OT:Deer Season

[Jebadiah_Smith]

Yup, it opened in Michigan this monday. We hunt on private land, 40 acres, but we still have to deal with the yahoos who break out their shotguns once a year to hunt deer. These are the people who set up on property lines, near houses, and try to blast anything brown that walks by. We had two people set up tent blinds about 160 yards away from our house on Sunday, not a good sign.

We set up monday morning and at first light I had roundballs clattering in the trees around me from people set up on the property lines. My dad got the worst of it though. The people in the field by our house shot a dozen times between them, towards my dad who was fortunately behind a hill. One sharpshooter manged to blow the hind legs off of a fawn with his four round burst. It dragged itself near my dad, who thought it was just dying, but realized after a few hours what had happened and put it out of its misery. He yelled at Deadeye to come pick up his mess, and when he came he said he shot it because he "only seen one deer last season".

Fortunately the next day I managed to grunt a decent fork horn in and shoot him. I shot him once in the vitals with 12 ga. Lightfield Commander slugs. The slugs are incredible, my entrance hole was a bit bigger than 1.5" and made a very quick, clean kill. That was the first time I have ever seen a clear hole on impact, not just a ruffle in the hair. It was an unusually big fork horn with its antlers going out far past its ears, a good one to remove from the gene pool. My little buck was only 100 lbs. dressed, but it salvaged an almost ruined hunt.

I have my eyes on a bruiser 8 point that I have been seeing since bow season but never gives me a shot. Ill get him him before the season ends, mark my words...

I dont know when the deer seasons start in the rest of the states, but do any of you have stories to share?

 

[hollowdweller]

Gun season starts next week. Ms. Hollowdweller and I take the whole week off. It's pretty cool cause our "camp" is our house. We have 85 acres all posted and she, I and either my dad or a friend are usually all that is hunting. We run into a yahoo every now and then who trespasses, cause there is a power line right of way running across the back of our hollow, but usually just telling them they are on posted land gets them to leave. Also our land is bordered on 4 sides by 4 other tracts so there's a lot of woods. I have permission to hunt on my one neighbors 90 acres too, but usually I just walk up the road to his orchard on the ridge and then drop over into the head of my hollow to my deer stand to avoid running any deer out by going up to it from behind my barn.

It's great to spend a whole week setting in the woods. At first my perception is dull, but toward the end of the week I can detect movement from much farther off. Plus it's cool to just set on my land and see all the stuff that goes on. I could do that anytime but I don't.

I have lived here 17 years and it always amazes me how much individual trees have grown in that time!

For 22 years we hunted on land owned by this lumber company. Then one year we came out to scout and the whole place was clearcut. Broke my heart. I mean it was their land so it was their right, but trees I knew intimately were gone. The tree that had the treestand I killed my first deer out of was pushed up in a big pile by a dozer.

Now I have a place NOBODY can ruin or run me off of!

 

[cliff355]

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[Ben Arown-Awile]

..One thing we did different this year was pull the skins off with a truck..

Tried that trick twice, only using a winch instead of low gear. Never figured out how to properly attach the rope. Both times we just ended up with a headless carcass. It was quite a mess.

 

[Ad Astra]

Tried that trick twice, only using a winch instead of low gear. Never figured out how to properly attach the rope. Both times we just ended up with a headless carcass. It was quite a mess.

Imagine what the deer were thinking that escaped that day...

AA

 

[Jebadiah_Smith]

I always heard you could work a golf ball up above the tail, tie a rope around it and then pull it off with truck

 

[cliff355]

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[Svashtar]

Only real good hunting down here is for pigs, and the best place is down at Fort Hunter-Liggett. There are deer in the area, but most of the CA deer are pretty scrawny and tick covered. A friend of mine up in Northern CA has gotten some nice bucks, but most of this area is either Fort Ord with hundreds of deer and a bunch of mountain lions eating them all posted no hunting, or some few public lands with lousy deer. At least in my limited experience.

