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The story of 2020’s top OH typ!
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> …first spotted on trail camera in 2019 as a better-than-average 8-pointer. “He was a nice buck then, probably a 150-class deer…figured if it survived another year it would be a whopper.”
> “Our first impression [next summer] was that it was a nice 10-point rack on a small-bodied buck, which has a way of distorting the true size of the rack. Trail cameras don’t always tell the whole story.
> “We had trail camera pics of the buck all throughout September, but we still weren’t convinced he was that big of a deer,” Lear explains. “Then I saw him for the first time during the first week of Oct.
> That was the last time Lear saw the buck during the fall, and the elusive whitetail vanished during the entire rut. After a nearly 6-week hiatus, the giant whitetail got his picture taken…during the last days of Nov.
> Lear kept moving his Lone Wolf treestand closer and closer to the thick cover of cedars the buck was thought to be bedding in. The spot was near an old logging road that had a few leftover scrapes and old rubs in it.
> …had spent nearly 3 straight weeks…of evenings hunting the…10-pointer, and it was late Dec and only days away from his wife’s due date.
> “I heard tinkling in the branches not 15 minutes after I got into the stand. I knew immediately what it was – it was the sound of a buck with his rack in the branches. I looked over my left shoulder and didn’t see anything. Finally, I saw the antlers and then I saw the buck standing there hitting a licking branch.
> “At this spot there’s one logging road that comes down to another…at that Y intersection is a big community scrape. The buck walked down to the scrape and freshened it up. And then he went over to a rub and freshened it up. At that Y, if the buck took the left fork, he would go away from me. If he took the right fork, that’s the one I was on.”
> …while the buck was 70-80 yards away standing and looking around, he started to ease toward the right fork. “He only took 2 or 3 steps before he stopped and licked his nose and checked everything out. Honestly, it took him half an hour to get within range.”
> Lear readied his Excalibur 355 Micro Crossbow with a 100-grain 3-bladed Muzzy Merc broadhead. “There was a big white oak just off the trail between me and the deer…. Once he stepped away from the oak, I had a clear shot at 25 yards.
> “He ran straight away from me about 100 yards uphill, and then he turned and ran back downhill toward me and died about 70 yards away from the tree I was in.”
> Lear’s buck was officially scored by OH Buckeye Big Buck Club scorer Tim Schlater. The 5×5 typical rack grosses 194 3/8. The inside spread is 20 7/8, the main beams are over 29″ each. The longest tine is on the right side, which measures 15 1/8″. Both brows are over 5″ and the mass measurements at the bases are 5 2/8″ and 5″.
> There are no abnormal points, and the total deductions amount to only 4″, netting 190 3/8.
A lot of emotional family stuff was tied into that hunt and that story, too much for us to include but wow. So glad everything worked out!
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Is deer-patterning actually baloney? 🤔
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> “I can tell you that I’ve done a lot of consulting for outfitters over the years and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that a whole bunch of bucks that you’ve been told on TV that they spent this much time scoutin’ and doin’ this and don’t that’ figurin’ – nuh-uh, the outfitter told them to climb up in that tree and showed them pictures saying, ‘Here are the bucks you might see there.’
> “They shot one of them, was able to recover him, and next thing you know…they knew everything there was to know about that buck….
> “A 200-inch buck that was killed on TV, I happen to know that the entire patterning story is baloney for a fact.
> “Patterning a whitetail really is nothing more, in my experience, than finding 1 or 2 things that he tends to do during legal shooting light.”
He also says the rut is one of the easiest times to pattern a buck:
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X-bows now taking more deer than vertical bows in a few states.
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> …firearms hunters accounted for 65% of all deer taken during the 2020-21 seasons, while archery equipment accounted for 26% and muzzleloaders for 9%. So…roughly 1 in 4 deer were taken with archery gear.
> Trying to generate additional detail about the archery harvest itself is where things get hazy…because many states don’t separate crossbow and vertical bow harvest data. However, some do – and in those places, the trends point clearly toward growing crossbow participation and success.
> …of the 30 states east of the Rockies that allow crossbows in archery season, 25 can distinguish crossbow from vertical bow harvest. In 11 of those states, the crossbow harvest now exceeds that of vertical bows.
> …we can see regional differences here, with archery hunters in the Northeast embracing crossbows while vertical bows continue to dominate in the Southeast. One possible explanation for this is the fact that the Northeast is more heavily urbanized, and using a crossbow may be more attractive when seeking to remove deer from areas with dense human populations.
