Well, I finally arrowed the 160-170+ drop tine buck thats been haunting our woodlot for the last few years. I took a 40-45 yard broadside shot on him this afternoon around 3pm. I hit him hard directly in the shoulder. The Rage buried into him but as he ran off he broke the protruding arrow free & burnt out of my set in a hurry. He dumped quite a bit of blood at first but as we followed the blood trail through the 2" of snow, the blood came to a trickle & after about a half a mile, we could only find a drop or two every 20 yards or so. We could follow the trail he left in the snow pretty easy, even after dark without a good blood trail. The trail he left led us into a huge bedding area, so we backed out easy. Ive got a good set on the edge of the bedding area that Ill be back in tomorrow morning. Im hoping that he'll be laid up in there recouping & will allow me to finish the job on him. Ill keep yall posted.

awsome, i hope he died in his bed. good luck sleeping tonight jason. How far did the arrow penetrate? Was it directly in the center of the shoulder or was it closer to the elbow joint.

The shot was dead center in the thick of the muscle tissue in the upper shoulder. The arrow broke just a few inches back from the broadhead, but hes hurt pretty bad from it. We could see in the snow that he was carrying his leg, but my brother & I didnt feel like sitting there freezing our asses off, & since I know where he went, I decided to back out.

As for sleep, Ive already decided that sleep is pretty much out of the question. Ill prep my gear & sit here patiently till morning. lol 8)

I hope that was enough penetration. Whats your draw and poundage?

Length is 28", poundage is 60-65.
Im pretty positive that I only wounded him, but Im also pretty positive that I can put the follow up shot on him tomorrow. But hell, I may find him dead in the snow too. The wait is effin killin me. 8)

Im with ya bud, i remember when i wounded that nice buck earlier this season and stayed up all night and never found him the next day. The one thing that you have going for you that i didnt is, my shot was a slight quartering away and my arrow went all the way through the shoulder and out the front of the brisket missing the vitals by mere inches, and yours is still in there moving around and hopefully tearing things up enough to cause damage every time he moves.

Oh man, I hope you get that buck!! I wanna see him!

I went out today, after our 8"snow on Wednesday. I was pretty much in disbelief after seeing the lack of deer tracks through my ground. So I pulled all my cams for the season. And as I was leaving I seen all the deer. Over on the neighbors that will give no permission. I still may try to get out 1 more time but my faith is rapidly dwindling. I did get a couple videos of a couple shooter bucks. Take a peek and see if they work for ya.

I have pics of this guy earlier and I was hoping he'd survive til next year. He looks like he was in a good fight.

http://s340.photobucket.com/albums/o...-23-12b010.mp4

I think this may be the guy I missed during rifle. Oh well, he's still running around. Unless someone got him since the video was taken.

http://s340.photobucket.com/albums/o...-23-12b008.mp4

sorry to hear about that mottz, It sucks this time of year when they abandon the only ground you got, is there any ranchers complaining about deer getting in the hay yet, sometimes that is a knocking opportunity.

Problem is that there was no corn on my property. Had beans and milo and with such an early harvest he planted everything wheat. And with it being dryland and the drought, well it is barely poking above the ground. My adjoining neighbor has corn but all his cows are in it. So the neighbor that has corn with no cattle has all the deer. Plus he has a deer's paradise for cover. My land does have a stockpile of hay with a few tracks around it but my guess they may be hitting that just as they are passing through. So I'm hoping to hear good news from Jason on that big boy so I can redeem myself to the team next year.

By the way. Merry Christmas to all my teammates and have a safe and enjoyable New Year!

Good luck man, hope this works out for you!

I know, i wanna see that brute with the leprachaun holding him by the rack with a ice cold beer in his other hand lol.

Well guys i think i am going to get my concealed weapons permit and get me a ruger 1911 .45 in the next couple of weeks before the goverment tries to regulate them. I have been watching the news and i am not liking what i am seeing. The only good news i seen today is that gunowners have a live online petition at wethepeople.com to deport CNN's piers morgan back to britain. It has over 47,000 signatures in just a few days lol.

