Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Hunting 2015/2016

Congrats RAH! Im guessing 2 or 3 yr old.. Hard to tell from pics. Im still hunting and remaining patient as I really like to hunt the late season with bow. For me late is the best time to harvest a real toad.

It could be a 2.5 yr old, but based on the whole package, I think he is 3.5. I should have had more restraint! Mass is OK, but not great (4.5" bases measured right above the bur; 4.125 & 4.375 official)).

Our hunt starts up here on Monday for a week. I have two of my three boys will be hunting for the first time. Looking forward to it this year. We have four tags to fill in the house with a week to do it.

We like the late hunt to have a bit of snow but might be hard pressed to get some next week up here.

Some great looking bucks guys.

Cheers Don.

You guys get the really big ones up there!

CJ, that's a great deer. Let me (us) know what it scores. I'm curious, that's all.

Bummer about the calf. OUCH!!!!

Nice work guys . deer and ducks. CJ get well soon ! Tbar good luck with the pigs.

I'd like to see that score too. He looks like a very good one!

Shot these on public land.

Not sure why you have to click on the link. What am I doing wrong? help please!

This is one of the big ones. Hes rutted out really good. The rut seems to have run long with the warmer weather. They are out in the flats and not in the valleys yet. Hoping for cold weather tonight to drive them back in the valley.

Run a few bigger ones out. You know the bobble head ones. The rack you can see bobble when they run.

Thick rack beat to he!!

Cheers Don.

I saw that in another post. He is a very nice buck!

I heard 3 shots as fast as they could be fired this evening. Got the binocs out and was sad to see the neighbor dropped a small doe and her this year's fawn in the field next to our property. I understand the need for deer hunting guys and support those that hunt. This just strikes me as very wrong.

Me too Bill- hunt the older does- leave the yearlings

I don't know much about deer hunting but I know you need a tag. What tag do you put on a little this year's fawn?

We have a surplus of does compared with bucks (again this year) due to the ease of shooting young bucks, and some hunters habits. I dropped a large doe the afternoon (number 4). The doe to buck ratio was getting toward the 2:1 optimum ratio last year and I though that I could ease up, but the missing and wounded young bucks this year have things skewed again. The overall deer population in my area will just keep getting lower until the "meat hunters" may find the pickings get pretty thin. Filling the freezer with does is really not that bad a deal, even if they are small ones (compared with removing young bucks). The meat from my deer will go to good use.

My hang up here is the shooting of a maybe 50 or 60 pound fawn. How much meat can there be? To me that is just shooting to kill something, not hunting. Just my 2 cents and I am ok if folks don't agree and won't argue the point. Just my personal thoughts.

As long as the meat is used, and the herd benefits from the removal of doe fawns, I am OK with it. They are a lot of work for a lot less meat, and not much of a challenge from a hunting perspective. I had two young ones around the stand for over an hour a week ago. They finally saw me but did not even know that I was a threat. They went right back to browsing and I finally had to chase them away when the light left and I wanted to get back to the house. Fawns do present an opportunity for inexperienced hunters to get started.

Bill, this years fawn is probably going to survive without Mom. It will, more than likely, also be a doe because, had it been a male, she would have run it off to survive on it's own before now.

A lot of this stuff is kinda like managing a pond and the health of a deer herd is dependent on forage. After a couple of days it will join with other young deer. Or, she will be accepted into a group of does.

A couple of years ago I was hunting and saw 3 young(under 1 year old) deer come into the pasture. Their mothers had obviously abandoned them when it became time to breed. 2 were females and one was male. The 2 females were kicking at the young male and trying to run him off. I figured that he would, sooner or later, find some males to shoot pool and drink beer with and get away from the girls.

