All BS aside, be candid; how important is it for you to kill a big whitetail and why?

I just want to know, in your mind.. how important is it to you, how hard are you willing to work at it and why is it so important to pursue and kill big whitetail bucks?

 

It's not important at all. I have important things in my life but big bucks don't fall in that category.

 

If it were important to me I'd be miserable all the time, because big bucks are few and far between in my woods. But, I have gone as far as the Edmonton Bow Zone to try to kill one. lol

 

wait a minute....I meant to say it is very important because it means I have challenged myself to the utmost and have exceeded my expectations through sheer will power and the mental capacity to outhink the canny whitetail (especially during the rut) and harvest him, and his antlers, after letting him go for the 4 previous seasons in a row while I waited for him to grow antlers of sufficient quality to meet my standards.

If I wanted meat I would just kill a doe. They are not nearly as smart and canny as a buck with big antlers so they are no challenge at all and shooting them does nothing to test my skill, will power or mental capacity.

 

Important to me.... sure its like getting a bonus check it doesn't always happen, but I am not gonna lose any sleep over it...unless I missed him.

 

In the grand scheme of life, no, not at all. But as my hobby and passion, yeah its very important to me. If I fail to kill a big buck (by my standards) it means I didnt prepare well enough, I didnt learn enough the previous year, I didnt practice enough, I let myself down. I always want to get better at the things I do. Just me though..

 

In the grand scheme, not that important. Especially on a yearly basis. I've got some nice ones on my wall, I hope to add to them, but if I was truly serious about killing big bucks, I'd put far more time into finding them and gaining access to the lands they live on, rather than just accepting whatever the places I can access hold.

I've got the drop on some nice ones this year that I checked out & have a solid plan to try for them opening morning. Beyond that I'm not sure how realistic my chances at them will be. All I did to prepare was spend a few hours on a sunday afternoon looking for thier bedding area...and found it.

 

It is important to me, but not as important as (not in any particular order) my kids, my wife (sometimes), God, my family, my career and sleep! I do what I believe I need to do to be successful in the areas that I have access to if it be public or private land. I do not know of a single P&Y or B&C buck taken off of any of the private land that I hunt so my expectations there are much less than some of the public land that I (mostly) trophy hunt.

Rybo, good luck catchin' one of those big boys going to or coming from that bedding area.

 

Not very important. I don't put in nearly enough time to be a proficient big buck hunter. To me its fun to get out there and see what happens. The places that I am hunting, I have hunted for years so there aren't too many surprises anymore.

 

Shooting a doe or a small buck doesn't even so much as evoke a flutter in my heart rate. Not sure why, or what's changed, because it surely used to. Man, I used to get so excited over shooting even a little doe that I couldn't sleep the night before or after. I'd have driven 10,000 miles, and spent my last dollar just to buy a tag and shoot a 55" yearling that I'd never even seen before or knew nothing about.

That feeling, however, has fleeted over the years. Those young deer are just faces in the crowd, wayward animals that are either destined for the bed of somebody else's truck, or god-willing, my wall in fall, 2014.

Last year, I got to cut two arrows loose on true tropy-caliber whitetails, and let me tell you - once that arrow was out of the bow, I felt a feeling that I hadn't felt in years: pure whitetail-induced adrenaline. This is it. This is what fuels the engine.

That's why I'm out there. It's not that I think a buck's rack size makes him a superior opponent - it doesn't. I don't even want the meat - I give it all away. It's not that I just want to fill my tag and run my mouth for the next 364 days about taking down Ol' Mossy.

I'm now in Bow Hunting Version 19.0, and in this version of the game, I walk hundreds of miles every year, scouring thousands of acres of whitetail habitat to assess and inventory the animals that call that land home. I know, with alarming accuracy, the scoring hierarchy of the buck herd in those tracts. I've got piles and piles of sheds, pictures, sightings and unsolved mysteries lurking in my gameroom. Being totally honest, I've managed to push the envelope so far that I've actually alienated myself from most hunters. What I do, it doesn't really have all that much in common with most guys who spend 3-4 days a year out in the woods. I usually don't even tell people that I hunt, until I really get to know them first. But, it's truly my only real hobby, so I get into it in big way.