I have never used slugs on deer, although I have some Brenneke's for self-defense. Is your barrel rifled, or do you just use a standard cylinder bored barrel, or what?

The pigs though are big and fat and destructive and can be hunted year round. Nothing like a pig tearing up expensive landscaping to convert a non-hunter into a rabid pig-hater!

I know all about slob hunters believe me. When I was 17 I spent 6 months working up on Sonoma Mountain just east of Petaluma, CA. Big mountain and from the top you can see almost over the coastal mountains to the Pacific, and clear to Santa Rosa in the North to Marin County in the south.

One of the lodges up there had a big wooden deer cutout of plywood and painted and stood up on the side of the hill near where I was working stringing sheep wire. Every hour or so some idiot would stop thinking it was a real deer, and get out of his car and shoot across the roof at this huge wooden cutout deer. The bullets would come within yards of me sometimes, either into the side of the hill or overhead, while I was screaming at these fools to stop shooting. The plywood deer was full of holes from head to tail, and these guys could never figure out why it wouldn't fall.

Another "great hunter" acquaintance used to take his Browning BAR in .308 out, and just empty it into any hapless deer he found. He'd shoot it 3 or 4 times at least, and there was usually nothing left to skin, especially starting with the scrawny deer around here. He figured more is better, and had no sense of shot placement, or of trying to make a quick kill or whatever. His deer hunting exploits ended one year when he stepped over a big fallen log into a wasps nest, and then tried to kill them all as they came boiling out by tromping frantically on the nest. He ended up dropping his pack and rifle and running like crazy downhill for a half-mile while getting the crap stung out of him. By the time he made it back uphill his gear was long gone.

Just as well, as eventually he was destined to kill some poor hunter. He was the kind of moron that would just blaze away at any sound and then go look to see what he had bagged. Orange hats and clothes were wasted on him. He looked like he had mumps for a week though after that big outing, and that pretty much cured him.

Hollowdweller, I can't tell you (well, you probably already know!), how much I envy you having that land of your own to hunt on, and how lucky you are. It's getting harder and harder to find a place to go out here, and most places charge you several hundred dollars for "guided" hunts, which means that they just take you to where they want you to hunt on their land.

Regards,

Norm

 

[Ben Arown-Awile]

...I have never used slugs on deer, although I have some Brenneke's for self-defense. Is your barrel rifled, or do you just use a standard cylinder bored barrel, or what?...

I haven't used slugs for over 40 years, and things may have changed, but when I hunted with them I used a 12GA cylinder bore. The slugs themselves had rifling on them, but I doubt if that really provided any spin. They were basically 72 cal cannonballs.

There were rifled 12 GA barrels around, but they were so heavy they never caught on. It really didn't make any difference anyway because the places I hunted were so thick that 20 yards would be a long shot. I liked slugs because they were great for plowing through the brush without getting deflected. The only other choice was 00 buckshot.

Deer hunting only lasted a week and was shotgun only, no rifles allowed. This was not because of the density of the woods, but for the safety of the large hordes of hunters. A shotgun blast would dissipate fairly quickly while a rifle bullet could travel for a couple hundred yards and hit someone that you couldn't even see.

Deer were so scarce back then that the newspaper published the names of those who got their buck, and the lists were not very long.

Now, a half century later, and on the other side of the continent, I have deer in my backyard, and they walk up and down the main street feasting on the landscaping. I never get tired of watching them.

 

[Svashtar]

Deer were so scarce back then that the newspaper published the names of those who got their buck, and the lists were not very long.

Now, a half century later, and on the other side of the continent, I have deer in my backyard, and they walk up and down the main street feasting on the landscaping. I never get tired of watching them.

This substantiates the figures I have seen. In 1900 there were only an estimated 250,000 deer left in the Continental US. Everyone hunted them for meat, and literally almost wiped them out. At last count one hundred years later, there were over _30 Million_! They devour gardens and are completely fearless of humans. I have seen several hit on the roads around here, and nothing is sadder than a crippled deer in the street dying slowly.

