ORIGINAL: bowhunterjohn
Gforce, I use spotlighting to scout my urban zone. When the deer come out this one area of the woods and head north, the next moring they come back in a finger located on the north. Worked everytime this year at my URban spot.
I'm from Fort Wayne also
Thats a nice buck blondie, but what was the exact score, not knocking you or anything, but it looks a little thin on mass and tine length to make the mid 160's, but its a real nice deer. Too bad about the other deer. There are a lot of dorks around here that spotlight and poach deer. several years ago in another county there were two guys that spotlighted a deer eating out of a bird feeder, dropped it with a rifle, it died in the older peoples driveway, they drove in and took a chainsaw and cut the head off. They got caught, the buck scored in the 170's, just a shame that a buck like that had to be taken in such a cowardly manner.
blondiez24 - Too bad you had the other deer poached. The one you posted is a nice buck.
bowhunterjohn - Glad to hear of your success in your urban zone set-ups. I recently lost a prime urban zone spot due to some low-life that came in and stole mine and the property owners stands.Trespassing is illegal almost everywhere, but a thief doesn't mind. The law isn't what they care about, your property is what they want.
Legal use of aspotlight is an effective scouting method IMHO. Some will not agree;to those that do not, I will not change their positions anymore than they will deter mine.
I don't know if you heard about a duo of spotlighting poachers that were caught in Steuben county a few years back. Two guyswere living in Michiganat the time and were shooting deer in the county'srural areas and takingthem home. One of the idiots even entered at least one buck in Michigans' big buck program (don't remember the programs name).
They were targeting an area that I have glassed in the evening and you can see 100-200 deer in a two or three square mile area coming out into the fields just after sunset. This area is widely known and gets a lot of vehicle traffic of people just wanting to see deer. Many are nothunters.
You don't even need to use a spotlight, and some of the bucks are just
huge. It's not unusual to see a dozen bucks that are in the 140-170 range, a couple here and there at 180. Any way, the two got caught because the farm ownerreported the night time gun shots to the DNR. The IDNR set up a sting operation and caught thepoachers as they shot a buck in a field with a centerfire rifle. The Michigan DNR searched their homes and found more deer carcasses.
Shooting deer while spotlighting is illegal in Indiana, but the laws will not stop someone that is determined to poach.Poachers don't care if the laws exsist or not, it is the criminal mindset that they follow.
Poachers are thieves of our wildlife.