> …some state data indicate crossbow hunters enjoy a modestly higher success rate…. OH, for example, tracked bowhunting success over a 7-year period (2013-19) and reported that crossbow hunters posted a 23.5% success rate compared to 21% for vertical bowhunters. MO reported a 35% success rate for crossbow hunters and 31% success rate by vertical bowhunters for the 2016-17 season.
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Deer hunting with – eagles??
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For sure wouldn’t be fair chase here, but guess it’s okay in whatever country that is…?
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> After 8 months, an Ingham County Circuit Court judge denied an application by Deer Hunters For Responsible UP Deer Management to appeal decisions made by the MI Natural Resources Commission regarding Upper Peninsula deer hunting that were counter to recommendations made by the MI DNR….
> Decisions about applications of this type are supposed to be made within 35 days. A footnote on the court order states, “This Court does not know the reason the application was not decided within 35 days of its filing by the Circuit Judge from whom this case was reassigned.”
> The court’s decision was based on timing of the application rather than the merits of the case…. The court ruled that an application to appeal the NRC decisions had to be filed within 21 days. In the attorney’s opinion, an appeal was possible up to 6 months after the NRC decisions.
> The harvest was 10.9% lower than the 2020-21 record harvest of 17,265 deer, but marked the 9th consecutive year that the DE harvest exceeded 14,000 deer.
> …72,200 deer gun licenses last year. Overall hunter success was 57% with each hunter spending an average of 4.5 days in the field.
> Hunter success for antlered whitetail deer was 40%, and antlerless whitetail was 48%. Mule deer buck success was 72%, and antlerless mule deer was 80%.
DNR speculates it’s from less deer due to disease:
> WA hunters bagged more than 24,000 deer in the 2021 hunting season. That may sound like a lot, but it’s down from 2020 numbers by more than 5,000, and it’s the lowest deer harvest overall in the last 20 years.
Including:
> Creating permit quotas on Statewide Whitetail Buck and Restricted Statewide Buck permits.
> Including the Pine Ridge deer management unit into the Mule Deer Conservation Area.
> …the Dept is seeking input on adjustments to license numbers and hunt dates and adding some new hunt opportunities. Additionally…proposing creating an Oct youth hunt in GMUs 2A and 2B, and moving the majority of licenses out of the current Nov hunt period.
…to reduce deer herd, and will of course test the meat for Covid before donating it.
Also 8,000 pronghorn tags.
> …what makes for a long-lasting, high-performing camera from 6:30 to 9 pm Thurs at the MI Iron Industry Museum in Negaunee and via Zoom. The Zoom link is at bit.ly/3JYlDut.
11. 2A stuff.
Interesting because President Trump and other prominent anti-Rino Republicans have not endorsed Kemp, and it seems like Trump’s endorsed candidates are doing most of the winning.
> The measure would increase the amount of funding provided from the Game and Fish fun to be used for development and maintenance of shooting and archery facilities…will provide $5 mil in funding that will support gun/hunter safety and angling activities.
12. Keep an eye on…
> In Nov, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit over the 2020 expansion of hunting and fishing opportunities on 2.2 mil acres of refuge land. The CBD claims that hunting on refuges threatens endangered species due to hunters trampling critical habitat, through lead poisoning from spent ammunition and because grizzly bears are mistakenly shot by hunters believing them to be black bears or in self-defense.
The bad guys will do everything they can do ban guns and hunting, non-stop.
Headlines of the Week
Ya think??
Feral hogs are the Asian carp of land.
Sounds financially backwards?
Question of the Week
If politicians are trying to compromise the Second Amendment, aren’t they violating their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution?
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Deer Disease News
> The state has killed hundreds of deer in an effort to stop a disease that has not demonstrably killed a single TX whitetail yet.
> 3 of the does at Williams’s RW Trophy Ranch died of pneumonia after the Feb 2021 freeze. Williams sent the tissue to the TX lab and was told that 1 deer tested positive for CWD, a result he still disputes on scientific grounds. TPWD refused to send the sample to a national lab that Williams says can measure more DNA markers more efficiently than A&M. “That threw the first red flag up,” Williams says. “Why should you not have a second opinion?”
> …TPWD later refused to let Williams release 49 bucks from the pens to his fenced release site ahead of hunting season, even though the bucks tested negative for CWD.
> The agency has since killed all of the deer that Williams sold to other breeders in the last 5 years and has still not found another positive case of CWD outside of several does inside the breeding pens.
