ORIGINAL: Red Lion
ORIGINAL: tatonka
I respectfully disagree with anyone who uses walkie talkies, cell phones, etc. to enable themselves or people they are hunting with to kill a deer. Using these for safety reasons is a totally different issue.....that just makes sense.
Using these devices to radio ahead to a fellow "hunter" to let him/her know that a buck is headed there way, that maybe they need to run over to "Hickory Holler" to cut the buck off, etc. isn't hunting.....it's just killing.
In regards to killing bucks at 300 yards in Montana......try coming out to these wide open spaces and killing one with a bow sometime (or a muzzleloader......not the modern in-line ones, but the old traditional ones with open sights). There aren't many trees to climb up in around here......
WHoa! I agree that harvesting an animal at 300 yards or longer is not easy, and getting close enough to kill with a prmitive weapon is very tough in more open spaces, but tight quarters have there own difficulties that equal long shots and open areas in more western hunting.
I agree 100 % (about the difficulties in tight quarters). Getting your bow drawn back without being detected when a deer is in bow range can be very tricky.Movement of any kind is much more critical at close range than when a buck is at a distance.
The tricky part in many places where the georgraphy is very open is even getting within rifle range at all at times. These open country deer act a lot like antelope. I've seen bucks laying out in the wide open where there was just no possible way to even get within 400 or 500 yardsof them. They use their eyes as their primary means of defense. When the hunting pressure gets heavy along the riverbottoms and creek bottoms, the older bucks leave. They'll go out in the middle of the stubblefields or out in the sagebrush on the wide open prairie and hole up......sometimes several miles from the nearest cover. Tracks indicate that they'll go back into the riverbottoms at night to find a doe in estrous, but they're usually gone by daylight (and take the doe with them). I picked up a track one time at first light along a creek bottom of what appeared to be a buck with a doe. I tracked thetwo deer approximately 5 miles away from the creek bottom where I found them bedded down in some sagebrush. Fortunately there was enough clumps of sagebrush to allow me to crawl within range and I was able to shoot the buck in his bed at about 200 yards. That doesn't happen very often......