Yesterday, after a morning hunt that netted (saw) one little 4 pointer, my friend and I decided to try another tactic. We took 2 doe decoys (targets) and a buck decoy out and set them up. One doe was 20 yards from his stand, another doe was 30 yards from my stand and the buck was placed in the middle 45 yards from both of us. We crawled into the stands at 2:00 PM and let the games begin. At 3:30, I see him stand up quickly and let an arrow fly! "Alright!" I thought wondering what he shot at. At 4:10 he stood up and let another arrow fly. "Wow! It sure is busy by his stand!" I thought again. At 4:30, I see a buck out in the bean field. Grunted and rattled and he started slowly towards me. He stopped every so often and browsed for a minute or two. At 4:50, 3 does came out of the same woods he exited and 3 in view are more than a buck he can hear. He turns and jogs over to the does. They proceed to mule kick at him and I'm sure a few of those kicks connected, but he continues to chase the does around in circles. He never comes any closer. After dark, I get down and go over to the friend who is looking around to the Northeast of his stand. "How many deer did you shoot?", I ask. "A cull buck" he replies. "Did you miss the first time?" "Nope" "I saw you shoot twice." "Oh....I kinda fell asleep and when I woke up saw a doe. About the time I released, I realized it was my decoy", he explained. Sure enough, there was an arrow sticking out of his target which is NOT set up to take broadheads. I chuckled while we looked for his buck. Found the bugger a few minutes later. It was a perfect Rob buck. 3 pointer on one side and a spike on the other. He was a one year old. Don't know if he would have grown out of it, but I do know he will never grow out of it now. "Well, you know the rule here don't you?" I asked. "Can I get a waiver?", he replied. "Nope" I said firmly, "You shoot a buck, you have to have it mounted". He took out his phone and made a call. "Honey, I have something to tell you that you're probably not going to be happy with." He explained the rules of hunting on my land and what he had shot. He listened for a long - long time, said "Yes dear" and hung up. He told me that he was in deep kimchi and that buck was going to cost him all new appliances in his house. I laughed and then said "Okay, one time waiver". He quickly called his wife back and talked to her. When he got off the phone he looked at me and said "Still gotta buy all new appliances!" "At least you saved the $500 getting this deer mounted! Did you really think I would enforce that after the entertainment you gave me this evening!?!". I laughed my arse off and soon he was busting up too. Spoke to his wife this morning and she told me that I'm going to be receiving all new hunting clothes too! Said it was worth it and asked me my size. She works at a sporting goods store and gets a great discount. I told her that was not necessary and would make her husband think we were in cahoots. He got on the phone and told me that it was the least he could do for not making him mount the deer. We'll see what happens. Just wish I would have had a camera to catch him shooting his decoy!!!:D
Intresting story...he shot the decoy? lol And your rule is that you HAVE to mount bucks? Pretty cool...I bet that saves alot of little guys.
If you shoot a buck, you have to mount it. Keeps a lot of 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 yo's from being taken before their prime. Everyone who hunts here, the neighbor's and most of the places I hunt have that same rule. I like it personally. We do all have bucks that are exempted from this rule (mostly those with no/little promise of growing to be awesome beasts. When we hunt together, we show the pic's of the exempt bucks and go from there.
Don't hunt with anyone who is in to european mounts right now. I guess my personal view is, if you're going to display the fruits of your labor, that's what counts.
