Have you been watching these bucks grow over the last couple years or all these fairly new to your area? How old do you think the one with all the junk on the brow tines is?
Looks like they are taunting you! Someone needs to teach them a lesson. Hope that you get a chance once deer season starts and the feeder isn't around anymore.
Yeah I've been watching them as they came up since 2011 or so when I started running cameras there. There's a thread somewhere from last year that had most or all of these in it at the same feeder. There are more that I either didn't include yet or that I have not seen yet at the feeder. That one with the trashy bases is named "Jaws" because his jaws both look like a horse's from the side. They aren't abnormal just that he has different bone structure than most deer, more pronounced. I don't recall for sure how old he is but he's getting pretty old, I think he's ~7-8 this year. I think last year was his peak. I don't bother taking down the feeder, this is in KS so it's legal to leave it there. I don't hunt over the feeders personally, I don't feel it's sporting but you can see a redneck blind in the back ground there...one person hunts out of it and he has special privileges. As far as I know, there's never been a deer shot from the feeder, that blind actually overlooks a travel corridor on the other side that leads to one of my 150 acre bean fields a quarter mile on north. This feeder actually sits just on the north edge of one of our bedding area refuges that has roughly 40 acres of timber and coal mounds in it. Which is why there are so many deer at this feeder all the time. The pics in this post are from a camera about three hundred yards north of that redneck blind in the feeder pics. There's a big culvert there that branches off west to a 35 acre lake dam. The culvert is the easiest path across that branch so deer use it a lot.
You going to try and take ol jaws out this season?? I sure hope you get him, that's a pretty unique buck man. At first glance I didnt know how old he was based off that one picture. Pretty cool to see that you've been tracking all these for such a long time. Sounds like the deer are master hide and seek champions with you my friend! Hope you get to tag one of those bucks this season to put on the wall!
I don't know to be honest, that's probably a decision I'll have to make on the stand if it happens. I usually reserve my KS tag for some of the bigger bucks running around. I haven't hunted very much the last two years though and that's a good way to a big helping of tag soup. Considering his age I may take him out rather than have to watch him degrade and die of old age or think about coyotes tearing him up as he weakens. I'd rather have him on the wall and make good use of him than to have that happen.
I really have a hard time understanding why people think a feeder/baiting is any different then hunting over a crop field or a food plot. The deer go to all those locations for one thing... food... I just honestly cant see how any of them are different. Nor have I heard an argument good enough outside of its not legal in this state or that state. Sorry not trying to hijack the thread. This is just a hot button topic for me.
Since I run the feeders I can easily see the argument from both angles. In my mind it's that the feeders concentrate the deer into one tiny spot and it makes the ambush that much easier. Very arguable that a feeder is comparable to a micro kill plot but with food plots that are very large at all, you still have to be in the right place at the right time, stand placement is crucial and there's still a certain amount of luck involved. Growing a food plot also takes more planning, skill and luck from nature to grow so there's a bit more effort/reward involved in a plot as opposed to just buying feed and dumping it. That said, hunting over a bait pile is not necessarily a walk in the park either. Bucks tend to go nocturnal coming in to feeders, daytime visits are sporadic and there's always a threat of kicking deer near the feeder into and out of the stand. Also I would imagine that if a person shot many deer off a feeder that it wouldn't be long before deer would stop using it or would never run it until 2am. I've come to the conclusion that I'll hunt however I want and can feel good about and leave everyone else's decision to do the same, up to them. Some people are fortunate if they can scavenge a 30 minute hunt from their busy life/work/family. For those folks I see hunting over bait as justifiable to gain a bit of an edge when they just are not able to devote a lot of time in the stand. Doing so out of laziness is a different matter and leans more towards the spectrum of road hunting. One I can personally find reasonable and the other detestable but both are borne out of a desire/need of gaining an edge vs something like tree stand hunting without bait.
