Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Hunting and Trapping Fall/Winter 2010/2011

Male wood ducks certainly are a pretty bird!

We'll get em' Scott.

I keep telling Scott how awesome the waterfowl hunting is and we end up scratching out only a few. When the weather cools off it will happen.

A buddy of mine got me hooked on waterfowl hunting 3 years ago. My first 3 days were during a special Canada Goose season they opened in some counties here in Indiana. February 1-15 to focus on the resident birds. Bag limit is 5 per day. At the end of the 3 days, 10 hunters had 138 geese on the ground. It was unbelievable! I now have full body decoys, shells, layout blind, flags, calls and a new gun.

I'll see if I can dig up a post hunt picture of that hunt.

I'd rather see a picture of your deer from this year!

And don't say "show me yours and I'll show you mine."

You have a video of mine!

Just a thought . . .

I skinned and butchered a deer on Saturday. As I was cleaning up after I got the meat in the coolers, and the cape/skelton taken care of, I found two deer ticks on me. In all my 63 years of being outside, and picking hundreds of wood ticks off my body, I had never ever before seen a deer tick. Geeze they are small. I've had several friends and relatives get Lime disease -- probably all got it from deer ticks. So, just a thought about cleaning up after dealing with a deer hide.

Ken

Ken:

Good advice. Once the body starts to cool down, the ticks realize their meal ticket is over and they start looking for a new one.

The woods has been extra dry this year, and locally we've seen an explosion of fleas and ticks.

Any outside activity requires a good going over now.

This body was quite cold when I got started with my knife. It was shot and field dressed by a trusted hunting friend. I didn't skin it until about 48 hours after it was shot and field dressed. It hung (hanged??) from my tractor bucket for about 36 hours before I started skinning it. During that time, the temperature fluctuated back and forth between a low of about 28 to a high of about 42. Absolutely perfect!

On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised at this guy's health and fat. I'm not sure I would have taken him had he shown up in my sights.

From the looks of his teeth, snout, and general build, I'm thinking this fella was only 3-1/2 years old. I'd have loved to have cut his stomach open to see what he'd been eating.

He was ten points and 153 lbs., field dressed. I would have expected about 65-70 lbs. of deboned and trimmed meat. He had well over an inch of fat over his hind quarters and over his ribs. I got 83 lbs., of de-boned/trimmed meat. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a huge and fabulous venison neck/brisket, and monstrous sirloin tips on a deer. The backstraps were really long and thick. Usually, I get very little flank, but this guy had fantastic flank steaks that will get ground with pork and beef for meatballs, burgers, and sausage.

I attribute the exceptional yield of trimmed meat to the health of this critter. Knowing where it was taken, I'm assuming it was due to the quality of the corn fields, alfalfa fields, and a 41-year mast record.

I may just have to change my mind about butchering big bucks. I'll have a better idea later in the week when I cook up a little bit of this critter. So far, it looks, smells, and feels like very premium meat.

Ken

P.S. I forgot to include a photo of the poor critter that made the ultimate sacrifice. My friend who shot him removed his antlers, innards, and manhood before I put him in my truck -- my friend had already gotten a trophy the day before, so he offered me the carcass (which I gladly accepted).

So, here he is, missing all important parts of his dominance:

Ken, that looks like a very healthy deer. I wonder why the ticks stayed on him that long?

Somewhere around here I have a deer aging set of flash cards that shows the deer's age as derermined by tooth wear. I'll see if I can find it.

When I was curious about this critters age, I found lots of good websites with info. This was one. How to tell the age of a deer

I took an 8 point this weekend on Sunday. I'm not super proud of him, but he was better than last years by about 20 pounds. This year I'm having him processed rather than do it all myself. Going to get some smoked sausage, jalapeno sausage, etc. They commercially tenderize the steaks so it should be better than what I have been doing on my own. We'll see when the bill comes and the grill gets fired up.

The Texas counties that I hunt in have enacted antler restrictions for the past two seasons.... a buck must have at least a 13" inside spread,or be a spike to be legal. The definition of spike is at least one antler that has no branches. So, I got a 4 point spike on opening weekend.... 3 points on one side and spike on the other. I have seen this deer for a couple of seasons now, and I think his antlers would have always been like this. So, I got to cull an inferior buck, and get some meat in the freezer early in the season. Now I can wait on the big guy....