I picked up the blood trail in the snow again this morning, just after sunrise. Found him laying not more than 75 yards from where I stopped tracking him last night. He ended up bleeding out right in the middle of the bedding area. As I approached the thicket I assumed I was jumping deer out of there, but it ended up being two german shepherds & a black lab. The lab & one of the shepherds ran off a ways but the other stayed tight to the carcass of my deer that they & Im guessing coyotes utterly destroyed during the night. The shepherd was acting pretty mean & kept growling & posturing as if to attack me but after a barking & yelling match between the two of us, I finally ran him off far enough to check the scene. These mother ****ers had eaten so much of this buck that if I hadnt tracked him there myself, I wouldnt have believed that it was my deer. You can see by the pictures below that they really did a number on him. They tore his legs off & two of them I couldnt find, so Im assuming there were more dogs working on him than the three that remained as I got there.The thing that makes me sick & also something that Ive never seen before is that the bucks antlers were broke off at the skull. Ive never seen a buck have his antlers broken off from coyotes or dogs. Im assuming they broke them off while pulling & ripping him up. I searched the area for over three hours looking for the broken antlers but with the snow cover, I never found them. Those three dogs barked at me the entire time I was there & Im pretty sure that the neighbors a couple miles off could probably hear me cussing & yelling all the way out there. Im so ****ing pissed about the whole thing. Come the end of season, Ill be killing a coyote pack & if I see those three dogs on our place again, Ill be killing them too. Im wishing now that I had just shot all three of them this morning.

Here are the pics. You can see where they pulled his antlers off & ate his face. They devoured most of his back half as well. Looked to me that they drug alot of him off with them as they left the area because I couldnt find most of his body any where in the area & as I said, I searched the area for hours.







Anyways, Im not going to be back out until friday now, & since my #2 hit lister is now gone, Ill put some points on the board with one of the smaller bucks we’ve been passing on. I may be down, but Im definitely not out, & I am as pissed off as a rattlesnake in a pentecostal church.

I feel for ya. That makes me sick just thinking about it. I wouldn't care if it was a neighbors dog if it is aggressive to me I'm shooting on the spot. They should have kept it behind a fence. Hope you at least find the antlers

I would never had guessed you would find this in the morning. Holy s***, I think the dogs did most of the damage, i have seen alot of deer tore up by coyotes and the antlers are almost always unharmed. The dogs would not have made it out alive it was me. Especially if this was the deer of a lifetime. Im an azzh*** like that. I keep my skinny azz off your property, the least you could do is keep your dogs of mine, would be my thoughts anyway.

I just got off the phone with my buddy whos the warden here & he said that the dogs, not the coyotes took the antlers off. He also said he suspects from the pics that the buck was going to shed soon, thats why the dogs were able to break them like that. He also gave me the green light to kill any dog we see out there. We know all our neighbors pretty well & these dogs dont belong to anyone we know. So our assumption was someone dumped there dogs out there to be rid of them. He also asked me to bring a dog carcass in to him so he can have them checked for chips. Once the snow melts in the next day or two, Im going to go back out & search for the antlers some more. Im just hoping to find them before the critters do.

Golly jason, it dont get much worse than that, i hope the rest of your season goes better. I just cant believe that deer, i dont even see a rib cage in the pics, I have never seen one that mangled overnight.

Yea, I couldnt believe it. Ive never seen such a mess. I do believe Ill be taking the mini14 to the woods in the morning to see if I cant get at least one of those dogs. Id really like to know if theyre chipped & find out whos dogs they are.

If you shoot them im sure you will find out whose they are soon enough. Id give them dogs at least 10 rounds of 5.56 a piece, maybe more if my temper wasnt cured by that point lol.

Well Jason, thats not the Christmas miracle I was hoping for ya. Hoping for you to find the antlers. Its just a shame that a guy does the right thing by backing out and something like rabid dogs take over. I'd plant some bait and wait for those SOB's to come back for more:fighting0007:Now I hope that you get a shot at the other bucks out there. Team Captain needs to seal up this contest for us:biggrin:

What concerns me is that 4 of us hunt our 450 acres with someone out there almost every day & none of us have ever seen a stray out there. Now we have 3 all of a sudden & of course its when I put down the one buck that we've all been hunting for the last 3 years. Its ****ing retarded. Im definitely going out there to kill those dogs tomorrow. And what really sucks, itll be the first gun fired on that property since we've been there. I really want to know who these dogs belong to.

