Are trail cam photos helping or hurting your chances for success in the whitetail woods?... Read more... The post Does Naming & Claiming Bucks Help or Hurt Your Season? appeared first on Bowhunting.com. Continue reading...
I am anti naming, I believe that comes from the TV hunting industry and you only get to claim a deer when you put a tag on it.
This piece was a different twist. Are we running out of things to write about ?? I name the bucks in my area but the part about claiming never crossed my mind. It's harmless.
Its has both hurt and helped me in the past. What i have found is that older bucks tend to use the exact same area every year and show up on camera within about the same week every year. This year i chose to hunt the wind and conditions strictly in those same spots at roughly the same time of year where they showed up. I did not check cameras in those spots until i hunted that deer with the correct wind and conditions. I was sucessful with getting the buck i have been after for four years. Do you have to name them? No. Should you learn their personality and habits? Yes.
Whether I name them or not it won't change my obsession with them. Now it does make it a lot less confusing when talking with Pops recapping hunts to be able to say I saw "x" or "y" but no "d" that night. If I think I'll shoot them I usually give them somekind of name...that might just be Wide 10 or Tight 8 but a name nonetheless. Changes nothing for me and I realize zero deer do I own or claim until tagged.
It helps to name, I name them all, even the does and fawns. Once named, I absolutely claim ownership...I own them all, even out of state deer I have not named yet. Mine mine mine!
That reminds me of a scene from The Count of Monte Cristo. Edmond quotes the number of stones in the walls of his cell and The Priest says "Yes, but have you named them yet?" Edmond breaks down and cries uncontrollably. I tried to find a video clip but failed.
I have only been bowhunting for 5 years... When I first started running trail cameras I got caught up in the whole naming of the bucks. I have since stopped doing it. Not sure how it could hurt anyone simply by giving a name to a deer... They are still chasing that buck regardless if it has a name or not. Nothing irks me more than when someone says "the neighbor shot MY deer"... It was not your deer simply because he walked your ground. People need to stop with that shiz.
Maybe it's from only hunting public lands? But I just can't even entertain the thought of claiming a free range deer as my own....the notion seems silly and a bit self centered to me. AND....I can't imagine how naming a buck could possibly help or hurt a season? I CAN see how targeting a specific buck and not succeeding could deal a hard blow to the ego. If the journey takes a backseat to your destination, you might be better off just shooting a random buck that meets your expectations...and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I myself would rather hunt for 10 year's without killing a buck, than to kill a buck 10 year's in a row and never hunt. I name certain bucks because they are specific, not random...and it makes reference to that individual buck much easier. I once hunted a buck I named the "bluff buck" for 4 seasons and never connected. Had 4 different sightings of him, dozens of pic's, 3 different beds identified, a crack in the bluff he used form time to time to travel from top to bottom....which gave birth to his name. That buck taught me more then 100 book's on buck hunting ever could...I will always cherish and be grateful for that opportunity. My buck naming has changed somewhat in the last few year's. The buck I shot this year first appeared two summer's ago...he was named "15, 6-2". "15" for the year 2015, "6" is the name I gave to that pretculer social network, and "2" was his individual number to separate him from others. He disappeared in 2016 due to crop rotation on the nearby private ground, then reappeared in 2017, but now as "17, 6-2" for the year 2017...and nicknamed the "brow buck" when he became target #1 for quick and easy reference.
I've never named a buck until last year. The 15B buck. I hunted him hard last year based on sign. He showed one time in mid December...I came close to killing him. This year I hunted around his core area..on the outskirts of it in October. Never saw him. I moved in on him Nov 6th and got within 40 yds and saw him. No shot. On Nov 10th I got within 28 yds of him and was uncomfortable shooting. I haven't hunted him since bc that area has been closed off. Starting this Friday and if the area is open, I am hunting him hard. I've had two trail cams out there within 100 to 200 yds of where I think he beds and stages in the afternoon. I'll be interested to see what he has been up to the last 3 weeks. The 15B ....one heck of a public land survivor. I think he is probably 4 or 5. Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
This is the reason I name bucks that I would shoot given the chance. I don't talk to many people about the bucks I have roaming around but have a couple buddies that I do talk with and it makes this much easier during conversations. Hate having to show/send pictures each time we're talking about a specific buck.
We name bucks not because we are claiming them or thinking they are our bucks, we name them to simply keep them straight when telling stories to each other or when we got them on camera. For example if you have 4 eight pointers on camera that you would shoot. Well instead of saying that one 8 pointer that we saw on this date blah blah and so on, it's easier to give them a name. When my hunting partner and I hunt an area of 1000s of acres with several stand locations, we are bound to have encounters and get several different bucks on camera. Especially 8 points that are very similar. This season it was really helpful for us to name them and keep it straight. However we don't name bucks until we start getting them regularly. It doesn't pay to name a buck if he only showed up a couple times on camera. Also if someone kills a buck we named, so be it. It's part of the game. Mostly everybody is playing to win. Sometimes you win, sometimes the other guy wins. That's life.