So, it's with all this in mind that I enter the woods this fall with the goal of locating, seeing and killing a top-5% animal. These just aren't "deer" anymore. They're animals that I've come to know and understand on some level. Show me a picture of a deer from my area, and I'll be able to tell you a story or three about him. I like it that way.

Don't get me wrong, when I get one - everyone on this site and in my texting rolodex will know. LOL But it's not that I expect anyone to care, because they probably don't. I do it for me and me alone. I do it because it's what I love to do, and it's one of the only things left in life that really gets into my blood.

If I don't get one, I take it as a gamble that didn't pay off, and understand that every deer that I didn't shoot was a calculated risk that a bigger one may never be coming. It's a numbers game, it really is.

 

Less and less with each passing season.

 

I want to kill a good buck badly.......mostly so I wont have to listen to my son beat me up with HIS story from last year anymore.

 

My biggest problem is that I don't have the time pre-season to really work hard, the marriage comes first. Come season I do walk quite a way to my stands, but I don't put near the effort that a lot of guys in here do. I would fall over and die of exhaustion if I was hiking to the lengths of guys like you Shed and Gri22ly or some others who get way back on the public land.

The other aspect of size comes down to age for me in the last few years. The buck I killed in 2008 was the third largest rack wise that was coming through my property. He was the oldest of the three and likely 5.5 years old. When I shot him I was excited because he was the one I saw the least and I only had him in bow range one time before and let him walk. I also had a deer that I hunted hard in 2002 that was at least 350lbs and had to be well over his prime. He had maybe 115" of antler as an 8 point but I never got him within 100 yards. I still see him walking the field edge with the moonlight behind him. That bastard saw me come in multiple mornings and I could never sneak in without him knowing. That deer was the smartest one that I have ever knowingly hunted and I never saw him after that season. I think for me the thing that gets me pumped is getting an animal that is mature and cunning. I have an 8 pointer on my current property that should be 6.5 or 7.5 this year and he is my main target if he is around. He has eluded me but also slipped up twice and got lucky that I failed. If I shoot him he will be my hardest worked deer, he will also mean more to me than any of the deer I have harvested. My main problem over the last two years is that I have had dozens of shots presented to me and only three shots that would leave me feeling like I accomplished something.

 

I have played the "Big Whitetail Buck" game for 20 years and have done well for myself. I must admit that the importance of killing one has subsided a good bit as I am now interested in working my own land for the benefit of the deer and other wild life. I get a kick out of studying and learning more about them. Don't get me wrong, I've got my eye on a couple nice ones, but if I don't get one, it isn't as important to me as it once was.

 

Honestly, not at all. With the areas I'm going to be hunting in new jersey, I'll be lucky to even see a trophy buck. Same in new york, theyre a little bigger, but not much. I don't let it concern me, hell, I might even just take does this year. Who knows? And by the way, good luck to all this season. May you kill whatever makes you happy.

 

Its important to me to have encounters with good bucks. I put alot into deer hunting all year, and expect it to pay off with seeing big bucks, and killing a few mature does. I eat tags some years but most the encounters are there. This is what I do, dont drink much anymore, dont smoke, I like big bucks, I can not lie.

 

It's important to me to do the best I can and take the best deer I have an opportunity at. I want to hunt safely, ethically, and in a way that I personally can feel good about myself. If I get a BIG buck, that will be a bonus.

Blessings......Pastorjim

 

This will be my first year hunting, and I can't lie, I would love to see a nice size buck in my sights. However, I am mainly doing it for the meat, and the opportunity to be out in the woods with my wife. I don't have any doe tags this season, so I am only able to take bucks. I won't know until I have one in my sights if I'm willing to let a little guy pass, but if I don't, I won't be upset that he wasn't bigger. The experience and the meat are far more important.

 

Not important to me at all ... and I mean no disrespect when I say I hope it never is ... I just love to hunt and kill deer ... if I didn't eat.the deer, I prolly would go out just to try and get a bigger buck than my last ... but it really is mostly about the meat for me .... and the hunt, kill, etc.

 

I really just do not know. I really enjoy getting out there and scouting extremely hard in order to find out where the bigger bucks spend their daytime hours. It has been an extremely difficult challenge for me personally in my neck of the hunting woods. I still hunt to kill decent bucks, but since I picked up the recurve last year, I realize that any kill for me is exciting with the stick and string. Doe/buck, it does not matter...it feeds my adrenalin rush to see feathers buried into the kill zone on a deer.