J-birds place

[j-bird]

Well our general firearms season has come to an end.

Roger hunted the SW shooting house saturday am (2nd) and saw 3 across the creek, Tom hunted near doe point and didn't see anything and I hunted the North shooting house and I didn't see anything either.

Saturday evening Tom hunted the SW shooting house and saw nothing and I hunted the ladder stand in the north and saw 3 way off in Bowers field.

Saturday mid-day we played with Roger's new toy. Roger was given a new gun for some work he had done for a friend of his. He has a brand new Weatherby Vanguard in .243 win....with a 2 to 7 x 40 Leupold scope! I need friends like that! Roger had only shot a rifle once before so we made sure it was good at 100 yards. It will be a great deer gun for him.

Sunday (3rd) morning....Roger, Tom and I all hunted and saw nothing.

Sunday evening Tom saw a doe being chased by a dog/yote as he accessed his stand and I saw 3 as I was accessing my stand in the north basin. A yearling buck right as I entered the woods and 2 does bedded on the edge of the basin.......nothing else beyond that.

I need to re-calculate my hours on stand vs deer sighting figures....

Next weekend starts our 16 day muzzleloader season. Roger doesn't have a muzzleloader and I have one, so it will be interesting to see how we work that out!

I am holding out hope that the colder weather of December will bring a shooter buck to my standing soybean plots.....so far I have not seen a buck that really interests me thus far..... but it only takes a few minutes and all that can change so we will see.

 

[j-bird]

Muzzleloader opener 12/9 .....Tom and I went to the SW shooting house and saw nothing that morning. We had my wife's family X-mas dinner that evening so no hunting. We did hear that a nice 10 pointer was killed on a nearby farm (granny & Paps) but Tony and Sam had not seen much activity either.

12/10 morning Tom wen to the north shooting house and saw nothing and we both went back to the north shooting house and saw nothing.

So to catch-up on the numbers. From 11/5 to 11/20 we saw 14 deer in 33 hours of hunting (2.36 hour's per deer). From 11/21 to 11/29 we saw 36 deer in 52 hours of hunting (1.44 hours per deer). From 11/30 to 12/10 we saw 12 deer in 51 hours of hunting (4.25 hours per deer). For a current total of 2.2 hours of hunting per deer sighted. Now those are NOT killable deer - many are way too far to shoot or even on a different property. Per some FB posts we are roughly 10,000 deer BEHIND last years harvest at this time state wide (roughly -10%).....I have some serious concerns about deer numbers in my county and state wide.

 

[OkieKubota]

Muzzleloader opener 12/9 .....Tom and I went to the SW shooting house and saw nothing that morning. We had my wife's family X-mas dinner that evening so no hunting. We did hear that a nice 10 pointer was killed on a nearby farm (granny & Paps) but Tony and Sam had not seen much activity either.

12/10 morning Tom wen to the north shooting house and saw nothing and we both went back to the north shooting house and saw nothing.

So to catch-up on the numbers. From 11/5 to 11/20 we saw 14 deer in 33 hours of hunting (2.36 hour's per deer). From 11/21 to 11/29 we saw 36 deer in 52 hours of hunting (1.44 hours per deer). From 11/30 to 12/10 we saw 12 deer in 51 hours of hunting (4.25 hours per deer). For a current total of 2.2 hours of hunting per deer sighted. Now those are NOT killable deer - many are way too far to shoot or even on a different property. Per some FB posts we are roughly 10,000 deer BEHIND last years harvest at this time state wide (roughly -10%).....I have some serious concerns about deer numbers in my county and state wide.

I recall you saying last year you were concerned with deer numbers in your state...just not right around you...this is a photo of 2016 hunting season of yours...

The problem you have is the same one I have which is low DPSM due to overharvest. Some days I sit on stand and think I have a great DPSM because deer seem to have come from everywhere but overall unless they are resident deer you have a lot of history with then they will be fleeting and here today and gone tomorrow. I have very few resident antlerless deer and my experience is every year I have less utilizing the area around where we live or even our entire county...seeing a deer from the road nowadays is almost newsworthy whereasback in the late 90's - mid 2000's I could count up to 40 on an 11 mile drive to work...after rifle season! Way too much antlerless harvest and way too liberal seasons...