Just curious...Chipped? Is that pretty common in your area? Around here the owners have to decide if they want it. Is it mandatory there?

almost seems like strays to me, i mean 2 shepherds and a lab running around together. If it was two blue healers or something like that i might think twice, but around here anyway, there isnt too many ranchers that need shepherds or labs, mainly cattle dogs that never leave the homestead.

Hell Ryan, Ive passed so many younger bucks this year in hopes of growing some mature deer & waiting patiently for our hit listers to give me the shot of a lifetime that I know I could walk out there tomorrow & know for a fact I could drop a 100" deer. So much for a world class whitetail this year. Ill put an arrow in a 2 year old come friday or saturday & put us another 100 points up.

Its not mandatory but its pretty common & Im just hoping it to be the case, that way I can give the ******* who dumped his dogs a piece of my mind.

Marty, no amount of dog murder is going to make up for that drop tine buck. Id really like to post a dogs head on a pike in the yard of the ******* they belong to.

Well fellas, my wifes asking me to stop stewing over this & to come help here play santa. We have some toys to assemble for the boys & you know theyll all be up at first light wanting to see what the fat man brought them. So yall have a merry christmas & Ill talk with ya later.

Your probably right, but you gotta remember that i live on a indian reservation where there is packs of stray mutts running everywhere and cause problems for me in my job everyday. :rant:, I have been bit a few times and have learned to show no mercy towards them lol. I used to be a dog lover before i moved here.

Find those antlers and you have your world class buck. Not a big deal to find another cape and still get them mounted afterwards.

Sorry to hear that your buck didnt pan out as you had hoped, bummer!

Whats up guys? Hows everyones holiday season goin?

Holiday season is going great, my dad and mom are on their way up here for the weekend. Him and i plan on doing some pheasant hunting plus he still has a archery tag and i have a rifle doe tag so we will probably fill those as well, but after seeing 9 coyotes today while pheasant hunting by myself i might have to do some calling on the other side of the property while he is on the stand :fighting0007:

Family time is good! Make the best of it just cause you never know what tomorrow will bring. Good luck on getting those pheasants. I think they are on the endangered species list here in Nebraska. I faired out alright in the gift department. Wife got me a rifle rest/lead sled and enough gift cards to add another camera or 2 to my arsenal. I love my trail cams:D

Know what ya mean about not knowing what tomorrow will bring. The wife finally filed for divorce last Friday and my grandpa passed last Saturday. On the bright side life can only look up from here. Time to hold the kids a little tighter and start chasing my dreams. Number one on the list find some place to get a mule deer. Anyone have any ideas. Would have to be a diy hunt, can't afford outfitter lol.

Geez kelly, sorry to hear about your run of bad luck! Keep your head up though. You still have us to vent to lol. How far are you willing to travel for the mule deer? I know quite a few people that head out towards the panhandle of nebraska on public land. I know the Pine Ridge area is known for them also.

I figure I can save up some vacation days and take a week off to try my luck. Nebraska isn't too bad just don't want to travel too far and not see anything lol. Getting one would just be a bonus

Well, good news fellas. I took a little 97" buck this morning. Easy shot, easy recovery & a great experience.

I got out 30 minutes before first light this morning. I ended up taking a little cat nap in the summit just after getting settled in & woke up to this guy browsing directly underneath me about 7:20am. I waited for him to turn broadside to me & I took the 5 yard shot. It was high in his back due to the angle of the shot & it was also a bit far back but it did pass thru clipping both lungs. He didnt run far before piling up, about 50-60 yards. Though he's not the buck I had wanted, he's meat in the freezer & points on the board. Ive passed on this buck several times this year in hopes of a bigger deer. Ive even been face to face with him while walking out to the truck mid-day. Each time thinking that he'll grow into one fine mature buck, but Ive yet to have a buck at 5 yards this season, nor have I ever had a buck wake me up from a nap. Today just wasnt his day & if I wasnt this far into the season, I might have let him still walk, but after last weekends incident, I let him have it.
Also bringing our combined score to 832 5/8, & 150 points ahead of 2nd place.

Great job! That gives the team a little more breathing room. Now get back out there and find those antlers LOL