2009 Deer Season

[adkman]

Our camp (Lewis Co.) got skunked again!  Just not seeing any deer!  >

[capt_terry]

A three point buck with the bow and a doe with the gun. The buck was a good example of inferior genes. He was a big boddied 4 1/2 yr old with a long spike on one side and a fork on the other. The doe was delicious.

[Nomad]

Greetings my first post here, so I dragged up this from a few weeks ago....

2,009 I took 5. 4 doe on the farm I hunt (QDM) and I had to take a 2 1/2 8 pt by where  I live as I did not have a chance at a buck meeting the farms size requirments.

[sweet old bill]

tag soup

[Larry]

3 for 3, doe with the bow a nice 8 with the gun and a doe with the ml

[Buckstopshere]

2009 was a good year for me, not just because I tagged four deer, but because I learned a lot by using my trail cams and more or less discovering the importance of the overhanging branch. For me, part of the real excitement and enjoyment of deer hunting is learning more about whitetail behavior.

I'm like a kid on Christmas morning and can't wait to try out and test new ideas.

My wife and I eat a lot of venison (and do cook-outs for friends and family.) We only have three packages of backstrap left and here it is...third week of July! Luckily we have processed venison (hot dogs, sausage, and pepperoni) to get us through until bow season.

I killed an eight-point with my bow during the last weekend before gun season at the peak of the rut. Saw him the night before staging with some does. I had noticed a couple days before some un-huntable scrapes (near a barn, used at night) with overhanging branches ripped up. So I cut them off, transported them in a clean garbage bag to a small scrape up on the ridge where the thermal was good, and zip-tied them above the scrape.

That next morning when the buck came in to my grunts (I saw him in the field about 100 yards away,) when he came in below the scrape, along with frozen tarsals I had from an eight point the previous season, he came in. I center-punched him. It was not the biggest buck, but very rewarding because of the tactic.

I hold off shooting any mature does before I get a buck during archery because I think now that it can screw up the rut if you take one or two of the old long-nosed gals out of your hunting property. Wait 'til after you fill your buck tag, or after the rut.

I think that, as so well said in the earlier post on this thread, keeping the does "happy" does wonders for bringing in bucks. And shooting them off doesn't make them happy! They know and a hunting property can go virtually dead if you take out a couple. I've seen it happen. Shoot the young ones if you want the meat. It does not have such an effect on the overall movement in the prelude to the rut and during the rut as it does if you kill an old doe there.

I shot a doe with my bow a few days later, so I had two hanging.

After passing about 30 bucks through rifle season (an all-time record for me,) because I wanted a big one, and knew he was there, hanging back with the does, I took a spike buck on the last Saturday of the rifle season. Good eating deer!

A couple days later I shot a horse of a doe during muzzle loading season with my .50 cal. inline. But she ran down on posted property, so I went home and called up the owner and he gave me permission to go get her. But I couldn't sleep at night, worrried the yotes would get her before me.

So my wife thought (Knows) that I am crazy so I got up at 4 am,...she should be used to me by now!... drove up on the hill and walked through the woods in the dark without a light and found the doe. Sure enough, the yotes had got to her first, but only taken a few bites. Dragged her a mile (on the snow) got home, got her hung and still made it work on time.

In the old days we could leave our deer overnight and come back in the morning...but not anymore. A buddy of mine did and when he came back in the morning, all that was left of his deer was a gruesome skeleton.

I made kind of an amateur video of my eight-point bow kill, but haven't put any music to it yet.

[Doc]

Looking forward to seeing the video. Hope you post it here.

Doc

[Fantail]

7 pnt. from 09. 

[SplitG2]

09 was a major bust on my farm.  Never saw a mature buck all season.  Never even seen any rutting activity either ???

[Buckstopshere]

That's very interesting! Why do you think that was?

[Doc]

09 was a major bust on my farm.  Never saw a mature buck all season.  Never even seen any rutting activity either ???

I have seen a few years when the rut activity (rubs and scrapes) seemed to be nearly non-existant. Strangely enough, that did not mean that there were no bucks in the area. It just seems that periodically they simply won't leave any visible signs of rut. I've never figured out a pattern or reason for that.

Doc

[Buckstopshere]

Rightly or wrongly, I attribute the lack of breeding sign in an area to two things, each to a greater or lesser degree....food and hunting pressure.

We all know that food sources change and this skews patterns from one year to another. Even in the "big woods" I hunt in Pa., mast crops from beech, cherry, oak, vary greatly.

And two, hunting pressure can not be over estimated as a factor. Other hunters can move in on adjacent properties that we have no awareness to their presence. We can over-scout and over-hunt our properties too.

Combined, these two factors can push deer into patterns outside our hunting area and as it does, they are continually leaving breeding sign as the rut approaches.

I believe that once deer establish key breeding sign in an area, that area becomes (if it is not overly disturbed) the key breeding area or zone for a specific localized herd (what I call the Whitetail Breeding Nucleus.) The WBN is composed of the top breeding animals, run of the mill deer, and even fawns. It is something to witness when they are all running around like crazy...but it has a pattern to it.

We can easily screw our chances of having a successful hunt  up before the WBN forms by over-hunting or over-scouting (trail cams, etc.) an area, the WBN can naturally dissipate as food sources shift, or other human activity spins it off to an adjacent property.

And I have seen it literally washed away as what occurred here (Southern Allegany County) during the 2006 season when we had moonsoon rains that washed the scrapes and scent away.

[Doc]

My hunting area is not very typical in that we have had an unusual growth of non-hunting land use on the state land which comprises the main part of my hunting turf. The land no longer gets the summertime rest that it used to, and there is year around human presence on the land. Bikers, and hikers have established trails everywhere and they use them throughout the summer. So there are changes occurring in terms of where bucks feel safe. I also think that some of those safety areas can be changed by any small change in biker/hiker patterns. so it probably should not be to surprising that rut signs move from one year to the next now. I am still trying to adjust to all this activity and it's causing a lot of confusion. I suppose the deer are adjusting and confused too.

Doc

[Karpteach]

NADA dang thing. Hoping this year is different. One can only hope.

[Buckstopshere]

If you have about 10 minutes to burn, follow the link and click on the video on the right rail and watch the amateurish video I put together on my 2009 bow kill. It was very satisfying because it was my first attempt at zip-typing licking branches over a scrape, course I used a frozen tarsal, a grunt tube and a can bleat call too...sometimes we luck out. Hope you enjoy it. Just paste the link in your browser...

http://www.wellsvilledaily.com/outdoors/x109291619/VIDEO-November-success-in-the-leaves

Click on where it says Video over on the right rail...we are working on the link.

[Chevy]

Very cool Oak. Thanks for sharing. I would rather watch a local hunter score over the hunting shows they put on tv these days.

[Doc]

Great video. I love to see NYS bowhunts! Thanks for posting it.

Doc