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[j-bird]

I recall you saying last year you were concerned with deer numbers in your state...just not right around you...this is a photo of 2016 hunting season of yours...

The problem you have is the same one I have which is low DPSM due to overharvest. Some days I sit on stand and think I have a great DPSM because deer seem to have come from everywhere but overall unless they are resident deer you have a lot of history with then they will be fleeting and here today and gone tomorrow. I have very few resident antlerless deer and my experience is every year I have less utilizing the area around where we live or even our entire county...seeing a deer from the road nowadays is almost newsworthy whereasback in the late 90's - mid 2000's I could count up to 40 on an 11 mile drive to work...after rifle season! Way too much antlerless harvest and way too liberal seasons...


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History showed a harvest like I had last year would not be an issue. This year is VERY different. And why I limited every hunter to only a single deer (with 2 of us holding out for a buck) - and we have only taken one doe so far (daughters first deer). Of those deer in the pic - two of those deer are button bucks. I am trying to adjust my harvest according but I fear I missed it by a year. I'm not afraid to admit I made a mistake. Now I need to adjust......it's just frustrating and I wasn't expecting such a dramatic shift.

 

[OkieKubota]

History showed a harvest like I had last year would not be an issue. This year is VERY different. And why I limited every hunter to only a single deer (with 2 of us holding out for a buck) - and we have only taken one doe so far (daughters first deer). Of those deer in the pic - two of those deer are button bucks. I am trying to adjust my harvest according but I fear I missed it by a year. I'm not afraid to admit I made a mistake. Now I need to adjust......it's just frustrating and I wasn't expecting such a dramatic shift.

My experience is going from feast to famine with deer can be pretty immediate...
The first year we owned our place (2014) I couldn't believe how many deer were using our place. Every sit was multiple sightings and my wife and I killed 3 5.5 yr old plus bucks and no does.

2015 I saw several does and 2 very mature big bucks and many young bucks on our place at beginning of season but the big deer disappeared and only 1 returned after season. We didn't kill anything on our place at all. I ended up killing a 6.5 yr old buck off our deer lease and my grandson took a doe off our home 10 which is 30 miles from here. Shots around me were insane all fall/winter...

2016 I saw a lot less deer on camera but I also got a new neighbor/renter who is young, doesn't work all fall, and hunts constantly with a rifle no matter what season... I luckily killed my target buck which was a minimum 7.5 yr old buck I had named "Laid Back 9" and had been chasing since we bought the place in 2014. He was a big one my entire history with him. I shot another big buck on the 1st day of rifle I didn't end up with and I saw several big deer but the least amount of does I had seen so far...tally was 1 killed and 1 wounded presumed dead. Neighbors constantly killing does and shots all through the woods all fall/winter.

2017 I had 3 shooters on camera but also had several shooters on cam on our lease. Least doe numbers so far...no pops on a mature buck on our place this fall even though I passed a very nice 3.5 yr old 10 point 3 times with bow. Shots early and late daily from beginning of October to about 2 weeks ago with an occasional 1 now...after dark...
We had an amazing buck year on our deer lease and I got a great deer on a draw huntas well...thing is we saw very few does no matter where we hunted including home 10. No does killed by any of us again.

Our problem is the ongoing slaughter of our female deer here. We have 38 days in the fall/winter you can kill does with firearms and we have a 6 deer limit per hunter not including special hunt deer. Our wildlife department motto was "Hunters in the know, kill a doe" for years. We control 1500 acres at our deer lease and we haven't taken a doe off it in about 10 years but we still can't bring them back because neighbors keep whacking them at every opportunity...

I read our proposed wildlife rules changes for 2018 a little bit ago hoping they would cut our rifle season back to 9 days again and get rid of the 10 day "Holiday Antlerless Season" coming up starting the 22nd of this month that invariably gets a good portion of our mature bucks who "made it" killed by folks who always say "I didn't get a rifle buck so they owed me"... I was very disappointed that our main change is to change crossbow bolts from a minimum 14" to no length limit...rant over...

