer in recent years (43” chest girth back in 2017, I think), I left my crossbow rope/pulley in the woods somewhere. Fortunately, my crossbow at the time was a small, entry-level model, and I was able to draw it without it on my next few hunts (for antlerless deer). It was a little tough on the fingers but I got it drawn back ok a few times. Since then, I made up a couple of pull handles with steel hooks, short lengths of chain, and comfortable handles. They work better than the rope pulley ever did, on that lighter draw weight crossbow, and allow for faster reload if a second shot were ever needed. I have also lost knives, hats, gloves, and multiple other items thru the years including a heart and liver from an old doe up in the Adirondacks last fall. Now, I usually try to make a special point of piling all my junk up under my stand before I start gutting and when I finish. That seems to have cured the problem. If I forget anything I can usually find it on a return trip.

You can get very little meat damage, and super clean gutting, if you hit them in the “under the tail pocket”, when they are facing directly away from you. That is a much smaller target though. If you miss it by more than 1/4”, in any direction, then the meat damage would be pretty intense, and gutting would be a mess.

That one was my great grandfathers and I would guess that it was first put together in the early 1920’s. If it’s not a hundred yet, it is pretty close. I put a different motor on it after the one my grandfather had on it drowned in the basement after the old house burned. I also put a new #12 knife and 3/16 screen on it, about 100 deer ago, and again right before the last one last year. In the old days, my grandfather would get them sharpened, but nobody seems to do that anymore. A new set was $30 on Amazon last year. It plugged up on me a few times, on my last deer, 2 years ago. It ran a whole bigger one thru last year, as fast as I could load it, without missing a beat. I am afraid to look inside the gear-reduction assembly, which looks like it came off of a model T Ford. I also changed the belt one time, maybe 10 years ago. I don’t think I am going to use it on the deer that’s hanging in the garage now. We have a very good supply of grind already, and those button bucks make real tender stew meat for in the crockpot.

The only buck that I weighed, in the last 10 years, was killed on opening day of sz gun season and weighed 182 pounds field-dressed on a “legal for trade” butcher’s scale. I only did that to calibrate the PA chest girth chart, which one of our members was kind enough to post on here a few years ago. I can now get a pretty good idea of their weight, and approximate edible yield, using just a tape measure and that chart. In my area (wmu 9F) that’s about the average field-dressed weight of a 3.5 year old buck on that date. 4 or 5 other members (mostly from wNY) also weighed and measured their bucks that year. It seems that the PA chest girth chart consistently underestimates the weight of a wNY deer. I can only assume that is because whitetail deer tend to be heavier, near the northern edge of their range . The little ones they have down in FL illustrate that pretty well. The only antlered buck that I killed last year might have been a few pounds heavier. It’s chest girth measured 1/4” more than the 182 pounder’s. One of the issues with weighing field dressed deer, is that the weight varies so much with time. When the guts are first removed, well over half of the measured weight is made up of water, which has no nutritional value. The longer the deer hangs, before it goes on the scale, the more that water percentage drops, and the weight drops accordingly. The chest girth method provides for more time-independent results and better approximation of edible yield volume. I always want to know how many quart sized bags I will need to package my meat, That is a volume, not a weight measurement.

My unit takes both those prizes, hands down.

Some of us are afraid to post pictures of our deer, and others (like me) are afraid of deer drives. You can find a few photos, of the only deer that I killed so far this year, on the 2022 “live” thread in the deer hunting section. I’d throw up a few more photos of it, and a few from last year here, but I don’t want to offend some of our thinner-skinned brethren.

Too much non-deer talk in last years thread. I wonder how the LI and PA folks are doing ?

It helped on two of the deer that I killed last year, the first being about 15 minutes after sunset during the early antlerless season. The second, was this 3.5 year old buck that first appeared 5 minutes after sunset on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Even with the extra time, I never would have seen him, in the thick woods, without the light dusting of snow we had that day. When I took the shot, it was 7 minutes past sunset. The only thing I didn’t like about it was gutting in the more or less pitch black dark both times. I have to remember to keep a good headlamp in my pack for that reason from now on. My mom standing behind me, gaging from the blood and guts and shaking while holding a flashlight didn’t cut it. I noticed, mostly during the early September season when the leaves hadn’t even changed color yet, that about 20 minutes after sunset and 10 minutes before sunrise were the only useful portions of the new time. Beyond that, on either side of daylight, it was too dark to see the crosshairs on my scopes. Maybe some real expensive, modern European glass would help, but my old and new Redfields were not quite up to it.

Somebodies got to put up some deer pics since your too scared to put up any.

That’s not as easy as it sounds. This button buck was pretty elusive when he stepped out onto my clover plot at 4:18 pm yesterday. He showed up two minutes prior to the previous time, two days prior, so I wasn’t quite ready. My gun was pointed in the wrong direction, and he came from a place I didn’t expect. He would take a step or two, then turn away. Each time he turned, I inched my gun his way, but he would turn back stared me down. I had to freeze (he probably saw my orange hat), and try not to blink.

Did you see the one with the new antler ornament in it: That is my twenty cent, 16-gauge, Remington slugger that he caught with his rib cage. I pressed it back into the original hull. I held it over the propane heater a little too long, so it’s a little shorter than it once was. The powder is burnt, the primer is punched, and I couldn’t find the wad. I was going to melt that 4/5 oz of lead, and cast it into a few jig heads, but another forum member gave me this idea. It sort of balances out the lower jaw hanging on the other side. I am saving that in case I decide to do a “proper” aging, rather than my usual “skull size” method.

He hunts the southern zone also, and gives plenty of deer to folks who appreciate it.

