Interesting Thought--Mature Bucks

[OkieKubota]

Yes, it was definitely him. When my neighbor first texted me I though he was probably just mistaken. But then he sent a picture.

I'm like some basketball teams now - going into a rebuilding year.

My experience has been that when a mature buck is killed out of an area that another will move in. Exciting times!

 

[George]

Yes, it was definitely him. When my neighbor first texted me I though he was probably just mistaken. But then he sent a picture.

I'm like some basketball teams now - going into a rebuilding year.

bummer!

G

 

[George]

My experience has been that when a mature buck is killed out of an area that another will move in. Exciting times!

I usually rebuilt from within the farm system.

G

 

[OkieKubota]

I usually rebuilt from within the farm system.

G

I draw from big woods so there is always some good ones out there looking for something new and for some reason a bunch of 2.5 and 3.5's survive every year even with our poaching issues and they tend to make huge jumps from 3.5 to 4.5...

 

[Native Hunter]

I'm going to take a positive outlook on this - now I can go in and do a bunch of work without having to worry about running anything off.

 

[Merle Hawggard]

We probably have the same problems here too. My son used to be my meat hunter. If it got in front of him we were going to be frying tenderloin for supper, but for the past two years we've both been working hard for a mature buck.
We've let a lot of smaller bucks walk, but I'm not sure how many actually make it to the next season. I talked with a man from the highway dept this summer that told me about how my neighbors to the south harvested eleven last year.
The wide antlered buck we watched all summer hasn't been seen since mid Oct though I did see tall tines, came close to hitting him with my truck, about four miles from our place after the two day slug hunt.
Our plan is to keep working on better habitat and to focus more on bow hunting. There are a lot fewer bow hunters than gun hunters here plus we get first shot at any target bucks that are fortunate enough to make it.

 

[Ohanaman]

Great topic to discuss. Many times the answer is, it depends! Your location, your neighbors, your property size, your cover, your pressure. I bought my property 3 years ago. It had been hunted hard and poached for years before. One thing in my favor was the land was neglected and really overgrown. Year one 2 of us hunted but passed on every 2, 3 and 4 year old. Year two we passed all deer except a 6 year old. This year I have on camera 39 different bucks, ages ranging from 1-7. Neighbors have killed 2 young bucks the past two years. neither showed up on my cameras. One neighbor found two nice 4 year olds locked up and dead last season. I have spent countless hours working on adding food plots, managing timber and limiting hunting pressure. I have a neighbor down the road 2 miles that bought his property the same year and is doing the same. Our buck quality is improving in leaps and bounds and we are sharing some bucks that travel between our farms. Its fun to both of us knowing that the work we have put in is starting to reap benefits. Thankful that we don't have some of the issues that many of you are experiencing.

 

[tlh2865]

I would like to toss my two cents in on this one. Where I hunt I can tell you that 4+ year old deer are rarely killed, and that is not because there aren't any. Here people shoot anything and everything, if it is a spike they want to shoot it and show it off to everybody. People just don't get older deer. To my neighbors, a 2 year old is a nice deer and a 3 year old is a giant. They don't kill the 4+ year old deer because they don't hunt for them, they don't put in the work and have the discipline to wait all season for one passing glimpse at an older buck. I went 5 years without killing a deer because I would only shoot a mature buck. In that stretch of time I could have killed dozens of 1 and 2 year olds and probably half a dozen threes. But in all that time I only once had a daylight encounter with a 4 year old deer, and he stayed well out of bow range and never came out during the day again. It may be true that in some places older deer are easier to kill, but where I hunt if you asked my neighbors they would say that they are unkillable. I get 2 and 3 year old bucks on camera during the day all the time, and at all hours of the day. But the two 4+ year old deer I have killed in the last two years made only 3 daylight appearances between them during hunting season over a combined period of nearly 110 days. 3 daylight appearances in 110 days. That is running 4 cameras, and hunting with very low pressure for probably 25 of those days. The numbers don't lie, here if a buck makes 4+ he becomes a ghost.