 

[j-bird]

My experience is going from feast to famine with deer can be pretty immediate...
The first year we owned our place (2014) I couldn't believe how many deer were using our place. Every sit was multiple sightings and my wife and I killed 3 5.5 yr old plus bucks and no does.

2015 I saw several does and 2 very mature big bucks and many young bucks on our place at beginning of season but the big deer disappeared and only 1 returned after season. We didn't kill anything on our place at all. I ended up killing a 6.5 yr old buck off our deer lease and my grandson took a doe off our home 10 which is 30 miles from here. Shots around me were insane all fall/winter...

2016 I saw a lot less deer on camera but I also got a new neighbor/renter who is young, doesn't work all fall, and hunts constantly with a rifle no matter what season... I luckily killed my target buck which was a minimum 7.5 yr old buck I had named "Laid Back 9" and had been chasing since we bought the place in 2014. He was a big one my entire history with him. I shot another big buck on the 1st day of rifle I didn't end up with and I saw several big deer but the least amount of does I had seen so far...tally was 1 killed and 1 wounded presumed dead. Neighbors constantly killing does and shots all through the woods all fall/winter.

2017 I had 3 shooters on camera but also had several shooters on cam on our lease. Least doe numbers so far...no pops on a mature buck on our place this fall even though I passed a very nice 3.5 yr old 10 point 3 times with bow. Shots early and late daily from beginning of October to about 2 weeks ago with an occasional 1 now...after dark...
We had an amazing buck year on our deer lease and I got a great deer on a draw huntas well...thing is we saw very few does no matter where we hunted including home 10. No does killed by any of us again.

Our problem is the ongoing slaughter of our female deer here. We have 38 days in the fall/winter you can kill does with firearms and we have a 6 deer limit per hunter not including special hunt deer. Our wildlife department motto was "Hunters in the know, kill a doe" for years. We control 1500 acres at our deer lease and we haven't taken a doe off it in about 10 years but we still can't bring them back because neighbors keep whacking them at every opportunity...

I read our proposed wildlife rules changes for 2018 a little bit ago hoping they would cut our rifle season back to 9 days again and get rid of the 10 day "Holiday Antlerless Season" coming up starting the 22nd of this month that invariably gets a good portion of our mature bucks who "made it" killed by folks who always say "I didn't get a rifle buck so they owed me"... I was very disappointed that our main change is to change crossbow bolts from a minimum 14" to no length limit...rant over...

Okie - The data on my place shows that we have been able to take some does over the years and not affect our hunting the following year. However, I guess I thought I lived in a bubble....and well it has been popped! How neighbors use their properties has changed.....the once peaceful country side is now being terrorized with the scream of ATV's - even during season. My former sanctuary areas are no more because of this. So my place and the surrounding areas are not holding the deer they did just a year ago. Lease hunters and hunting pressure in general has also increased as hunters are spreading to new areas in the hopes to find better deer hunting as well (many because they have depleted the numbers in their former hunting areas). I think I may also be seeing an increase in yotes as well. So couple all of that with my DNR's continued chant of "Kill more deer" and I am where I am. My county you can hunt deer with a firearm of some sort of 32 days....from roughly mid November thru mid December (both our rut and secondary rut in most years). My specific county (373 square miles) struggle to kill 800 deer a year, yet the DNR allows hunters to kill 7....with only one being an antlered deer. So from a DNR perspective I think we are in a similar boat. I will admit that maybe I was too slow to react, but hunters are going to have to wise up and realize that we can't continue to do this.....even if the DNR allows/promotes us to do it. Funny how we went from "harvest more does" to "don't harvest any does"....and the DNR seems to be behind the curve by several years every time!

