(spoiler for huge picture) My dad and I took our Thanksgiving break and went to our deer camp in Texas. We've been on our current deer lease for 15 years now and this is one of the better deer I've been able to shoot.
Previously, the occasional varmint duty, had been the responsibility of an underpowered and under-ranged group of weapons including my .40 cal pistol and 12 gauge. But with coyotes getting closer, armadillos wrecking shop, and raccoons just being dicks (eating trash + in my attic + not going into my baited trap)... I decided it was time for something with a bit more range and accuracy. Enter my new .223 AR 15. It got its virgin kill a few minutes ago. I wouldn't post about this if I didn't have a picture to confirm: the thieving asshole fell from the tree, and landed inside of my trash can (whereupon it broke through the wall, leaving a coon-sized hole and pieces of plastic littered about the yard). So basically, the new toy scored the varmint hunting equivalent of hole in one on its first ever tee shot. I cannot decide if this is a good or bad sign.
Is it a high fenced deer camp? Just curious as to your camp situation. Only ask because I got into a huge internet fight with some Texans about what constitutes trophy bucks. Apparently down there 95% plus of the land is private and people high fence and then sell hunts to people wanting huge bucks? They go as far as to breed (buying and selling the highest quality deer sperm) and feed them growth hormones to increase to retard deformed wrack sizes. A guy claimed he spent 8k a year on deer feed alone just to hunt his land by himself, not to mention how much high fencing hundreds if not thousands of acres would be. Shit seemed outrageous just so you can claim you shot a monster buck, ones Boones and Crockett won't even look at.
The lease we are on is about 1000 acres of low fence that was where the landowner grew up. Texas is quickly growing with the high fenced properties and feeding deer protein pellets to make them grow the ridiculous antlers. The cost of feeding enough protein to the door to see the antler growth these people are looking for is really high. I believe that the "recommended" protein being fed is to have one feeder every 100 acres or so with the deer having access to as much as they want to eat. So, the cost adds up really quick. Many ranchers don't want to spend the money that is required to produce these results to have the deer hop the fence and be shot by a neighboring hunter. I've been to a few of the Texas Trophy Hunter Extravaganzas and listened to Dr. Kroll from Stephen F Austin. His research is really interesting particularly his take on whether all spike bucks should be culled.
On average the deer we kill weigh 125-150 for bucks and 90-110 for does. Anything outside these numbers would be considered unusual.
Seems like we shoot significantly heavier deer up here but that could very well be due to geography and genetics in a region and not what they feed on... those body sizes just sound on the skinny side when you take the amount of feeding and enhancing going on into consideration. I guess I just wasn't raised to appreciate massive fucking deer antlers and haven't seen enough shootable ones out hunting to get bored of non-freaks yet.
One of my friends moved here, from Indiana, and didn't kill anything during the first few weeks of his first deer season here. Said they were all too small. Bucks here average 200 lbs and he was used to 250+ lb deer. Took him killing a 140ish" class deer to figure out they were full grown.
The ranches that do feed protein and have food plots and that sort of thing most likely do have the higher body size you would expect. On our ranch, there is no food plots, protein or any specific management going on other than shooting older deer.
Well I got lucky again yesterday, after 5 days of hunting for bull elk and only seeing cows I saw a small bull last night about forty yards from me in a canyon I had been walking in for a half mile. He was with 2 cows and I could only see his head so I put my crosshairs on his nose and pulled the trigger, the bullet hit him right between the horns and scrambled his brain, he dropped like a rock. I put another one in his neck because he was groaning a little. So there I was, 30 minutes till dark, half a mile away from any road and my 4 w wheeler and 500 pounds of dead animal. I called my wife and told her I would be back in 3 hours and started quartering him up, I hung the quarters in a tree, along with the backstraps and hiked to my ride, made a trip back in for one quarter and backstraps and took them to my cabin and then back to the elk 2 more times for the final pieces. 6 hours and a lot of sweat and working in pitch black and I was done. Will post a pic when I get to work.
Here is the bull I shot this week, it was the only one I saw. Thanks to 300WSM 185 grain bullets for helping me kill stuff.
Headed down to south east Texas for 5 days of hunting first thing in the morning, hopefully the weather cooperates as rain is in the forecast. Will post up pics from the field.