Bill, Pat, I agree with both of you. And we do not harvest yearlings and we will not allow hunting a doe who has a fawn or twin fawns with her. A Doe with out young are open to hunting if we feel we need or want to harvest. We watch over the herd as much as we can on a 175 acre low fence piece of property. We keep around 10% of our land in year round wildlife food plots to improve our numbers and quality of the deer that live yr round on the place. Our County is a 4 deer per hunter season and runs for about 4 months, with a 13" spread on the bucks, this will usually be measured by "He is outside the ears" when hunting as reference before shooting. It has improved the antler size of harvested deer and usually adds age to the harvested Buck. We also see where fawn survival is around 30% as an average yearly count goes. And we have not figured out how we count our Buck to Doe ratio, because of the "never seen buck before" that show up regularly. We see about 20 of those bucks show up during the rut. And that makes it hard to count buck to doe ratio's. We try to hunt 4 yr old or older bucks, so some years we will harvest and some years we don't. We will most always get a shot but as bow hunters, we will not always "get er done". lots of variables come into play, including "we missed over or under". Comments like he jumped the string might be herd around the camp fire lol. I like bow hunting and will hunt several days a week in small sets of 90 min or so and I see several deer that most hunters will take, but I like watching a scrap being refreshed as I watch at 20 or 30 yds, or deer bedding under me as I hunt, I just like being out there in the woods. lots to see.

Tracy

PS, I am happy when I see the harvest pictures you show here guys, I like the smiles and it is nice to compare the deer from other parts of the country.

Tracy

Usually the doe will NOT run off a male offspring until it is 18 months old and gets its first set of antlers . Most of the time yearling bucks are nubbins, meaning they have no hardened antler protruding thru the skin.

This topic is still fascinating to me. Someone, I think it was Dave, compared it to managing a pond. That's what I think also, except I consider this pond to be public water. The way I see it, if it's legal, there's no gripe coming. "Meat hunter" or not.

Back to the pond scenario. A few years ago I decided if I was ever going to catch that one pound BG, I would need to produce it myself in one of my own ponds. A 1/2 pound BG in public water will never make it to a pound, if it goes home in a bucket with the first angler who pulls it off a spawning bed....legal or not, great genetics or not. A public resource is just that, public.

High fence, anyone?

Sparky, my private pond is manageable to some degree. In comparison, low fence properties do not make a manageable deer herd. But as a property owner you can assist in improving "The Deer Herd". Studies have been made where improvements of property, such as cover, available food and water can increase the deer's size by as much as 35% in just 3 years, and will improve the numbers you will keep on your property. And with some of those deer, they may not leave the property except for short term ventures. This might make him open to the public. But, As much as 85% of a bucks life time he will stay in an area he calls his home or his core area. We have watched bucks grow up on the property and we will go through a time where he will not be seen on the property (during the rut) and then we will see him back on the property. Hopefully he will make it through the season and the night hunting poachers, if he does, it kinda of makes it worth the time money and labor of low fence management. Ha, it's not a perfect deal, but if you enjoy the outdoors and wildlife, it's worth it to me.

Tracy

Tracy

I hear you Tracy, and I think I understand where you're coming from. However, in my mind there is still no escaping the eventuality that you are attempting to manage, hopefully improve, a public resource. If I have a dock on a public BOW, and feed the fish underneath it every day, they should show some signs of improvement. And they will most likely tend to hang around. And if my dock is large enough, they may indeed find shelter and escape harvest by confining themselves to residing underneath it.

But I still have no say in preventing an angler in a boat from anchoring right off my dock, and casting up to it.

So in that regard, how big of a "private dock" is needed to have any chance of seeing the fruits of your labor, rather than simply rewarding the efforts of the angler who figures out anchoring in front of it is a pretty good harvest strategy?

Hundreds of acres?

I have two neighbors that now are managing like me. Someone has to start things off. Seeing the large racks on my porch helps a bit too.

Sparky, Same thing, I see no difference, like you. But some public places are hard to get to and see little to no pressure. Or like a lake where only a few of the public fish. This makes it manageable to a point. If your pier on a public lake is hard to get to it might be manageable. Same with managing a pubic deer herd. Lots to do with where your property if located.

Tracy