Did you ever notice - that the further you have to drag them, the bigger they get.

My neighbor shot a 9 1/2 point buck - up in the orchard.

It has posted signs on every tree. He really didn't HAVE permission to be there, but his brother is a insurance man and knows everybody.

The family has lived in the same house beside the orchard for the last 100 years.

Then he comes to my house a couple of days later with no tag and tells me that he is going to get the deer mounted. Only they already cut the head off - below the chin - because they wanted the meat for a roast.

He says that he can get a cape.

Then he tells me that they are going to get a point glued on - because the one was broke.

By the time the story was over, he was making it out to be a 120 Class Pope and Young record book deer.

I just wonder - if you glue points on and change the cape and do all the alterations that he wants to do - would it still be a 120 class deer and would it count.

All my deer are hanging on the wall and you can look at them anytime you want. Old piece of plywood board - cut to look like a placque. Nothing fancy!

I think that too many hunters places too much importance on getting recognition for what they have accomplished - by getting their name into some kind of record book or getting their picture took with their dad's deer.

I am 43 years old and spent most of my adult life in the woods hunting deer on public land and nobody ever gave me a deer, although more than one person took a deer off me.

I wouldn't tag a deer that I didn't shoot - so I could say that it was mine and my dad never took me into some honey hole and let me shoot some monster buck - so I could go to school and brag what a good hunter I am.

I worked for every deer I shot and I earned every deer I shot - because I hunted for every deer I shot.

There is no way in H3ll that some 11 year old kid is going to know where to go on public land, without bait and posted signs and a pet deer to shoot, where he can just walk into the woods and shoot a trophy deer.

I have been hunting for 30 years and I never got a single one that I would consider a trophy to anyone except me!

I have seen them and I have missed them, but I never shot one.

There is no way that some kid is going to go out in the woods and find a good place to sit on his own and not make noise and not go for a walk and not get lost in the woods and not get bored or cold and want to go home.

Sitting in a tower stand with a kerosun heater with video games and a television and listening to the radio and shooting out a window at some tame deer that shows up at the same place every day isn't hunting.

It's shooting!

You made a nice shot!

That's all they ever say on TV.

Give the same kid to me and I will put him on some old tree stump in the middle of the Game Lands and he can sit there for a week and not see a deer and then we will see how many people will say " Thank you Gary Alt!"