Well guys I had a encounter last night that I was hoping I wouldn't. My number 1 buck came up at last light with his doe. She came to 10 yards and stop, she smelled were I walked and stood there for 10 minutes. The buck followed and stood at 15 yards for 10 minutes. All I could do is watch until it got to dark to see him. They finally walked off in the dark back to the thicket. Now here was the problem. I didn't have a buck tag! I will have one open up this Saturday, so I will back after him soon. He was so close and all I could do was watch! I have hundreds of cam pics of him over the last 2 years, but this is the first time I've seen him in person.
That's a lot of bone to pass on after so many days in the stand. I admire your restraint! Rut was very odd this year. Small bucks chasing by mid Oct in 75-80* heat, big bucks chasing hard last week of Oct, then the rut seemed to almost dry up overnight. Seemed like every guy in my QDMA or my deer camp struck gold between Oct 28-Nov 5; and nobody even saw a deer worth taking after that.
Actually, to say I was tempted just as a way to stop my obsessive behavior would be an accurate statement. I have been blessed to shoot a few good bucks over the years and I don't necessarily like to eat a rutting buck so I decided to wait but oh did I want to get out of that stand. I may switch to doe mode if the rut slows down then wait until mid December for the second rut to kick in. Just have to see how it goes. Plan on shooting my limit of does though and get the canner out.
Had another buck similar size at 10 yards Oct 1st but couldn't end my season that quick. There is/was a beautiful 8 pushing 140" on our place but we haven't seen a glimpse of him since late summer. Got my chance on this guy running a doe from a food plot stand we have never killed from so I took it. Sorry but no doe for me this year. Gun season has started off horribly......the deer are just gone. We jumped home for a quick sleep and back for Thanksgiving so I'll get him in the scorecard. Yes, I know the date on our Covert wasn't set correctly. My dad is 72 and loves to "help" LOL
Did some work Thanksgiving morning with the guns. I'm going to try and fill my doe tag during ML with my bow since I am tagged out for bucks.........good luck guys.
Latest update, a buddy saw a giant mainframe 12 on Tuesday (guessed it was around 180 inches). I have a stand about 100 yards from where he saw him tending a doe. Wednesday and Thursday morning was spent there. Saw a lot of bucks and one solid 125 inch 8 pointer which I passed on. Lot of activity there with bucks chasing does whereas in my other stands I had been seeing lots of does but not much buck activity. Would love to be there the next couple of days but going to the farm to work on a couple of ponds we are rehabbing while I have a couple of days off. Be on an excavator and a dozer the next couple of days. Told a co-worker he could go hunt that stand so maybe he can get a crack at that monster. We will see if he has any luck and if not will try it again next week.
Sorry for the lack of presence guys. I've been hitting hit it pretty hard and the frustration has continued to mount. I've yet to have a shooter buck anywhere near me, and have only gotten a single pic of a decent buck within the last 2 weeks. Needless to say, I'm pretty burnt out.. and with the rut pretty much over, I return to being a weekend warrior now. The orange army takes to the field for the next couple of weekends. I haven't gun hunted in ages, but I'm considering joining them this year. We'll see.... Either way, I'm far from being done bow hunting. It's just gonna have to take a backseat, at least until after the holidays. Good luck to everyone still getting after it! Sent from my SM-N915V using Tapatalk
Well back from the farm and pretty upset after the visit. My brother and I purchased this place a couple of years ago and to say it is a farm is a misnomer because it is actually just acreage with timber and maybe 20 - 30 acres cleared pasture. We have cleared about 60 more acres and are starting to rehab a couple of ponds, one of them about 2.5 acres and the other about 1.5 acres so fairly good sized ponds. I haven't hunted it because quite honestly the deer just weren't mature enough. The property had been sitting idle for years and all the locals were using it as public hunting so when we bought it we gated all the access roads and put no trespassing/no hunting signs up every 100 feet or so but the property is so flat you can't keep 4 wheelers out. My brother and I both only bow hunt so the thought was to improve habitat, bow hunt only and hopefully be able to grow some great bucks by being selective and harvesting mature deer. Although the hunting pressure has slowed way down we continue to have trespassers especially during gun season and while I was down there I found a small spike as I was taking a tour around that someone had shot and just left. Boy was I mad. The game wardens try to help but with only 1 warden for like 6 counties there is no way that you can expect a lot of assistance from them. I live like 2.5 hours away and my brother had cateract surgery during gun season and couldn't be out there much so it is frustrating. The locals have been mad because they perceived they lost "their" hunting spot but we have explained that it is our property and we are trying to manage it. We even had a neighboring property owner(that had used our farm as a personal hunting spot for a few years) state that if we shot a deer and it came on his property that we better not come on his land. We informed him if he wanted it like that then the same rules applied to him and since he knew that the deer bedded and lived on our property he started stuttering and said well maybe we could work something out. I would like to make this place something nice but man is it a struggle with some of the attitudes. I can understand that they hunted there for years but the key point is they didn't own it, it was for sale for years and none of them bought it. My brother and I did and I just feel that we should have the liberty to utilize it how we want without all the hassle. There just seems to be a lack of respect for private property. Sorry for the rant but I am still hot.
