Success at the Zoo
11-12-2003, 09:16 PM
#13
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Maryland
Posts: 156
RE: Success at the Zoo
David, Len and Sean,
Beautiful buck-congrats! Just curious, with the quality deer you encountered in such a short duration do you conduct some sort of QDM on your property? Plant food plots or is it co-located near crops? How many acres do you have to work with - hunt? Impressed with the amount of " trophy" bucks in your area. Just wondering what type of program you use to promote deer of that caliber.
MD Piney
Beautiful buck-congrats! Just curious, with the quality deer you encountered in such a short duration do you conduct some sort of QDM on your property? Plant food plots or is it co-located near crops? How many acres do you have to work with - hunt? Impressed with the amount of " trophy" bucks in your area. Just wondering what type of program you use to promote deer of that caliber.
MD Piney
11-12-2003, 09:57 PM
#15
Dominant Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Blossvale, New York
Posts: 21,199
RE: Success at the Zoo
The whole place and the surrounding farms have been under mass crop damage permits for about 4 years. 4 years ago the neighboring farm shot 190+ deer. They again shot 100 in each of the next 2 years. I have no idea what they did last year. We' re hunting on a 260 acre peace of private land that is surrounded by farms on 3 sides and houses on the other. The land we hunt is about 70 percent woods. We have NOT really conducted a QDM campaign. Probably the reverse. We let a bunch of smaller bucks go, but over the past 6 years or so that I' ve hunted it a lot of them have been killed too. These particular 3 bucks we had not seen 2 of them before Sat and we' ve been hunting off and on in there since August. I believe I saw this 10 point the opening AM of crop damage hunting. We take around 20 deer off the place every year.
11-13-2003, 06:32 AM
#19
Dominant Buck
Thread Starter
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Blossvale, New York
Posts: 21,199
RE: Success at the Zoo
We know. My old hunting buddy and I asked for permission every year for about 10 years. It was always the same answer. We don' t allow hunting. My old buddy(who still hunts about once a year) serviced their phone system for them. It was an old system and went down everytime the tide changed I think. He lived close so finally suggested they just call him at home and not the central office when they had a problem, day or night. So one night he was called out there about 10:30. He had to shoo a herd away from the shrubs by the door when he rang the bell. A conversation insued and one thing led to another about the deer destroying their bushes. As he was leaving about midnight, right out of the blue, with no discussion, the head man said, " OK, you and your buddy can hunt, but no one else" . We hunted it for 3 or 4 years and then I got Len and Will permission to hunt. As payment I mow the big lawns with a bush hog all summer long. They' re good to us and we thin the herd. It' s really becoming a tough hunt at times. We' re not seeing nearly the deer we used to or the bucks. I guess that' s to be figured with probably something like 500 deer being taken in the immediate area that I know of in the past 4 or 5 years. There are others hunting around us that I have no idea what they shoot. 4 or 5 years ago you could go and literally shoot a doe anytime you felt like it. The first time I took Len as a guest was in late January. He saw something like 30 deer his first night hunt.
