ORIGINAL: Antler Eater
I'm not sure why I would continue to add to this thread. I guess just to pass on information. You will have to take it for what its worth to your situation.
I am always hesitant to reveal any type of personal information on a forum such as this because unlike face to face communication where there is physical expression, voice inflection, and other means of emphasis during the communication to keep the intent of the message clear, it is easy in an environment like this to twist words, meanings, and be misunderstood in general. What I may say in an effort to add weight to my statements could be interpreted by some to be self serving, bragging, or an attempt at putting myself on a pedestal. Further I think that cyber space is a perfect place for making outlandish claims simply because there is no accountability. A person with experience can sort out the treasure from the trash in most cases but even then sometimes the line between the two gets blurred.
Agreed
I will spend in the neighborhood of 300 hours sitting in a treestand on the properties that I hunt. I do not hunt these places exclusively, in other words there are other hunters hunting these places also. The above hours of course do not include scouting, putting up tree stands, moving treestands, cutting lanes, hunting sheds etc. I do not consider myself an "expert" when it comes to sorting out the life of a whitetail but I can usually tell fact from fiction.
Nice
It was mentioned that "If you let a deer walk by 20 times in his life he doesn't magically get smarter one day...." I guess my reply to that is that there is nothing magical about it. It is actually an evolution of sorts. A mature buck by nature is a completely different animal than an immature buck. In adition to acquiring the normal learned behavior along the way, he grows ever more wary, reclusive, and becomes nearly totally nocturnal.
Antler......I wasn't trying to say that a mature deer is as gullable as a young one. I was however trying to make light of the fact that not every one is a wizard of the woods either. I have seen young deer that were very wise for their age and I have seen older deer do some really dumb things too. I don't care how old a deer is when the army of hunters start marching the woods and the lead starts flying they stop worrying about what is possibly in front of them and more concerned with what is behind him. There is clearly a difference between deer that get hunted viciously and those who see very little if any pressure.....no matter the age or sex of the deer.
Three days ago a 190" (gross green score) was shot by a party of gun hunters. The bare field where the buck was killed was less than a mile from a woods where some of my stands are hung. The buck can be aged anywhere from 3 1/2 on up. Because of the number of years I have hunted this woods, and the amount of young bucks I let walk (yes I am lucky to have that luxury) I can almost guarantee you that at one time or another in that bucks young life he has walked by me in the tree. Here is the rub...for at least two years I have not seen this guy even though I have spent a considerable amount of time pursuing him and his relatives and have certainly seen evidence that he existed. Though he may indeed have been the biggest buck cruising this piece of real estate there are other good bucks also, I have the sheds to prove that. However, try as I may with the exception of sighting one buck, I have got not even a whiff of any of them in the last two years. While one could interpret this as an incrimination of my hunting skills (you wouldn't get an arguement from me
), I have done nothing radically different than I did in scoring on a number of book bucks in the past.
Great story.........my dad calls bucks "ghosts" because they seem to appear out of no where when you could swear you had just looked there.
We could all sit and tell 100 stories about things we've seen and heard that seemingly support our opinions........after all they are what helped shape those opinions. In the end they are just single cases in a ever evolving and dynamic world of hunting. My dad just got out of his truck with his brother and took a walk in the woods one day while talking and drinking coffee. A nice 6 pt walked out in front of him and he killed it........we have been hunting there ever since. Nice story and we still laugh about it because he killed the deer and his brother was left holding his coffee cup LOL. It doen't mean that it's a good idea to walk through the woods talking and drinking coffee as a way to find deer.
Not taking away from your story at all because it was a good one and it's point was well taken.
I just don't put too much stock in single case studies. That buck could have gotten chased to your land from anywhere seeing how it's gun season. You really have no idea how far he was away from home when they killed him.
I really think the evolution of game cams will allow people to really start to understand more about when and where deer move. It will also be interesting to see how many never even see a deer that is constantly mugging his film during the night.
Just think how close you may have been to that bruiser at times [
] He probably saw you a few times.......even if you never saw him.
The deer I killed this year was sneaking out of dodge.....he wasn't running but he wasn't sticking around for chit chat either that's for sure. About 10-15 minutes after I killed him some hunters appeared with no report of seeing a deer of any kind. Can't say for sure if he was avoiding them or if he got busted by me coming through the goldenrod but if he was avoiding them they never would have even known about it.
Have you seen that deer yet?? Do you know the guys that killed it??