I feel your pain man. I have had threads on this very site go sideways when I expressed my displeasure with idiots thinking they should be able to go wherever they want even though they do nothing to deserve that privilege. That's the whole problem........they view it as a right not a privilege just because they want to hunt. People like that are no different then the welfare/Medicaid culture.........they have access to land for free the govt provides for them but that's not good enough. They want access to YOUR land that YOU work your whole life to obtain. It's nauseating. I bought my home 6 years ago and immediately ran into numerous clowns that were abusing the fact that an older woman lived there before. I actually had a guy tell me when I caught him on my land that he had permission to be there from the owner. When I told him I was the owner he actually said "well, I've been hunting here for years" as if I was some how obligated by that. He did not like the response he got from me and sadly he wasn't the last. It's almost a never ending battle.
We had the same problem. People, are lazy in general, very few of us want to put in the work and time out takes to own our own ground. Keep at it and have patience. It is worth out in the end. Sent from my SM-G930V using Bowhunting.com Forums mobile app
I'm going thru the same thing also, but it's getting better. The big difference is I'm leasing the land, so I can just walk away, but you guys cant. It's frustrating to deal with! It takes so much away from your hunting time just dealing with these people. I had to get the DNR involved and he confronted all the people that were problems and it seems to help. But now I don't have a single deer bedding on whole property. It has been a complete waste of time. All I can say is the way you manage the deer, you also got to manage the trespassers. It will get better over time once they know your there and there will be problems if they continue what there doing. Stay strong guys, it will get better!
Sounds like you have talked to some of my trespassers Atlas. It is amazing that I have gotten the same responses from people we have found on the property as you have. After we bought the property we put notes on each of the treestands that we found informing them they were trespassing, our phone numbers and that they had 30 days to remove their property. Most called us and said that they had been hunting there for years and could not understand why we wouldn't let them hunt there. We told them the reasons why and have had numerous deer shot with momentos left for us to find letting us know they had killed a deer. Found 1 guy and his family riding a side by side this weekend, he asked if he could target shoot after we first bought the place and we said yes but after we went to the site he shot at found that he didn't even have the decency to pick up his targets or shell casings. We asked him to leave when we found him yesterday and he wanted to know why. We told him why. Some people just don't have a clue. Some of them show no restraint whatsoever when hunting and have the mentality of if its brown its down. We know that if we don't monitor and manage the place it will never produce what we are hunting for.
Went hunting yesterday evening and had over 200 inches of antler looking at me broadside at less than 20 yards. I couldn't pull the trigger and let him walk. I did take a picture though and hope you enjoy.
It was cool until they ran all the deer off that I had around me at the golden time of 30 minutes before dark. There were actually 5 bulls in the group that came through. They stocked 25 of them here last year and are supposed to put 75 more in this year. The bulls like to stay on the jobsite I assume because as we reclaim we have planted grass and clover which has done remarkably well and they really like grazing in it. Don't see that many cows though.
Live in KY right in the heart of the elk restoration zone and work in WV where they just started a stocking program. Have been trying for years to get drawn in KY but have not gotten a whiff of a tag.