I can think of lots of good reasons. Doing something that you love, while helping to manage the deer herd, tops the list. No one benefits from an unmanaged deer herd, nor do the deer. Disease would likely wipe them out entirely, if they were not managed. I agree with you on catch an release fishing though. To me, that is just the senseless maiming of a fine food source. It’s kind of sadistic to torcher those beautiful creatures “for sport”.

For many, it is not ALL about the meat. I see nothing wrong with that, so long as the meat goes somewhere where it is appreciated. There will always be vegetarians and folks who prefer eating domesticated animals.

Same here. I saw more deer thru the Holiday week, than I did thru all of southern zone gun season after opening day. I only killed one on the last day, but it was fun getting out there and seeing some. The weather was almost perfect thru most of it. Warm enough, to not freeze my but, yet cool enough for easy meat handling and to keep the deer active. My favorite part about it was only needing to use 1 vacation day from work, and being able hunt 5 of those 7 days. That was a big plus for working folks, especially those of us who have had to bust our ass continuously, going into work each weekday thru the pandemic. I liked all of the changes that the NY DEC put in place for deer season this year, but the Holiday ML season was my favorite. In these days of full-on global warming, one other great thing about this extra late season, is that it is finally cold enough to properly age a carcass in my garage, without having to use my deer fridge. The week after Thanksgiving was the only other week that was good for that last year, thru all of the other southern and northern zone deer seasons. Thankfully, I was also able to take advantage of that one.

I couldn’t review until today, but I would rate this past deer season as my best ever. A big part of that was getting to meet you, and a several other forum members. Sharing that warm cider with my family, during the hurricane near-miss out on Long Island, meant a lot to us, and is something we will always remember and be thankful for. Goose set me up with a fine double tree stand, at a very reasonable price. I haven’t killed one from it yet, but it was very comfortable, the two times that I hunted from it, and I am sure that a day will come when I will. Patrick set me up with a fine deer heart, after he read on here about my distress over the one that I lost up in the Adirondacks last October. I probably lost 5 pounds, walking up and down that steep mountain looking for that heart. Larry replenished my supply of t7 pellets and primers, when the supply in the local stores had dried up completely and I was running low mid-way thru the Holiday muzzleloader season. And then there were those glorious rule changes that the NY state DEC enacted this year, and which helped keep me safe (orange hat or vest law), and directly contributed towards each of the (4) deer in our freezer. Most importantly of all, the Good Lord blessed us with plenty of meat to make it thru another year, without too much store-bought chicken. My wife is extra thankful for not just one, but two of her favorites (button bucks). I was very happy to finally get the old Adirondack doe, that has eluded me for several years. Special highlights for me last season, were finally getting a nice buck on my grandpa’s old farm, with his old shotgun, and breaking a 5-deer slump with my in-line ML, with two consecutive DRT kills. I may have had a better season, but I really can’t remember when. Here’s to hoping we all have seasons like that, or better this year.

Probably, it’s his hair.

One of my best friends, who passed away a few years ago, was really into drives. I went on a few with him where multiple deer were killed, but I was not at all comfortable hunting like that. Had it not been for a “near miss” that I experienced, a few years prior, I would have felt different about them, I suppose. If you ever get the chance to feel a 12 gauge shotgun slug pass by your face, before you hear the gun go off, and you still like to do deer drives, then you are a lot braver than I am. These days, I prefer to hunt in the Adirondack mountains, and far from all others. On the flat lands around home, where there might be other hunters around, I prefer to be hunting from a position that is 4 to 10 feet above ground level, and safely out of the cross fire: Two of the three deer in our freezer, from last year, and soon to be one from yesterday, were taken from this super comfortable perch, 9 feet up. The other was taken near the top of a very remote Adirondack ridge, while I was seated in an extremely comfortable tree hammock chair. The older I get, the more comfortable I like to be while hunting, and there is no substitute for a comfortable chair. I spent $ 8, at a barn sale up in Alex bay last summer, on the fancy, padded, adjustable office chair that I shot three off of (from the blind in the picture up above).

I am sorry and I meant no offense. I agree that some of the others are overreacting a touch. I only asked about the tenderloins, because several members here have mentioned that they are not overly fond of that cut. I usually find them to be the best-tasting part of the deer. The only ones, that I wasn’t thrilled with, were those from a probable 5.5 year old plus doe that I killed up in the Adirondacks last October. One of those was so tough, I could barely chew it when cooked the day after she was killed. The other was still a little chewy, after 6 days in the fridge. I go to extra lengths, to make sure those tenderloins taste as good as possible. Step one is a quick, clean kill. Step two is to get the guts out ASAP (butt out helps with that). Step three is cut the pelvis with a folding saw and make sure the channel is wide open and clear of all piss and shit. Step four is rinse them good with clean blood from forward of the diaphragm. When I get the gutted deer hung up, I dry them off with paper towels, cut then out, put them in a zip lock bag, then into the fridge in the house. If they are from a button buck, they can be eaten right away. If they are from an older deer, they are better after a few days, so that the rigor mortis can pass. These from the 3.5 year old corn-fed buck that I killed this year were about the best tasting and textured ones that I can recall, after 6 days in the fridge. I think the reasons most have not liked the tenderloins is: first, they are eating them near the state of maximum rigor-mortis, which peaks 6 to 8 hours after the kill. Second, they are tainted with piss, shit, or gut-juice. Congrats on that beauty of a buck, that you killed at the buzzer this year. Hopefully, you get to enjoy his tenderloins and they taste real good. This was the tough old Adirondack mother: I had the rest of her ground up there (except for the back straps) and we have not started eating any of that yet. Hopefully it’s not as chewy as the tenderloins were. Many folks talk about pursuing a particular buck, but that old doe outwitted me more times over the last 3 years , than any buck that I have chased.