Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Deer Season '23/'24 Comments

Nice buck, Theo!

Apparently, I need to start scheduling more business trips!

I let this nice ten point walk by me Sat in the name of letting him procreate and sire more nice bucks like him in the future. (this is a game camera pic that was sent to a home camera then emailed to me) the camera is right by my stand, thats how close he was. I will attach another picture of him that I took with my phone after he had went by the stand.

Why did the chicken buck cross the road?

Because gehajake had a nice harem set up for him on the other side!


P.S. Nice buck!

Theo, is the dude's face obscured on purpose??

My friend is currently out of the country; I can't contact him to see if he is okay with being shown identifiably. So I did my best to "pixelate" his face with Paint.

Also, he is so extremely handsome it would distract from the fine 11 point buck.

There are more than a few nutjobs that believe harvesting a deer should be a death penalty crime for the offending human.

I don't post any full-face shots of me or especially my children.

Some of the outrage over this dinosaur hunting picture were obvious spoofs ... but I believe a lot of the outrage was real!

OK, it just looked creepy.

May have been better to put the horizontal black bar across his eyes so he'd also be viewed as a drug addict.

Heard more info regarding the buck shot referenced above. Even with trained bloodhound, they were not able to locate and recover it. They followed it across two neighboring properties (all adjacent on south side of ours) for some distance; but did not find it. They described its rack as two feet wide and two feet tall. Probably laying dead out there somewhere; but likely not on our property.

Also found out that someone hunting neighbor's property to the north of ours shot a massive 10 point buck that weighed over 300 pounds after being field dressed - literally yards from our property line. I suspect it is a buck I had on trail cam a few times last spring (after season before shedding).

Honestly, kind of frustrating. That landowner lets tons of people hunt on him. He and most of them have the brown is down mentality. I'm in between all of them with little time to hunt, trying to ensure wife and son get chances at big bucks, and spending time and money improving habitat for people who do none of that to benefit and take it all for granted... Sorry for the rant... just frustrated... I'm sure those bucks genetics are in the does and young bucks on our properties... I know... I just need to improve our habitat more so spend most of their time on our property...

What is the "brown is down" mentality?

Does that mean getting out of your stand as soon as you observe the deer drop?

We have only lost two deer on our property in all of the years it has been hunted. Both times, the person got out of their stand when they saw the deer go down!

Brown is down = meat hunters who shoot any deer that moves, without regard for any sort of local herd management.

Thanks Augie!

"Brown is down" can refer to herd management...if you need to thin the herd everything can be on the menu, but usually does and fawns. Deer on our property are like squirrels...so many with no hunting pressure, even with 5 antlerless tags being filled it won't put a dent in the population.

We will "if it's brown it's down" for the next 2 years most likely in the hope that more bucks will be sighted.

Had one come out into a food plot yesterday. I have passed on several bucks, and probably should have passed on this guy. I guess I got a little buck fever, as he looked huge at 150 yards. 😂

I find antlers gain or lose at least two points between when I shoot and when I stand over the dead deer.

Usually lose.

Only had time to hunt twice and have seen nothing. Not a lot of hunters around my area this year.

I hope the deer that I have pics of back in March makes an appearance tomorrow. I have some pics of him in velvet - last pic was July 19th. He grew since last year.....

That's a nice deer SetterGuy! Will fill the freezer!

Esshup, pics of him?

Happy Hunting!

Have seen lots of does and small bucks. Neighbors about an eight of mile northeast of our properties got a big 18 pointer. Neighbors immediately east (hunting on line) got a nice 12 pointer. Nephew got a nice 9 pointer (would have been 12; but three were broken off one side). I guess the bottom line is we have good genetics in area. Just need to pull big bucks to our properties and find more time to hunt / pattern them. Haven't had any of those really big ones on any of our trail cameras. Thinking their core areas aren't on us.

Prior to buying my own place, I did a lot of weekend lease hunting and brown is down meant take meat home. But, those were the days prior to herd management. We had never heard of such a thing and ranchers considered any deer as $. In those days there were no antler regs. “It’s a buck” meant shoot.

I used to plant wheat crops to feed deer and cattle. Then the hogs moved in and made a mess of everything. Combine plentiful hogs with our 4 year drought and i haven’t seen a winter crop in years. I wanted to this year but the rains didn’t come at the right time and I had some nasty surgery that kept me off a tractor. I’m still not 100% but getting around ok. Combine that with some nasty arthritis.

My place is mostly hunted by a young couple that I know. They’re hunting this weekend. My Grandson has hunted once and I’ve been twice. Seen some bucks but not shooters.

I have a corn feeder about 75 yards from my kitchen window. Last year a monster buck showed up while we were eating breakfast. I didn’t shoot. I don’t like the idea of shooting one unless I’m hunting.Glad to see it. About 5 years ago a herd of about 20 bucks wandered by that place. They ranged from spikes to Bone and Crocket whoppers. The younger ones stopped by the corn feeder but the big boys just kept walking. Once again, I didn’t shoot because I wasn’t hunting. I had no idea that those guys were in the area.

This year, I’ve decided to keep some corn feeders filled all year. Gonna do a lot of hog hunting.

Based on my (limited) data, I believe this to be a true statement regarding the biggest bucks NOT eating at the feeders. It seems to me that the biggest deer have to do the most fighting during the rut and therefore need the most energy. (They also need energy for their other activities.)

I do get bigger bucks at my feeders at 3AM later in the season. However, the true monster bucks I only see passing by on a trail camera, or when I am up on my highest platform blind during the season and can see many of the open lanes within a half mile where the biggest bucks briefly cross the open ground between areas of dense cover.

Questions for the deer experts:

Is it true that the biggest monster bucks generally DO NOT go to feeders?

If so, what is the best means to lure them from adjacent properties onto our properties?

My personal opinion about this...

I think older bucks check feeders but they do it differently than younger deer. They swing far downwind and scent check for does, and danger.

I think they are more in tune with their environment and less tolerant of changes. Ie - if you want to successfully fool an older buck you need to have your baiting routine set long before season starts. Otherwise you all of a sudden going in to fill feeders is a change likely to shift them to night movement, or different acreage.

Want old bucks... give them habitat, security, good cover, no perceived pressure, and don't let them know you're hunting them.

I dont think the big, old, smart ones will hit a feeder out in the open very much, Might make a little difference if they been feeding at it since they were born.

Getting them out in the open is pretty hard but my theory is, if you have the does, the bucks will be there, and when they are in full rut, with competition from other bucks, they tend to do stuff that they would not normally do, I think that's how most of them get killed.

I did get a pretty decent ten yesterday but he was stuck in the woods, thick stuff, would not come out, had two eights and a nine that were out in the green field with twenty does and young stock at the time, and thats actually how I seen this one, the nine point all of a sudden got all stiff and puffed up and was staring into the woods just behind my stand, then I was able to make him out in the thick stuff. smart old booger.

I’d like to see a picture of that old guy. Sounds like your deer population is in pretty good shape.

We saw this guy several times on the cameras. But haven’t seen him since we started hunting.

Great advice.

My biggest problem is that I am getting too old to work on all of my farm projects when it is 104! Much easier to get work done on those nice crisp fall days.

I think I will have to keep getting feeders out earlier. I always wondered why manufacturers made feeders that held 500# of feed. Now I realize that many people fill it and then set the feed rate to run out 2 days after the start of the season. They never go into their property for any work at all during the pre-rut and rut.