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Little earlier DeerBlaster this week, hope you have a GREAT turkey day and long weekend! Goes without saying — hope you get to chase the wood antelopes and get one!
Today’s Top 5
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Check out this MASStastic wide-beamer!
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OH hunter Doug Kisamore is big-time proud of his dad Rick, who dropped this gigantor of a buck with an x-bow. Love love love all that mass, and the way the main beams go waaaayyy out and then almost join back together. And brow tines much? Two sets of ’em!
Doug says the monster green scored 213 2/8 — gotta be the biggest (or at least top 2 or 3) OH deer taken this year?
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IL hunter joins the 200 club with “Big Boy”!!
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IL hunter Glen Lynch arrowed this 213 6/8 HOSS — told the story on the LandCo podcast, worth a listen. Highlights:
> Glen and family purchased the property in 2017 and immediately installed trailcams. Real quick they saw this deer and nicknamed him “Big Boy.”
> In 2018 they improved the property with food plots, but the buck stayed pretty shy and the only photos were nocturnal.
> The buck disappeared in summer/early fall 2019. Glen worried the buck may have been a victim of EHD, which was known in the area.
> Big Boy finally reappeared on their CuddeLink trailcams and the hunt was on. Glen got in a ground blind, and one eventing the buck came out 150 yards away.
https://www.cuddeback.com/cuddelink
> After a brief encounter with a smaller buck, the massive deer walked straight towards Glen’s position. He let go of his arrow and the deer of a lifetime fell dead 70 yards away.
Props Glen!
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Guess it could apply to any forage — info from here:
> White oak acorns mature in one year, which makes them a more reliable source of mast, given favorable growing conditions. They also tend to drop early and over a relatively short time….
> Red oak acorns, on the other hand, take two years to mature. That means one year could be a boom and the next a bust, again depending on growing conditions.
> An abundant, widespread mast crop means deer don’t have to travel as far and wide to find food…. The rub then becomes finding a way to take advantage of the bounty.
> I’m fortunate in that oaks are patchily distributed in the woods I hunt, which makes those patches hotspots for deer activity. I simply need to find the best producers, which are typically the largest, oldest trees.
> It’s a different story where hardwoods dominate the landscape. Then it becomes a matter of which oaks might provide better odds. Fortunately, you need only apply the same logic you would during an absence in acorns. Find places where that abundant food source is easiest to access with the least risk.
> Look at the landscape, cover and terrain and find where the nuts occur along the path of least resistance, or closest to thick bedding cover.
Or you could just follow Scrat from Ice Age:
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11-yr-old drops 22-point first-time buck!
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Wowsa, another STUD first-time deer for a young hunter! This time it’s MO’s Kaden S., who tagged this 210 5/8 green score buck while sitting in a pop-up with his granddad Kevin. Even cooler: He shot the buck with a Remington 700 his grandpa bought 39 years ago. Some deets:
> “I was very excited and shaky. I was trying to find a comfortable spot for the rifle so I could kill it.”
[We’ve all been there buddy! We STILL go there….]
> When the buck stepped out, Kaden tried to get the gun on it but couldn’t hold steady enough to make a solid shot since he was so excited. That made his grandpa proud that the youngster wasn’t willing to shoot without feeling confident in his shot.
> They set a backpack up on a stool to help steady the rear of the gun and used a shooting stick on the front of the gun….
> Kaden squeezed the trigger — the buck bolted. “I felt like it was a really good shot. It ran a ways and jumped a 5-wire barbed wire fence. It took an hour and a half to find him.”
Great job Kaden (and pawpaw)! That’s an amazing deer.
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How cool is this! A pretty good — and easy and cheap — way to get a Sitka-like pattern on pretty much anything you want:
If you need to have camoed-out everything or just think a camo treestand (or whatever) is a good idea — and why wouldn’t it be! — that vid is for you. On the Big Buck Registry Facebook page.
lol
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News
1. PA: Get ready to start on Saturday.
> The season is opening on the Sat after Thanksgiving rather than the Mon after Thanksgiving, which had been the opener since 1963 through last year.