 

[Familytradition]

I believe the Indiana deer herd very out of wack. For out of state people it can be hard to understand. Our DNR did a great job managing under Democrat Governor O’Banon. Our last several Republican Governors have either not cared about the DNR, state parks, and resources, catered to lobbing groups that want deer numbers way down, or seen natural resources as a source of income. (I’m a lifelong Republican; I’m just calling it as I see it.) We Hoosiers were used to a DNR that had hunters’ interests in mind. Now they use us as an eradication tool, checking account, and make changes before they know the effects of the last change. It’s hard to grasp. J-bird is like me; we want to kill a few deer on our land. We are hunters. But it only takes 1 group of greedy or law breaker neighbors to spoil everyone’s fun with the amount of doe tags available and 3 or 4 month season depending on your area. The best thing that a property owner in Indiana could do right now for the future is not hunt their land. Sometimes you are like J-bird and I; we have family trying to kill their first deer or (in my case) their last deer. It’s hard to know where the punches are coming from sometimes.


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[j-bird]

Well we hit the woods again this week end in an effort for just one more deer - as that is what we need to provide the meat for the household for the year.

I went out Friday evening to our 2 man stand and saw nothing.
Tom and I went out saturday morning and saw nothing to our SW shooting house (I did pull the SD card from the cam)
Tom went out saturday evening and sat at doe point and saw nothing.
Tom went out sunday morning to 2 man and again saw nothing
Tom went out sunday evening to sit at the north basin and saw again .....nothing.

Somebody may be asking why i am not hunting......we have one muzzleloader in the house, AND I have only a few places we can hunt together. So I am letting ,my boy go and be able to have more stand choices by him going alone.

I had also talked to my dad and about the deer numbers at his place. His cam sighting numbers are 1/2 of what they normally are. I also talked to another guy who has family in the same county I hunt but has even better property and they had seen far fewer and have only harvested less than half of what they normally do as well.

Tom claims we are hunting a mythical creature...like a unicorn!

The wife and I drove into town sunday and we did see 4 after dark in our general area.....seeing those deer triggered my memory that I had not reviewed the cam card.

So I sat down at the table to review my SD card expecting to not see much. I had 36 triggers in roughly 2 to 3 weeks of time. The cam is sitting low (just because i wanted a little different cam angle) in the corner on my SW plot where I have soybeans standing with some wheat in it. I figured the cold temps would move the deer to feeding on standing grain if they could find it.

Well to my surprise - the deer are still there.......however EVER all triggers but 3 where at night. The three daytime triggers - one I was not able to see anything, one was of me going to the cam and the third.....well its a good news/bad news thing. He isn't huge, but he does meet our rules. The day this happened.....we hunted a different stand!


This buck likes this plot as I had him show up in a few other videos as well.


He has a little buddy around as well......


Had a video of a yote....and a family group of a mature doe and 2 fawns (I assume the group I pictured in post #494) So the deer know the food is there, they are just mostly using the cover of darkness to access it.

So our daytime sightings are in the toilet, but we do appear to at least have some deer still alive and in the area. I guess it's better than not seeing them in the daytime and not having anything on cam as well.

 

[lakngolf]

Glad you confirmed the deer are still there, even if numbers down a bit. I have run my cell camera at both Mandy Hollow and the Bull Pen area just to know that the deer are there. They are and they love corn at night!

 

[j-bird]

Glad you confirmed the deer are still there, even if numbers down a bit. I have run my cell camera at both Mandy Hollow and the Bull Pen area just to know that the deer are there. They are and they love corn at night!

Just shows how cams can be an important tool for us. We don't always see what is actually going on out there.

 

[j-bird]

Well I am still trying....2 more evening hunts.....still no deer!

December 18 - evening hunt. Wind from the due south and sitting in the SW shooting house. Sort of dreary out with a heavy mist. This is the bean plot where the pics from last trail cam pull came from. Still no deer.


December 19th evening hunt. Again sort of dreary, wind from the North West I am in the 2 man stand overlooking another plot...still no more deer.

 

[dogghr]

Good read as usual J. Odd how seasons can compare across the country. Our state rifle kill was less than last year and it was a 30 yr low. Part is overabundance of acorns but I think other factors happening. I can take 8 doe off my place per hunter but luckily we have taken only 2 in 4 years. Had to take into account neighbors itchy fingers and the logging trucks. Good luck on rest of season, thanks for showing. Merry Christmas.

