Recent content by Steve Bartylla

Dave, when you sent me the email to check this out, I had very high expectations, s you have earned them many times over in our discussions and what you've shared soooo freely with others....WOW did you ever somehow exceed the heck out of those expectations! I'm afraid I have extremely little...

Dave, Thanks a ton for emailing me your link...Frankly, you are one of my favorite ppl to talk deer with and this has always been one of my top 3 favorite threads ever. A couple months ago I decided to shift the time I put in on forums to my own Facebook page. I know you, Steve, Buckly, Doug...

Grats!!!!!!!!!

Sorry to see that, my friend (and thanks for the surprise in the mail a few months back....wow, just wow). An issue we have as humans is that we when determine that an age class of deer are "prone" to or have a "tendency" to do this or that, we expect won't ever do the opposite. The definition...

I wouldn't find something like that shocking. The catch for me is that bunches of anecdotal observations indicate the opposite for me. The most obvious example was when EHD & BT disproportionately slammed the does on a large property I managed. It resulted in a sex ratios that was higher in...

As always, I appreciate the heck out of you dragging me along with you, my friend.

I agree that It'd take something of a similar scale in the north. I don't pretend to know when the average peak is up here. If forced to guess, I'd put my money on 6.5. I'm basing that on both my experiences on large free range tracts and the experiences of another manager that runs an 1800...

He may surprise you and be a year or 2 older. Unless the side shot is deceiving, he has a long body. I tend to underestimate the age on long bodied deer. That said, he looks 3.5 all day to me, but I've had other bucks with long bodies that I've underestimated more than once before.

Baker, I think part of what makes finding the age where buck's max their potential tough is that soooooooooooooooooooooo many outside factors are at play (was there a drought, how hard was the rut on that specific buck, was it a bad acorn year and so on). Over the years, I've had somewhere...

Sorry for being late to the party and not reading the entire thread. I know this was brought up at least once, but here's another vote for practicing looooooooonnnnnnnnggggggg distances. A rule of thumb I use is practicing more out to at least twice as far as I'd ever be willing to shoot than at...

Unless I have enough years' worth of history with a buck, I never bother trying to get any more specific than "that buck sure looks 4.5+ yrs old to me," and he sure fits that to me. I would have said that based on last year's pic. So, that'd put him at 5.5+ in my book. As a side note, I think...

Interesting....I agree that age structure likely plays a significant role. As my grandmother would have put it, after checking to be sure no one was looking, young bucks are filled with "piss and vinegar." They're the ones most often itching for a fight to carve out their slot in the hierarchy...

wow...everything seems to be shaping up great, bud!!!! including the bucks you have to hunt. Looks like it could really be a fun year, and I have to echo what wbpdeer said about 2017 & 2018. Assuming things continue breaking well, you guys are going to have a lot of options on what to chase on...

P.S. That said, I have taken over several large properties that hadn't really been hunted at all for the 4-6 previous years. Most would believe that the quality of bucks on large ground essentially unhunted for 4-6 years would be ridiculously good. None of them were. They had great mature buck...

Btaylor, I'm afraid I don't see myself as being qualified to address resetting genetics based on doe removal. I've somewhat recently heard theories that if one has the best possible range and wipes out a large % of deer that the genetics of those that replace them are better than the genetics of...