Good shooting Gary!

I finally am on the board this year. I know it's only a small yearling doe, but after almost getting skunked all of last season I wasn't going to let it happen this year. She weighed slightly over 80# field dressed.
I had a button buck come by and get spooked by a noisy chipmunk, and this one came by at 25 yds with about 10 minutes left of shooting light. 100g Hypershock broadhead thru both lungs. She went about 70 yards with a 2" wide cut thru both lungs. Amazing. Sorry for the bloody pic., nothing to wipe it off with. This is the exit side.


The easiest way yet to get them out of the woods:


She's already skinned, quartered and chillin' in my fridge.

Gary, I see green stuff in the background. What % recovery did you get after the fire went through?

Ok I have been missing PB for awhile now. Working and hunting. COngrats to all. Very awesome to see kids and dads getting their best ever. Looks like some fine eating is going to be had by many.

I have gotten 3 does with the bow but tough year for bucks. I hope that is about to change. Leaving shortly for KY quick hunt on way to Nate's lease.

Nice setup!



That's the way to get 'er done!

When Todd came to visit recently, I think he probably wondered why I didn't shoot any deer. When he and I walked up on about seven deer, he took one. I didn't shoot.

Maybe this video by some of my cousins and boyhood friends can help explain my warped sense of Wisconsin / UP Mich., deer hunting and food preparation. This is pretty much how I grew up. Second Week of Deer Camp

Yes, those are real accents of my cousins, nephews, uncles . . .

That's great

Ken, you need to teach Todd to shoot the larger ones. While the smaller ones are more tender, the larger ones put more meat in the freezer.

48 hrs from now I'll be sitting in the rain with the ML. It figures, the first day of firearm season for deer and they are calling for rain with the possibility of thunderstorms.

I think it will be a high harvest this year around here. The deer are just starting to move, and we're supposed to have snow the early part of next week. It's a lot easier to see deer in the woods when the leaves are gone from the trees/brush and there is snow on the ground.

You might be thankfull for the rain. The deer are not moving during daylight right now. This is the driest Fall in over 20 years in my part of Indiana.

Same here on the rain. Deer are kinda acting weird this year too. Moving but not Rutting hard, lots of scrapes no rubs though kinda odd. Seen a monster 12 this morning it seen my decoy and just kept moving away non responsive to calls. Hopefully something pans out soon this is the worst year I've had as long as I can remember

I'm glad that I got my buck in early October. Plenty of pre-rut activity but their nocternal right now. Need some weather to push them out when it is light. I may regret that I let some smaller does walk. That is why they call it hunting rather than shooting...

I'm hoping that the rain holds off for a day or so because the deer are coming down to a pond to drink at 8-9 a.m. That pattern will change if they can get water elsewhere.

They are really hitting the Oats that I planted. The back food plot looks like someone went thru it on a lawnmower while the oats in the front food plot are 10" tall.

Gotta go and sit in a tree. Maybe I can be 2 up on Mike...... Update: Nothing moving except a neighbor sighting in a slug gun.

I got my buck when he came to drink at one of the wetlands. Good luck Saturday Essup!

Hello, Dave.

Thanks for asking about the place.... the picture with my buck was taken on a different property, so it is unburned and pristine.

My ranch that burned in April 2009... that's a different story. I would say that less than 1% of the trees made it through with minimal damage. 99% of my oak trees are did not leaf out again, and the bark is falling off the trunk. The trees are dead from the ground up.

The little good news there is, is that the roots of all these trees seem to be alive.... so I have a multi-trunked oak shrub growing around the base of each dead tree trunk. These shrubs are growing amazingly fast... most of them are 5 or 6 feet tall now. Here's a pic that's fairly representative... lots of undergrowth, grasses, and oak shrubs around the dead trunks. The deer have come back strong this season. Last season, there were very few.




My pond never did have any bad effects from the fire... I know that I had increased erosion into it, but other than that the water quality and fish seem to come through with no bad effects.

Thanks, Gary

Thanks RAH, I seem to do well when the weather is at it's worst.

Gary, the shrubs ought to be prime deer habitat. Have they continued to come to feeders? Our acorn drop has just about stopped all movement and corn eating.