2. AL’s biggest deer on new website.
AlabamaWhitetailRecords.com. Used to be in print only.
3. OH: Rifles now outselling slug guns 50:1.
Rifles allowed for deer since 2014.
4. MI bill would extend firearms hunting season.
Would extend it by 10 days by starting Nov 5 instead of Nov 15.
5. OK considering extending deer season.
> …to include a 3rd week. Any changes wouldn’t go into effect this year. Public comment on the proposals will start Dec 2 and last for a month.
6. TX: Whitetail hunting with an air rifle.
Air rifle shooting a 240-grain Nielsen hollow point, buck went right down.
7. TX: Father-son accused of hunting on college campus?
From the article:
> Police responded to the [University of Houston-Clear Lake] Campus Nature Trail after a caller reported an on-ground deer blind and deer corn nearby.
8. UT: Homeowners not happy about hunters.
> …say they’ve called the police about people either attempting to hunt on their property or hiking through their property to get to legal hunting areas.
> “If you want to hunt that’s fine, just don’t do it in a neighborhood, don’t be going through people’s property.”
9. VA gun owners and hunters alarmed by state rhetoric.
10. MS sisters shoot bucks on the same afternoon!
14-year-old Haley and her 10-year-old sister Hayden each put the smackdown on a couple of wall-hangers! They shot their deer just minutes apart in separate blinds, on the family farm:
> Haley went with her grandfather, and Hayden was with her father.
> “I saw his head when I looked up,” Haley said. “He was half in the woods and half in the plot. I saw white horns and I was about to pick up my binoculars to look at him and my Grandpa said, ‘Shoot, it’s a good buck. I picked up my gun and shot. He dropped and kicked. He ran off, but he really didn’t go anywhere.”
> The 8-point wasn’t her biggest [cool!], but it had 18″ main beams and a 16″ inside spread.
> Hayden and [her dad] heard the shot and received a text saying Haley had shot a deer…not much was happening in the corn field. But just as the light was about to fade away, a deer came into the field.
> “He just walked out,” Hayden said. “I was getting nervous. I was shaking a little bit.” Hayden sat in her father’s lap, got the deer in her scope and fired. “He dropped. I shot and he just collapsed.”
> Her 8-point had 23″ main beams and an inside spread just shy of 19″.
11. More bucks from around the web.
Here’s some that caught our eye:
> NICE David Miller WV mountain buck.
> @ontrackk9deerrecovery posted this 228″ KY whitetail!
> @lonewolfstands posted this great shot of a successful buddy hunt, not sure where….
> MASSive IL buck — no measurements listed — posted by Luke Slemmer.
> How ’bout Derek Goss’s cool Jackson Parish velvet buck — @louisianasportsman post.
> Not every day you see an antler comin’ outta an ear (sorta) — Shed Addiction FB post of an OK muzzleloader deer. That ear-ish deal’s called an “adversary’s antler.”
In America, hunting is richer, deeper, and more rewarding than the old trophy-mount stereotypes.
Word! From a food blog…!
C’mon man. That’s a lot of negativity for something that hasn’t even happened yet in AL.
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Deer Disease News
> “We know the number is going to be several times larger than what we have reported. We have probably lost thousands of deer. In fact, we know we have.”
We know at least a few hunters are like this lol:
> DNR: “When we get that first positive, all our efforts of prevention will shift to mitigation. I’m not saying this to scare people. But the facts are the facts. We have to educate the public on just what we are facing. The steps to prevent the spread of CWD are effective. But all it takes is one person not to follow them.”
> “The CWD-positive deer was a 2.5-yr-old buck harvested in the Shelby County portion of the Wolf River Wildlife Management Area. This comes as no surprise since CWD had already been detected nearby in neighboring Fayette County.”
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Gear of the Week
Moultrie XV7000I wireless trailcam system.
We love the idea of wireless trailcam systems — can’t beat seeing new pics at any time and from any place, plus no disturbing the woods. BUT these systems have been kinda tough to set up and maintain, but Bowsite says Moultrie got it right with their latest system:
> …2 designs available: XV7000i and the XA7000i. The X denotes the camera series but the next letter is for the network. So V stands for Verizon and A stands for ATT.
