2014.
He is an old deer, look at how grey he is. His right ear is split almost half way down to the skull. Going to be a neat looking mount. Charlie Smith has him.
Opening weekend last year we didn't see much at all in the way of nice bucks.
It was on the Saturday that the weather was totally crap, I think it was the second weekend.
I was hauling an antlerless in to the butcher earlier in the day and saw one that makes this one look common.
This one came in with another, or I should say they came in about the same time but from different directions. The other one had deeper forks, but was not as wide or heavy.
I was picking up stands in November and decided to just chill out in a stand until dark and then tear it down, saw another really super nice one, but I don't think it was the monster I had seen while taking the doe to the butcher. The body on that first one was absolutely huge and the second one didn't really impress me as that big. But he had a rack that was a real dandy.
There are a lot of mature island blacktail bucks, but seeing one on a road is not something that is all that common. Particularly the real monster bucks. They are pretty cagey.
We got another four point last year that was large, but the rack is only about ten inches wide. Heavy, tall, deep forks, each antler had nice conformation, but really a ridiculous looking deer. I will try to dig up a photo of that one.
I'm bad for not taking pictures. I almost forgot to get a photo of this one.
Not much fat on this one either, but from what I hear he ate pretty good. As the guy who posted above stated, these really big bucks are not child's play. They can really hunker down and wait out the entire hunting season.
Filling tags isn't to much of a problem for us, especially our antler less second tags. Figuring out how to close the deal with the big ones is pretty tricky though. They won't come out to feed until way after legal shooting hours most times and will hang back. The best bet is to catch them after they get out of their beds moving toward the areas in which the does are feeding but still back in the heavy cover.
Since we started using ladder stands our success has went way up. We now have about eight or ten. Pre season scouting for rubs like the first gent has pictured is the right idea too, if you ask me. If there are any on the property you have access to I kinda like to concentrate on hunting over larger three or four inch alders that have been rubbed, but you can't argue with their success.
As long as the rubbed trees are fresh there are bucks frequenting the area. If I find rubs I will keep them in mind to check year after year. I have found times when I never saw the culprit, but knew he was getting pretty darn big because of the size trees he tore up kept getting bigger.