They should expand hunting seasons and areas to hunt, not curtail them!

Regards,

Norm

 

[Jebadiah_Smith]

I have a Marlin 512 slug master. Its a 10 ga. barrel blank, but a 12 ga. bore, so its a thicker barrel. Its fully rifled and is very accurate. At close ranges, I think I prefer slugs, they really kill. You cant use real rifles around here because they travel too far.

 

[Ben Arown-Awile]

Reuters News Service
Nov. 17, 2004, 10:37AM

Internet hunting

Hunters soon may be able to sit at their computers and blast away at animals on a Texas ranch via the Internet.

A controversial Web site, http://www.live-shot.com, already offers target practice with a .22 caliber rifle and could soon let hunters shoot at deer, antelope and wild pigs, site creator John Underwood said Tuesday.

Underwood, an estimator for a San Antonio, Texas, auto body shop, has invested $10,000 to build a platform for a rifle and camera that can be remotely aimed on his 330-acre southwest Texas ranch by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world.

The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.

"We were looking at a beautiful white-tail buck and my friend said 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head," he said.

He said an attendant would retrieve shot animals for the shooters, who could have the heads preserved by a taxidermist. They could also have the meat processed and shipped home, or donated to animal orphanages.

 

[Kismet]

Deer

Two days ago, 11/17/04, Tom Brokaw on the NBC Nightly News had a piece on whitetail/& maybe Mule ? deer/car collisions in the U.S. Something like 1.5 MILLION annually, or 4,000 a day. (can that be right?)

Insurance rep came on and guestimated $1.5 BILLION in property damage annually.

Urban sprawl blamed, lack of predators not mentioned, PETA nowhere to be heard.

Oddly, Wisconsin didn't rank in the top 10, but Illinois (of all places) did.

Deer here are big enough to get your attention.


Shot gun slugs...rifled barrels...have made a come-back, Ben. 2 inch groups at 100 yard target reports with saboted slugs (slugs in a plastic carrier) through scoped rifled shotgun barrels. A neighbor uses a 10 guage. The slug weighs about as much as my VW Fox wagon. Also costs about 4 times as much. No sense to it to me.

Season starts here tomorrow, more or less. Supposed to rain, that lessens the numbers of hunters, as does the Chronic Wasting Disease business of the last few years.

Be well and safe.

 

[Ben Arown-Awile]

...Shot gun slugs...rifled barrels...have made a come-back, Ben. 2 inch groups at 100 yard target reports with saboted slugs (slugs in a plastic carrier) through scoped rifled shotgun barrels...No sense to it to me...

I don't get it either. The whole purpose for using slugs was to be able to plow through thick brush at close range. If your shots are out at 100 yards you're using the wrong tool. You should have a rifle.

 

[Jebadiah_Smith]

I doubt that slugs were meant to "plow" through thick brush. Any projectile will be thrown off by any impact, slugs included. Ive killed most off my deer at around 100 yards with slugs, with no problems at all, and with massive wound channels. Ive chrono'ed these Lightfield IDSs at around 1800 fps, and thats darn fast for such a huge chunk of lead. When you see a slug killed deer that looks like it was run through with a telephone pole, you will understand .We cant use rifles because they carry too far, so the "right" tool is out of the question. I have complete confidence in sabot slugs and would choose them for most any Michigan deer shot. Now for 300 yard Wyoming shots, I would definately want my rifle...

 

[Kismet]

Ben?

I meant the 10 guage made no sense to me. Expensive and unnecessary. There are a lot of cases in Wisconsin where you will have a good shot at 100 yards, so I understand the rifled slug business. But the 10 guage shells will go for $20 for five, whereas 12 guage go for $2.50 for five.

Counties that have a large population density prohibit rifle shooting for fear of "collateral damage."

Shotguns are fine by me. I know their, and my, limits.


Be well and safe.