i can't believe i forgot to post this here. i shot this buck on 11/28 on his way from his bedding area to the winter wheat.
****** this is a cut and paste from a thread on a site. so some of it may not make sense. but there is enough here that you can at least get the story.****
don't really know where to start other than to say this has been a bit of a dream fulfilled for me...... to be fortunate enough to have enough ground to, on a small scale, farm and mold habitat to hold, grow and hunt whitetails without ever having to get in a pick-up and drive to the area i am going to hunt...... to essentially, throw my camos on, take a few practice shots, and hike to a stand right from my home...... the whole experience means much more to me than the buck itself.
this year has been a tough one on the deer herds. not just in my immediate area but in eastern washington as a whole. we have had numerous back to back gnarly winters that have really taken their toll on the bucks that don't have time to replenish reserves lost during the rut (this year's buck is a prime example..... he is very "rutted out."). on top of the winters, we have a very steadily increasing predator population..... and even more detrimental to the deer and elk than the predators is the fact that deer and elk are being shot off baits at numbers i have never seen before and we have a Fish and Game department that doesn't want to acknowledge that fact. so this year, buck numbers are WAY WAY down especially on the 3 year olds and older. lower than i can remember them ever. yet the doe numbers still seem relatively high and we had a fantastic fawn drop this year. yearling bucks seem to be decent as well.
between the two farms west of town that i hunt comprising of over 11k acres as well as the few thousand acres that surround our home, there were only TWO..... yeah two bucks that i had any interest in pursuing. the first buck was on one of the farms west of town that i nicknamed "Pirate" because he was missing an eye from a battle 3 years ago. Pirate is not a massive buck antler wise (upper 130s maybe 140 as a 9 point), but he is ancient......... in the 7-8 year old range. the other buck is the one that i ended up killing. again, not a monster..... stubby but very good mass and a solid 5 year old.
few pics of "pirate"..... i have a lot of history with this buck but he was unfortunately wounded by another hunter.
the strange thing is, VERY VERY few of the bucks that i had high hopes for last year remained on the property this year. not sure if they just left (which i find very strange that most all left) or if the winter just pounded those animals that were doing the brunt of the breeding.
so enough of the winter woes and on to this season. scouting started for me like it alway does on the farms west of town. glassing started just after the 4th of July as did throwing up some "buck inventory cams" with large piles of corn in front of them. scouting at the house started the first of the year....... getting to see them daily all year long has added an entirely new chapter of insight to my studying whitetails.... especially in late winter through spring time as well as the fawning season. but the hunting portion of scouting started when the animals were really starting to show what they were going to be bone-wise in mid to late May. we had several 3 year olds that are showing potential with one 8point that really looks like he could be something spectacular. he is already flirting with that 130 mark and last year's sheds were only in the 105-108 range. he is one that lives down by the house and comes in when i feed the deer regularly. 20 yards is all he feels comfortable with when i am feeding but i have been a little closer on several occasions. the other two are 10 points. one in the 118-120 range and the other is around the 130 mark. several 2 year olds seem to have potential, but the buck that has my interest peaked is the one i call "P.B." (Potential Booner). he is just a yearling but is a mainframe miniature palmated 5x7. if he can get 4-5 more years on him, i really think he could be something spectacular.
a few pics of the 1.5 year old i call P.B...... generally, it is hard to determine what a yearling might turn out to be..... but i don't think there is any question about this little guy.
the north end of the property got 2 buck inventory cams in July. the only bucks there other than yearlings were "crazy wide" (he obviously made it through winter...... but not gun season this year :twisted: story to come down the page) "midnight" a big mature 8point that is 100% nocturnal, and a 3 year old mediocre 8 point that i have last years sheds to. one of the 10points that i call Drifter" is seen occasionally there as well as all other parts of the property. otherwise, the north end holds a bunch of yearlings and two year olds and a moderate population of does and fawns.
few pics of "crazy wide." i am guessing him at atleast 5 years old. he dressed at 212lbs
2010
2011
here is the buck i call "midnight" a 4-5 year old 8 point.
"buddy" a 3 year old 8pt that i have last year's sheds to. he is flirting with that 130 mark this year....... not quite, but getting close. normally i would be happy to get the 8point genes out of here but this guy gets REALLY close of me when i feed each night out in the pasture..... one false move and he is gone for days, but if i do my usual thing, i generally can get within 15 yards of him.... thus the name buddy
the west end got 2 buck inventory cams in July and i started glassing in mid july from a high vantage point pretty well in the middle of the property. that end holds the best number of bucks and is also the most secluded remote part of this ground. there are 5, 2 and 3 year olds that have potential and one 3 year old that i think will be phenominal. i call him "slim" since he is only about 12-13" wide but has very long tines with a split G-2 on the left side. he is an 11 point. other than the buck i killed, there is only one other buck that is a fully mature male. i call him "fat *censored*"....... a mamoth bodied 8 point with a paddle left main beam. this deer may very well be the biggest bodied whitetail i have ever seen in person. i have killed a pile of deer dressing over 200lbs and one that was approaching the 250 mark and this deer has them all beat by a long shot. from my vantage point 1500 yards away, i can tell when he would step into the wheat without any optics...... he is that big. antler wise, he is only in the 120 range but the paddle main beam on the left side is pretty cool and the beams themselves curl in hard just after the G3s. he is a pretty cool deer and the one i was going to hunt if i determined that the buck i killed was not a 5 year old. tons of does and fawns on this end.
