Tony, I understand your pain....Last year my neighbor shot strick nine about 400 yards from my front door while doing a deer drive. They gut shot him and broke his back leg then ran out of slugs. I watched him lay in the field wounded for 10 min while they went back to there truck to get more slugs. IT was all I could do not to shoot him with my 308 from my front porch to put him out of his misery. Frank and I had hunted that deer for 4 years. I have/ had both or at least one shed from every year. Im not going to lie on here. I cried and I called frank and broke down like I had lost a family member. After it was all said and done they let me put my hands on him and get some pics with him. I had a huge connection with that deer. I had found a lot of his sheds with my family. My little boy avery picked up his left side on one of our first shed hunts together. That deer was what we based season of hunting, scouting and food plot set up on. I always looked forward to hunting him. To say I was attached would be an understatement but I feel like that experience has made me a better hunter. So here is what I learned and would like to pass on..... Everybody hunts differently. It was just as much a great accomplishment in there life that they pushed him out and shot him with a gun as it would of been for frank and I to kill him with our bow. Deer do not know boundaries and we do not own them. Deer hunting becomes a much more rewarding experience when you learn that there is more to it than killing and to be happy with the blessings god gives you and the ones he gives to other people. It took me a couple weeks but when It was all said and done I grabbed a set of strick nines sheds and a few drinks and drove to the mans house and gave them to him. They were just horns he deserved them just as much as I did.
So far only have on one Buck! The Buck I called fang. I had an awesome late late late season encounter with him. Went in and found his sheds side by side, then Rattled him in and killed him the next season! It was awesome but at the same time hated that he was gone!
We have a lot of good history and memories of this buck already. My family and I have let this buck walk several times this year. We are adding another camera at the end of December to focus on his shed antlers. Not a giant, but adding 15% to 20% of antler should put him up there next year.
Do you believe in the QDMA theory that a buck is at 80% of his potential at 3.5, 92% at 4.5 and 98% at 5.5? I did some reading on that today...
Hahaha..........no. That's way too accurate of an assumption in my opinion and while it may hold true once in while, I don't think it would be very consistant. I would almost say it would be more accurate if you add one year to those percentages and start the 3.5 at like 70-75%
I have seen the rack size of some deer get significantly bigger every year while I have also seen some bucks that haven't ever gotten any bigger from 3 year olds to 6 year olds
That's why you have to take averages, subtract the supreme right and lefts. I've seen the same. Some deer make a huge leap from 3.5 to 4.5. Others may only add 10% a year. Nutrition, stress and genetics play a big role.
The term "average" applied to things like deer are about like applying the term "Universal" to parts, usually means it universally never fits right. Dunno, maybe spot on, who the hell am I to argue with QDMA and their official studies. . . . . I still stand by my first opinion though.
Caleb... was Freakdaddy bigger in the top right pic than when he was killed? Just wondering... looks like he's gotta lot of trash going on in that top right pic.
Haha, I know man..it's okay...I'm saying it may be right, I just thought it was comical that they narrowed it down to such a precise percentage. It made it look sort of flaky.
Well never know for sure. The shed I found scored 82 4/8. The other side looks a tad bigger, so if you add a 20" spread he's around 190-200" again. He did have about 10 more scoreable points though. That's for sure.
They all look the same to me... bald... no connection. Just kidding... I think I get your drift but I don't care much for antlers. I do like really big bodied deer and I get at one hard that give me the slip.
I don't really experience a connection with certain deer I see on cams, driving around, year to year (watching him grow), etc.. It does peak my interest seeing "target bucks" on cam as the season approaches. But never really had a personal connection so to speak with one or kept track of what happened to him. My deal is once I see one from stand on my land that I really want to shoot, that's when I take it.. well... personal I guess. It starts consuming me to kill THAT buck (almost to a fault). It's weird, I almost immediately go into an entirely different mindset and wheels start turning. Then it's game on and I want THAT one! Not because I have a history with that particular buck, but because that's the one that showed himself and game on figuring out how to get an arrow in it's lungs. I will, think, analyze, plan, hunt my rear off (not that I wouldn't anyway) to run into him again in bow range. Almost like other deer I encounter don't really matter (that's where the to a fault comes in). Sometimes it works... most times it doesn't, but that's what gets me going.
This describes my season to a tee.... once I saw THAT buck, I never raised my bow to others that I would have shot ... even the doe I missed... I was more hoping I didn't scare away HIM if he was trailing far behind... Now if a bigger buck comes along.... I wouldn't think twice...
