Buddies nice 5x4 Blacktail

[saylean]

Great color! I miss hunting black tails....maybe next year.

[fishnfur]

Good story JD.  One down, one to go.

If it was me, I'd still put in one more day in the stand on the 31st, or perhaps the late season with your decoys, just to see what happens.  Depending on the results, you may hold off on a lesser deer next year in hopes of scoring the monster. 

Congrats on the kill!

[JDHasty]

I am going to be strictly focused on big bucks next year. 

I was excited about deer season this year up until about two weeks before the season, but by a week and a half prior something came up that made me not even really want to go over to the island this year.  Let's just say: this situation will not repeat.   

Once my one buddy got that nice three point I just didn't have any desire to be hunting on the island and decided to just shoot a decent buck.  I really wanted him to get a nice big buck this year, but other than that I really didn't care whether I was over there or not.  Honestly, I should have stayed home last weekend and gone over to the island this weekend by myself instead of with a party.   

I'm going to make some big changes next year and may just walk away from the access I have today and start over altogether.  My wife's best friend and her husband are buying significant acreage on Anderson Island and they love to eat deer, but neither one hunts.  She is always first in line at what I call the "beggars banquet" i.e. when the wife gives away last year's left over meat.

The blacktail populations are very dense on all of the islands in south Puget Sound.  The mature bucks are there to be had, it is just a matter of figuring them out.  Even people that live amongst them don't see much more than a small percentage of them during hunting season, if ever.  But they are there if you know how to find them.   



     

[Natures Way]

 nice buck!

[crazywednesday]

This is great info, not just for island blacktail, but for all. Thank you for your insights. It has me rethinking many areas where huge sheds have been found, but big bucks have not been seen.

Thanks for sharing.

Justin

[JDHasty]

OK Beee, no shuckin' and jivin' in the woods this weekend.  You better be hittin' it hard buddy. 

We got another decent buck yesterday evening.  This one came off the south end of the Kitsap Peninsila.  I'm wanting to see you post one that makes this one look common. 

[JDHasty]

I touched base w/a few buds yesterday evening and they have been are scoring on some real hogs this season.  Saw a real dandy that was on the way to the taxidermy shop and a photo of another that will probably measure north of 150.  Both make this one look common.  One is non-typical, drop main beam on one side and stickers everywhere, it had been hit by a car at some time in the past, it's lungs were all stuck to the ribs w/adhesions, was missing an eye and it walked with a pretty good limp.  huge rack though.

[Natures Way]

That's a great blacktail! no matter where its from.

[predatorG]

Agreed. Love seeing big ones pulled outta kitsap though. Nice job man!

[JDHasty]

The guys that target the big bucks on the islands are a pretty close knit cadre.  They share a lot of info back and forth ONCE THEY KNOW YOU, but they really don't broadcast to the outside world about what they bag.  They share back and forth pretty freely and don't really hold their cards close to the vest when it comes to other guys that are not part of their group, but not so much with those in other groups who are not after big bucks. 

I can walk up to a camp fire and have someone tell me to go look in the bed of a truck or have them throw me an iPhone with photos and then tell me pretty much where, when and how.... but let me show up with someone they don't know and the dynamic is really different.  The conversation is just about "deer hunting." 

Me thinks that most of that revolves around the fact that there are those who appreciate other's company who are of like mind and the conversation just naturally goes that way.  It really doesn't impress me about not having a horde encroach on their special spots so much as the topic of big bucks is more intimate in nature.  All access is private and TIGHTLY controlled anyway. 

I know I am guilty, if the topic is not big bucks I am not taking the conversation in that direction unless I am chatting with someone who has something to share that interests me, and I am not interested in their special spot other than what it is other than the exact location that makes that spot special. 

Every year a few someones take a real bragging buck off their deck or a meat hunter jumps a big buck, but there are islanders and off islanders who target the big bucks and they pretty well all know each other.  We share what it is about our spots that keep big bucks coming back year after year and then take that knowledge and apply it to fine tuning where we set up on the properties we have access to or to or for looking to develop access that will provide proximity to like situations. 

Really, in all honesty, there isn't a square mile on any of the islands that doesn't have a half dozen wall hangers.  Most of these bucks are perfectly safe and we know that and accept that as fact.  What we are looking for is how to find the few spots with a 270 degree view of the hundred-yard radius in which to set up our stands that a couple of these bucks will be moving through or visiting during the season.

Here is an interesting factoid:  a biologist I talked to said there are north of 150 blacktails per square mile on the islands, 40% of them are bucks and 30% 0f them are three point or better mature bucks.  If we accept that any mature three point, or big fork horn, is a trophy blacktail buck... as I do - there is a lot of untapped potential to shoot a trophy blacktail out there on the south sound islands.   

I don't sit and type this in order to see an invasion of trophy blacktail hunters invade every island in the south sound next year.  What I have written applies to every hunt able acre of ground around Vail, Newakum, Winston Creek, Scatter Creek, Lincoln Creek etc.  without paying north of $20 to get across every evening. 

The guys that target big bucks on the islands set up camp, just like elk camp, and hunt hard all season if they are not islanders and if they are islanders they hunt just as hard as we do when we are in elk camp and they do not, for whatever reason, take a good buck every season. 

They do know the bucks are right there though. I hunt the islands and south Kitsap because of proximity to home in Tacoma, but there are just as many big bucks in the Nisqually and Newakum and Chehalis drainages all the way from Mt Rainier Park to Monte.  I know that for a stone cold natural fact. 


I have had this topic on my mind for a couple weeks and just kinda got on a roll this evening.   

[predatorG]

My buddy shot a big one in tacoma. And I'm glad you share stuff like this because it's very interesting. The fact about the deer population blew me away. I feel like there's more deer all around than people realize and all you have to do is put in some work to find them.

[JDHasty]

My neighbor got a really decent three point the last weekend.  It is his first deer and is a dandy.  He hunted hard all season with hid dad's Excalibur Exocet in firearms restricted sections of the KP, and then ended up bagging his buck with a shotgun in an area that shotguns are legal.  He just wasn't getting a shot with the crossbow, the heck of it is that the shot he got  w/the shotgun would have been easy w/the crossbow too - especially an Exocet. 

I will post pictures as soon as I get them. 
Here's the photo and I told ya' it is a real Jim Dandy of a blacktail off the lower KP

[JDHasty]

Photo above

[fishnfur]

That's a real stud of a buck.  Looks fully mature to me.  I don't really like palmation, but it wouldn't stop me from shooting a pig like that!