Where do they hide?

[lokidog]

Saw this guy about 10 minutes ago.  Not a single sighting all of deer season.  Definitely rutting as he was glued to the butt of a doe.  This is one of the biggest deer I have seen on our end of the island.  We have a lot but not very good antler genes.   

[Smokepole]

Stocky, and nice rack for an island buck, Lokidog.  Maybe you should let him breed a few times before you bust him?  You should have some pretty good hunting on that island, since there's no ferry.  How many tags you got?

[saylean]

Pretty buck. Good size for an island deer. The deer on Orcas (at least the ones I've seen) are the size of dogs!

[Rowdy]

Pretty buck. Good size for an island deer. The deer on Orcas (at least the ones I've seen) are the size of dogs!

This summer I spent a week on John's Island in the northern San Juan's.  The deer were tiny and looked like they were starving, I could see damn near every rib on 'em.  The cool thing was a couple of them had some nice racks.

Jake

[STIKNSTRINGBOW]

Cool pic, definately rutting. look at that neck !!

[carpsniperg2]

rutting for sure, you know he will taste yummy

[lokidog]

Just got done with another round of filming him.  He let me walk to about 15 yards watching the doe who was eating apples about five yards from me.

When the deer hit 4 years here you can get about 50 pounds of meat, so we try to let the bucks get a bit older.  I got one like him last year and got 54 pounds of meat.  My first one this year was a bit smaller as was my wife's at about 30 pounds of meat each.

We have two more tags!

Winters are pretty tough for food on the deer, especially the smaller islands with no agriculture.  

[runamuk]

Nice......I remember some of the island deer well when we were kids we would feed them marshmallows on one of the little islands out near Orcas.  It was a park and protected they had nothing to fear.

[Savage3006]

Nice pics. Thanks for sharing!

[bow4elk]

That is a gorgeous buck!  Looks like a sitka blacktail with that vivid coloration around his face and throat patch.

[lokidog]

Here's another nice one of him.  He's a pig.

[bow4elk]

Looks like my decoy!

[Gamblin Guy]

Loki,

My son and I both have 2nd tags for Blakely, hoping we can find something about like that for his first buck (and first deer with a bow).  Nice looking deer, we didn't see anything like that on the east end of the island the last weekend in September when we were there.