My buck survived the winter!
 

Last year, 2 days after I tagged my buck I was trying to fill my doe tag when a really nice buck came out. I was hoping he survived the winter. I put out some trail cams and have been catching a lot of photos of him. He appears to be having some amazing bone growth compared to the rest of the bucks I have got on camera this year. I think he is going to be a brute, concidering he has over 2 months of growing to go. Here he is.

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Nice deer!

Go get him this year.

Just crious, but how is he "your" buck? Until he is on the game pole with your tag on him he doesn't belong to anybody.

I call him mine because I let him go last season. I could have bought a out of state deer tag, we can buy a nonresident tag for a extra tag here, and easily killed him. I watched him several times thru my crosshairs, last season. He is only alive today because I let him live, so yeah, I call him my buck. Besides "flags", I can call him anything I want. Whats it to you????

But remember...
 

years change and spring and summer is one time; hunting season is another.

He is been doing the exact same thing for over two years, he is still using the same scrape he used during hunting season, coming out the same times he always did during hunting season. This is the first deer that I have ever seen use a scrape year round. Here is a picture of him on his scrape. I have videos of him pawing up the ground and rubbing those branches above his head in this picture. In all the years I have hunted whitetail, I have never seen a buck running a scrape line all year long. All the bucks in this area are using this scrape, I bet I got photos of at least a dozen different bucks on this scrape. The only thing that will change, is he will go nocturnal about the end of August or beginning to middle of September. Come rut he will be right back the way he was last year during rut, coming out on the scrapes at various times during the day.

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I am going to go pull my SD cards Sunday, cant wait to see how he has done in the last week. I check my cameras ever 7 days.
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Fritz seems a little sensitive about this buck. Thought you were over that sensitive nature of yours... If you're lonely in that secret spot I'll come along to keep you company. Nice looking buck. Looks like he's gonna have some good mass too. Will this be a rifle or archery hunt? If he's on that much of a pattern should be "easy" to get him with the bow.
-Jake

Not sensitive at all, Jake. I do the same thing every year, I find a decent buck, concentrate my efforts on that particular buck and I, 90% of the time, will get that deer. Back to your question though, we can use either weapon here in Idaho, as long as you have a archery permit. I will probably hunt him the first couple of weeks with my bow. I am enjoying just watching him grow, right now, and he has a lot of time to grow yet.