I say this now but went out last night and had a MONSTER walk out on me. Deer of a lifetime. Was too far out and too dark for a shot I would feel good about taking...was happy just to see him. Got me all fired up for next year.
Doesn't seem like folks around me care much about their deer being legal. Pretty common to hear shots at night. Detroit ids too far away to hear their shots, lol. Fine with me though. To many deer here. I feel that if I don't worry about the neighbors activities then they have nothing to say when I'm tuning a muffler modded saw at 4am on a Sunday. Yes, that actually happened on the morning of time change. They're not too great of neighbors, but I've had much worse. We seem to put up with each other pretty well at least.
Nice shooting and good you saw that monster! All I saw opening day was a tresspasser and the neighbor cutting firewood Sunday was too windy to be out there.
Not my best effort. I had to shoot this one twice . And neither shot was spectacular. The first shot dropped him on the spot, but it turned out to be too high. After he got back up and walked relatively normal I decided one more was in order. The second shot was just a bit further back that I would have liked, but it still caught a lung. I have a hard time with the open sights on that barrel (need a LOT of light for them to be visible). Thinking hard about a scope for next year.
Its hanging up right Scopes are worth their weight in gold IMO. With my nikon 3-9x40, I can see thru it BETTER than with my naked eye at low light situations. Thats on my 44 lever action. My slug gun has a 4x32 and its marginal in low light.
That is one of many reasons I built in the woods down the backside of a hill. For years, no one could see anything here no matter what the season. Then a house went in about 300 ft up the road. Lots of trees between us. Now the land across from us has sold. 34 acres. That guy is going to build on the far end of that wooded lot. I've been here 38 years. I like my peace and quiet. Don't anticipate much to change.
Did you hear much shooting Saturday? I only heard about 20% of normal opening day shots...and only 3 shots total Saturday. It was a weird day.
Me and my hunting partner both said it sounded dead as far as shots go. I am less than a mile from Owen Putnam State Forest so normally its like WW3 with the orange army! I bet I only heard 25 all day which is rare for my area. 25 an hour is more like normal!
Just had that happen to me the other night. Big buck that I've seen on my farm came crashing through my woods the other night, I knew it was big just hearing it coming.. I was in my stand and ready with my 30-06 , I just bought from a good friend.. Well doesn't this buck stop dead 15 feet from my stand... Just trying to figure out what my stand is, I can't believe this just happened, I'm just in the woods 30 minutes, now have the scope cross hairs right on his sweet spot, thinking to myself, wow how can I miss? I go to squeeze the trigger and nothing happens,,, what!!!!!! Oh no, I'm move to looks at what's going on and there goes my once in a life time close big buck encounter... I sighted the scope in the other day no problem, my buddy had it zeroed in fine.. Turns out it's an older Remington 742 Woodsmaster semi automatic, when I pulled the slide back to load the first shell, it never went all the back closed... Being a new owner of the gun I looked and thought the slide was closed all the way .. Nope needed a push with my thumb on the lever and it closed.. Once you shoot it works fine .. I was sick that's all it was. Oh well.... it was nice being in the right place at the right time and thinking what could have been.. Haven't seen him since..
The wind was coming from every single direction Saturday. I'm lucky the wind was blowing right in my face when he walked up. You heard about the bonus antlerless season they have this year?
Never! That hurt, but at the same time I think it was a privilege to have that size deer run right up to me... Was pretty cool..
Same here. I knew I wasn't even going to lift my gun and buck fever still set in pretty bad. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest.
My friend and I were both spread out on my 96 acre farm... I told him the same thing... not a lot of shots like in the past years.. We have the antler restriction here in Schoharie, NY zone 4G, must have at least 3 points on one beam at least 1 inch long.. So a four pointer with two on each side is not legal. I'm thinking this has slowed the shooting down big time this year..
I felt like that deer knew I wasn't going to kill him.. was a pretty weird moment..like a dream almost...
