Me too........it was a damn good time. Hey, I had slow days/hunts on my trip. Actually 2 of the 5 days were GREAT, definitely not non stop action by any means. In 5 days though when we used our ability to get on deer.........the deer we saw were BIG..........bigger then anything I even hope to see in NY. 5 days in pre rut is all we had.........I can't even imagine 4 months including the rut. Many locals we talked to have barely even started hunting yet LOL. Not really what I meant............the point is my chances of even seeing a buck like that in NY are almost zero. That is the depressing part. I should have killed a 160" on my second day in Illinois and coud have killed the buck in the video and two others not much smaller. I can't even imagine what I would have seen and done over the last 20 years hunting deer like that 4 months a year. I'm not saying you can just walk into Illinois and the 160's jump out and yell "shoot me"...........but they ARE there and that's all anyone can ever ask for is a chance. When I meet a 22 year old kid with 4 bucks over 155" on his resume it puts things into perspective REALLY fast. It's just 1,000 times more fun to hunt hard and see big deer as a reward..........hunting hard just to see a 130lb six pt just doesn't measure up.
Good post Altas. That was similar to my one time I went to IL a couple years ago. I saw a bunch of book bucks in a weeks time, and one was a 140+, and one a solid 150+. I didn't kill one either, but passed on some bucks that I would have dropped in a heartbeat here on the east coast...and they would have been my biggest to date. You are right, its a different world. I'm hating the east coast right now...LOL
Bet on it. The couple sits I have had in NY since coming back have made me wish I could rewind the clock and shoot that buck from the video..........oh well, when in Rome I guess. Last night I sat and watched 6 quads go in and out of the woods (temp was in the 70's so the gunners were getting itchy) and then the farmer shows up to cut some firewood with his chainsaw LOL Near dark I turn the can over a couple times and hit the grunt.........I hear some rustling a minute later and the unmistakable thumping of a deer stomping my way through the apple trees.........I get a little pumped up as I know I am sitting on the exit route which will take him broadside at 17 yards.......in other words if he doesn't stop he is toast. As the sounds get louder I know he is not stopping until I stop him.........I see him now approaching through the brush headed right for my lane...........I draw and wait for him to take his last 4 steps. Finally, the bruiser pokes his head out. Hellooooooooo!!!! LOL The sad part is I probably should have greased him. I am giving SERIOUS consideration to altering my hunting approach for the future. NY has really reached a point where I am starting to view DEDICATED hunting as a waste of time. I have been pouring over my options the last few days and I'm really leaning towards just shooting as many deer as quick as possible in NY and just using it as a supply of meat and then maximizing my time out of state to hunt for real. A land purchase or lease is where I am leaning. I think I am done swimming up stream.
Brinkley says thanks to all for the good wishes. Today has been his best day since the surgery........he seems to be feeling better.
glad you were able to come on over! sorry to hear bout your dog but gald he's doing better! i mostly hunt in northern IL and i still am in shock when i head down south... shows a lot of patience on your part for passing on that nice buck! hope you can arrow one bigger soon =-)
Cool trip! Glad you had fun. Also glad the dog is doing well, I'd have been completely freaked out to get a call like that about my dog while I was away.
Yup........it sucked. Was sitting in my stand feeling like the odds of me taking a big buck were better then not (something I've NEVER experienced before) and the phone vibrated..........excited because I thought my brother shot a buck I grabbed it only to read that. Shooting a big buck has never seemed more meaningless to me then at that moment........I was in deer hunting heaven and all I could think of was my little guy at home being rushed to the vet. I couldn't get down fast enough.........I didn't care if a herd of 200" bucks with bullseyes on them was coming. There'll always be more chances at a deer. Don't get me wrong............when he gets all better I am gonna have a chat with him about timing (and perhaps getting a job) I'm just glad the vet didn't know that WHATEVER price she said the surgery cost.........my wife would have signed off just the same.
Atlas ... you are sooooooooooo right about NY ... unless we could get rich and buy 500 - 1,000 acres of land and manage the herd, we are not gonna experience what you experienced ..... there just aren't alot of deer in NY ...no matter WHAT the DEC says ...
Go over to ArcheryTalk and start a conversation about antler restrictions in NY or any kind of change that would enable us to have a more balanced age class of bucks in our herd and see that rash of s--t that you take. If guy's like us are not consistently killing big deer on public land it isn't likely happening.Which raises another question that I will pose as a new topic.
This says everything I was thinking. I can tell you EXACTLY why hunters and locals in IL hate pretty much all out-of-staters that come here to hunt. 1- A lot if not all of my buddies have lost ground that we have hunted all our lives to outfitters and leases. Ground that our Grandfathers and our Fathers hunted. 2- We are not poor, sure there are poor people that live here and in the backwater towns in the real country there are no high paying jobs but they live good lives for the most part. This being said the job I do for a living in a large city like NYC would pull down six figures... EASY. But where we live that is not the case. It is hard to compete fund wise with these so called "city slickers".... lol 3- Outfitters and out-of-staters, for the most part, do not do their part in harvesting Does to help better manage the herd. 4- Outfitters and out-of-staters it seems have ZERO respect for people they hunt around and could care less what impact they have on neighbors. I mean why should they care they don't know us and will only be here a week. I have had too many bad run-ins with people paying to hunt. Just this week there was someone hunting on my farm, probably thinking he was on the leased property. He set his ground blind 5 freaking feet from a heavy trail that I was planning on hunting. Not only did he ruin the trail, but 30 yards from this blind there was a ladder stand. It gets better..... the ground blind had corn thrown out on the ground in front of it baiting deer (which is illegal). Many guys would have taken the trespassers property or burned it or thrown it in the creek, but I just let it stew and turned the other cheek. I know that this is not the case with all outfitters and out-of-staters, but we see a lot of it. Please be careful the next time you pass judgment and wonder what crawled up the @ss of the local guy. I would be willing to bet he has similar stories to share. One more thing to note: "All the big deer are in Iowa and Canada" Happy hunting.... lol