Just got back from my trip, and there's a reason they call it hunting and not killing. Spoilered for length. Spoiler Friday morning we were going to be bird hunting, but it was so goddamn warm that no birds were flying. We sat in the blind all day and got close to calling in maybe three birds who flared away for some reason. Normally we're limited out by around 9am. Not one guy fired a single shot. Saturday was opener for deer and our group killed 5 bucks that morning--no shots were fired in the afternoon. The only thing I saw as a four pointer right after first light. He walked across the field in such a way that he stayed right behind a branch blocking my view the entire way across up until he was about 10 feet from the tree line. When I saw him, I turned to get my sights on him but he took another couple steps forward behind a large row of thick pines. He stood there just staring into the woods for about 15 minutes. Shots were going off on other parts of the farm, but he didn't care. Finally, he walked into the woods and just slumped down, not ten feet inside the tree line. But the bastard laid in the perfect spot. Trees were covering his body, and a few thick horizonal branches concealed his head from my view. I leaned down and saw that I'd only have a headshot, but I'd have to stand up, turn around in my stand, and gently sit down on the foot platform backwards to even get a shot at him. As I was doing this, the stand shifted and groaned. He heard this and rolled himself back up on his feet and with no real sense of urgency, strolled further back into the woods--right behind a row of holly trees so I had no way of taking a shot at him. No one else saw him the rest of the time. I didn't see anything else that day. Sunday and Monday two more bucks were killed, I didn't see anything. At 4:30 on Monday morning when we woke up, it was already 63 degrees. Insane. The mosquitos ate me alive. We think that was little feeding the deer did was done late at night and by early morning they were bedded down again. When it's that warm, they just didn't need to move all that much. Tuesday it was going to rain, so we went out in the morning to see if they'd move before the storm. No one saw a damn thing. Tuesday night it poured as a cold front came through. Wednesday was my last day and I was going to drive home after hunting in the morning. It was significantly cooler--about 42 degrees--and blowing 10-12 mph. I was in my stand at 5:30 and didn't see a damn thing. There weren't even squirrels around. Along the field, it was my dad, me, and then my uncle (from right to left looking out into the field) spaced about 175 yards apart from each other. At 8:00, I heard my dad take a shot and then a couple seconds later, he fired again. No sooner had he shot that second time that a buck came flying past me parallel to the woods. I fired on him twice and he kept running--much faster after the second shot, though. Shortly thereafter, my uncle fired on him--twice again--and called over the radio that he was down. The guys on the other side of the farm said it sounded like a warzone, but we were a bunch of frustrated hunters who hadn't fired a shot yet--he wasn't getting away. I got to him first and found all three of us had shot him. My second shot went in right behind his left shoulder and exited in front of his right shoulder. I could tell it was mine because those accutip slugs leave some mean holes. It was a lung shot that nicked his heart, so he would've died if my uncle hadn't shot him. We think that my father gut shot him, but it was closer to the front and didn't hit the stomach. The third hole was your standard broadside double lung that my uncle hit him with when he ran down towards him and stopped for a second once he got into the woods. It was a community deer, but I was just happy to fire my damn gun. I'm going back down January 6-7 since there's a short, two day deer season and bird hunting is back on as well. Hopefully then it'll be cold enough that we'll have more luck. Here's a nice picture of sunrise on Friday morning. Bluebird day, not a cloud in the sky and the water was like glass.
My gun week has been shitty as fuck. Poured fucking rain monday and didn't see shit. Wednesday froze my nuts off spooked three doe as I walked to my stand and only saw one deer the rest of the day out of range. Yesterday, two bucks grazed thirty feet from me for 15 minutes (already got my one buck for the year) and then darted off to chase some does out of range in the woods. Saw two does today out of range in deep brush. That's it. Might make it out Sunday afternoon if I don't get too hammered saturday.
Still have seen no shoot able deer but one of the other guys dropped a huge 14pt earlier this morning, will post pics when I get em
We were supposed to head out to South Dakota this weekend for a pheasant hunting trip on ranch land but couldn't due to work complications so my dad treated my brother and I to an afternoon at a game farm in Minnesota. He told me to shoot it if I saw it, so I did. Six pheasants with nine shells. Me and my Wingmaster were connecting today.
Booked my ticket today, headed to cabo san lucas on the 3rd of January to do some marlin fishing, pretty excited about it, a guy I have been fixing reels for has a 50 foot yacht and has been trying to get me go down and fish with him and it has just not fit in my schedule, but 412 bucks(my airfare) for 3.5 days of marlin fishing is to much for me to not take advantage of.