"the little 9". this is a 2 year old deer.
"slim" a 3 year old 11 point with some real potential.
"Fat *censored*"..... biggest bodied deer i think i have ever seen. i had to reinforce the feeders because he was ripping the motor boxes down to get to the corn. you will see in some of the pics how the feeders have guards welded around the boxes. i included a pic of me so you could see how big he is as a reference. i weigh about 170lbs.
look at him checking out the guards i welded on the feeder LOL!!!!!
one of my favorite trail cam pics ever. 3 bucks in the pic
"stubby" a 3-4 year old that i would really like to see get another few years under his belt. this deer is one of the most visible bucks on the west end during daylight hours but absolutely does not like the trail cams. i have exactly 7 pictures of him from July through today. i have seen him through the spotting scope jump and run at last light when the cam would switch to infrared and snap a pic.
as the summer came closer to an end, i glassed and checked cams at our place as well as the two other farms hoping that something would appear from nowhere and knock my socks off. that never happened and i was quickly realizing just how scarce mature bucks were this year. it was about a week before the early season started that i decided that i'd probably just focus on elk (yes TC, i will finish the elk thread right after this one.
:oops: ) and hope that some reclusive mountain monster would surface during the rut. with the wolves decimating the herds that i hunt next door in ID, i figured my chances were just about as good here as they are over there and i would save 600.00 by not buying the ID tag. Cote turned me on to a spot that is very close to home and that is where we had a great last few days of the season and i personally saw the one of the largest if not the largest bulls i have ever seen in person. i also chased bears for a few days getting really close on a stalk while scouting for elk and also sitting in a stand in the high mountain orchard on one of the farms west of town. i had that bear at 17 yards but he was in such a frenzy ripping down apples that i never could get a clear shot or a shot where he wasn't moving. he was an absolutely beautiful chocolate bear in the 5'10"-6' range. a solid 275lber or better.
durring the early archery season, i glassed more than i ever sat stands or blinds. i did sit in a blind about 400 yards west of the house that i put up in some cattails right on the edge of the marshy ravine that we call "wallow hollow" (because the moose have some massive wallows in it). i had the 3 year old 130" 8 point feed within 15 yards of me in the clover. he sure looked big at that distance. that same night, the moose rut was really heating up and the resident cow was bellowing like crazy. the poor girl sounded miserable. :lol: several days later on the way to work, the second biggest bull that we see here was breeding her in the neighbor's pond about 1/8 of a mile from our house. several days later, i got the pics below with his right paddle busted off just past the eyeguards.
couple sunrises from my favorite glassing vantage point
cold morning with our first snow. in the upper right of this pic where the timber fades out to almost nothing is the area where i killed my buck. the spot is about 500 yards behind the timber line in the pic.
the bull that bred the resident cow.....
last year taken with my still cam
2011 on the trail cams
after the rut..... i have to imagine that he tangled with the big bull that is a legit 52" bull. broke his paddle
the early season came and went and i only sat in whitetail stands in vain knowing that the likelihood that i would shoot at something was remote at best..... but i had a hell of a good time since all the sits were on our ground and there was never a time that i didn't have deer saunter past well within bow range.
10-15 arrived and i was perched on the big hill in full camo waiting....... waiting for anyone from the "orange army" to try to see if they could get away with sneaking past property lines. low and behold, all was quiet....... i mean really quiet. evidently all the patrolling, filleting tires with spike strips, and snapping pics of faces and taking down personal info last year was paying off. around 9am opening day i decided to head off the south-end hill and head up to the north end. i came up on 4 guys sitting on the fence line (their side of the fence). i wasn't 15 feet from them when one of them spotted me and about jumped out of his skin. he asked why i wasn't wearing orange and i said because i am not hunting deer, just trespassers. he replied "ohhhhh you are the new guy, the Parkers told us you are pretty hard core and that we are not allowed to cross onto your ground anymore."
it was music to my ears. i just said that i am glad that everyone is getting the hint and as long as everyone stays honest, we'll get along just fine. then asked how their morning went and they said that they just saw a bunch of does and no bucks. i quickly and quietly backed out and let them enjoy the rest of their morning. the rest of the early gun season found me on my perch in the middle of the property half glassing for trespassers and half patterning the buck that i killed. not a single trespassing incident.
as the early gun season started winding down, the bucks started showing the first signs of pre-rut...... this was also the time that the WI trip started closing in and the pre-rut just added to that excitement. 2 days before we left, the bucks were really starting to chase and pester the does. the bucks were now heavily muscled and the first scrapes and sign post rubs were showing up.