 

[j-bird]

Well - still after it. With this week being the week before our holiday break at work I have been able to get out a bit early in the afternoons and get a few evening hunts in. When the sun goes down X-mas eve my gun hunting days are done.

Dec 18th hunt. Wind was from the NW so I headed to my ladder stand up north that sits between a bedding area in the woods and an inside corner of a cut soybean field. I wasn't able to hunt until dark as I had dinner plans with the fam for my daughters birthday.... No deer sighted, but I thought I heard some, so I am hopeful.

View looking towards the bedding cover.


View looking towards the field corner.


Yesterday the wind was from the south, but I didn't feel like following the norm since I wasn't seeing anything so I decided to "wing it". I decided to take a post on the top of a hillside overlooking my south bottom plot. There was some sign of deer activity and sat down and got comfortable. I finally did see 2 deer! It was a small yearling buck chasing what I assume to be a doe fawn. This is good news in that maybe I will see a little activity of a secondary rut. Neither deer was what I was after and neither offered a shot. It is always fun to watch the show however. I get distracted watching them and didn't get a picture.

This is looking to my right back at "doe point". There is a nice flat area just inside the woods where the deer like to move to skirt around the CRP and plot area. i figured - since I wasn't seeing deer in the normal places it was time to look in the abnormal places!


This is looking straight out in front of me. I have a 3/4 acre soybean plot with CRP around it - my 2-man stand is almost directly across from me about 100 yards away.


This is is more to my left and more toward a bedding project I am working on.


I will be out after it again this evening.....it is gloomy now with with highs forecast in the 50's....but the weather man is forecasting rain and snow with falling temps (highs in the 30's) for Saturday and Sunday.....so maybe this weather moving in will get the deer up this evening. We have been seeing deer at night as well......I just have to get one that I like to show up in the day light, sure would be a nice Christmas present Santa....if your reading....wink, wink!

 

[HB_Hunter]

Good luck j-bird. Nobody can say you didn’t put your time in.

 

[j-bird]

Well I got out again Friday evening and again this morning..... still no deer on the ground

Dec 22 pm hunt - My view of the SW bean plot - wind was from the south and temps where in the 50's......weather moving in......got foggy out!

My view of the soybean plot


My view of my perennial plot and "orchard" to my left.


I did get to see 2 deer come out in the fog.....in the neighbors field!


We hunted this morning as well. Tom hunted in the north shooting house from daylight until about 10 and then I took the second shift from about 10 until 1......we had colder temps (roughly freezing) as the rain switched over to snow. Still no deer, we had X-mas with my folks later today so no hunting in the evening.

My view this morning (12/23) to my left - only thing I saw was a squirrel running all over the plot. No deer....


View to my right..... The shooting house was nice to stay out of the north wind and the rain/snow.

 

[j-bird]

I must have been a good boy this year......Santa got me just what I asked for.....new Scent Blocker digs! You might find it hard to see me in the pic.....I am camouflaged!!!!


I can't however figure out what the hell these things are used for inside the jacket!!!!

 

[j-bird]

Well, I am sitting in my SW shooting house for my last gun hunt of the year. Supposed to have snow move in later but things don't look real good at the moment. I did see one deer across the creek on the neighbors place south of me, but that has been it.

Merry Christmas everybody! Be safe and enjoy the holidays!

 

[Chainsaw]

Good luck today J-Bird. I've enjoyed following your adventure; you sure do hang in there!

 

[THE LLC]

Do like I do. The way I like to hunt now is to get a glass of sweet tea, plop my butt on the couch, and watch the Outdoor Channel. They ALWAYS see a ton of deer, always kill a monster, and I don't have to clean it. All the same with no mess. LOLOL

 

[j-bird]

Do like I do. The way I like to hunt now is to get a glass of sweet tea, plop my butt on the couch, and watch the Outdoor Channel. They ALWAYS see a ton of deer, always kill a monster, and I don't have to clean it. All the same with no mess. LOLOL

That hunting doesn't put meat in the freezer! Been a decade or more since I have watched TV hunting.