> Please note: if you use ATT for your personal phone, you do not need to buy the ATT trail camera. Insead, you simply buy the unit with the best coverage for your hunting area regardless of who your phone provider is.
> The battery compartment takes 12AA batteries…strongly recommend you use Lithium Ion batteries…. The modem and camera combined consume a lot more battery power than a trail camera alone, so I also recommend using an auxiliary power box like the Moultrie Battery Box.
> Once your batteries are loaded, you will need to add it to a Moultrie Mobile (MM) Plan. X-series cameras need a MM account to operate. Setting up an account is easy.
> All settings are changed online through your MM account. Once you’ve logged in, choose your camera, and click camera settings. Here you can adjust the delay, photo quality, multi-shot settings, camera name, etc.
> Photo quality was excellent, trigger speed is amazing, and so far, battery life looks good. I had my XV7000i set up in about 5 minutes including adding it to my existing MM plan. I brought it to my property turned on the power button, saw all the lights turn green and left. Since then I have been monitoring my most remote food plot in PA.
The Moultrie site says data plans start at $4.99/mo, but they can quickly escalate to $20-50/mo depending on how many cameras and images you want. Even so, hopeful that it’s a great system.
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Tip of the Week
How to grunt up a big’un.
Believe it or not, the RIGHT use of grunt calls is still a mystery to a lot of whitetail hunters…us included! But it can be super-deadly way to bring in a potential trophy buck. As deer dude Michael Hanback points out, you just need to learn how to speak the language:
> Say you’re sitting a stand, watching a hardwood ridge or creek bottom. It’s serene and beautiful, but no deer are moving. Well, shake things up. Pick up your grunter and blow 4 or 5 “contact grunts” every 20-30 minutes.
> …does utter this common call when they become separated from one another. Their studies show that these short, single grunts are fairly loud (deer grunt loudly enough so that other animals 50 to 100 yards away can hear them) and of moderate intensity and high pitch.
> The “low grunt” is similar to the contact grunt, but more guttural. Scientists say both does and bucks use these single low-pitched grunts to show aggression toward other deer. In other words, if a buck happens upon another animal and doesn’t like its looks or smell, it might posture and grunt low at it.
> A buck is just as apt to come to one grunt as the other, so the best strategy is to mix it up.
> My favorite call, and the one that dupes the most big bucks across America each Nov, is the “tending grunt.”
> Start using tending grunts around Halloween, and keep them up for the next 2-3 weeks of peak rut. Blow loud, strung-out grunts that sound like urrppp, urrppp, urrppp every 30 minutes or so while on stand.
> During intense encounters in the rut, bucks sometimes “grunt-snort,” which consists of the low grunt…followed by 1-4 short, rapid snorts. Further, rival bucks sometimes add a 3rd element, an expulsion of air through their nostrils, thus the “grunt-snort-wheeze.”
> …if you keep trying it you will call in some deer. But…grunting is most effective when you spot a buck first and then go to work. Grunt at every buck, both shooters and small 4- or 6-points, that you see slipping down a ridge or ducking into cover up to 125 yards away.
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Quote of the Week
“Hey, you saw the trail-camera picture of that big buck. Maybe you’d like to come see him up close.”
– Art Graybill talkin’ to his son on the phone — after taking his biggest deer ever, the day after his 91st birthday! Great job Mr. Art!
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Shot of the Week
Very cool @obsessionbows_official shot — gettin’ away from the crowds:
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What’s the DB and who does it??
The DeerBlaster is a weekly roundup of the best, worst and funniest stuff about whitetail deer hunting culled from around the interwebz. We were kinda doing it already, just not the blastin’ it into your inbox part….
It’s put together by some deer nerds — Ted, Jay, Wade, couple more — from around the country. We excerpt content (and credit EVERYONE!), comment on content, do some original content — it’s an internet thing…. We do it because we can’t get enough deer hunting, hopefully you’re wired the same.
The DeerBlaster’s a work in progress, just like we are. Let us know what we can do better and thanks for readin’! Any issues, suggestions, whatever, just hit Reply to this email and we’ll get it. Thank you!
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