> The CWD-positive deer makes Hardin County CWD positive and neighboring Decatur County is now classified as a high-risk CWD county due to the location of where one of the positive deer was detected.
> Edwards said comparing the number of positive tests each year can be misleading because the Game and Fish’s CWD surveillance program focuses on different deer and elk herd units each year….
> “That said, we can say the prevalence of CWD is slowly increasing in most deer and elk herd units in the state”…added CWD was detected in 4 new deer hunt areas and 5 new elk hunt areas in 2021.
> …sampled and tested more than 32,000 deer for CWD between July 2021 and Apr 2022. Of the more than 32,000 deer sampled, 86 tested positive for CWD [or 0.2%].
> Those deer bring the total number of CWD cases found in the state to 292 since the first case in wild deer was found…in early 2012.
> CWD-positive cases in Barry, Christian, Howell and Washington counties marked the first detections of the disease in these counties.
Instead of the state Ag dept:
> “Each CWD-positive facility negatively impacts tens of thousands of hunters and PA’s wild deer. PGC has the biological and law enforcement staff necessary for captive deer shooting facility oversight, and full authority over these facilities would help protect the state’s wild deer resource….”
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> …fires at up to 405 fps with a 14.5″ power stroke, delivering 146 ft-lbs of energy. …this crossbow tightens up to 14.75″ across when cocked. …now in stock and ready to ship from centerpointarchery.com for $399.99.
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> Maven is a Wyoming-based company that sells directly to consumers—you and me. That means no middleman and no retail markup. In theory, it means that we get great optics at a significantly lower price.
> I was skeptical at first. I’m a bit of an optic-snob, and wasn’t really interested in a binocular unless it came from Swarovski, Zeiss or Leica. But last fall one of my buddies used a Maven binocular during a backcountry Coues deer hunt, and I was impressed with his ability to spot the little “Grey Ghost” deer with them.
> The optical clarity of the B1.2 is very, very good. Color and contrast are excellent as well. Is it better than Swarovski? No, it’s not. But it is very good, and available at a third of the price….
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> …redefining long-range hunting precision with the new LR Hunter (LRH) series of riflescopes that has been developed for shooters and hunters who are looking for a ‘do it all’ reticle. The combination of First Focal Plane (FFP) and adjustable illumination enables the LR Hunter to mimic traditional reticles on low magnification…at higher powers, a level of precision is on offer to help you connect with the farthest targets. The LR Hunter is a true hybrid.
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Less than 5 inches wide! So if a crossbow isn’t in the shape of a cross anymore, what is it?? 😁 Few deets:
> …the R18, using the new VertiCoil Cam System to compact a full-power crossbow into a weapon a fraction of the size of all others.
> …the limbs of the R18 expand vertically instead of horizontally for an axle-to-axle height of just 1.3″ when fully cocked or 4.1″ uncocked.
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> I bought my house in spring 2019 with the goal of having some land and possibly a small place to hunt. I was hoping for about 10 acres of woods surrounded by fields and other ideal whitetail habitat. I signed papers on 6.5 acres, only 2-3 acres of which were potential whitetail cover, as the lot is surrounded by 3 other houses.
> Signs of old rubs and a few dried tracks indicated that deer at least passed through the backside of my property… The silver lining was the surrounding ag fields and 40 acres of untouched whitetail bedding area directly behind my yard.
> After weeks of drying, crabgrass overtook the clover that survived in my backyard plot, and I decided to do a late-summer turnip plot by the elevated blind. It came in nicely as summer turned to fall, but with neighborhood noise increasing by the day, the challenges of building a buck honey hole became soberingly real.
> As with most of my best spots on public land, I ran a trail camera at mock scrapes and checked them every 3-5 days. To my surprise, 5 good bucks, including a 12-pointer, a couple of 8s, a 10 and a heavy half-horn older buck appeared during daylight. …that told me the potential was there.
> I had learned deer needed a reason – good food – to enter my property, but they needed excellent cover even more. For instant cover, I arranged a ring of Egyptian wheat around the raised blind plot to shield it from the houses, and then planted rows of Egyptian wheat in the back yard to segregate it and build a wall from my house. For improved long-term cover, I planted strategic pines and spruce at various places….
> …I brushed in a ground blind in the secluded corner of my plot, mowed an easy path through the goldenrod directly to it, and made 5 mock scrapes within easy shooting distance….
He ended up shooting a 9-pointer and a 10-pointer last season. More tips in there – great encouragement if you’re only able to hunt smaller areas, or maybe a smaller area within a big one.
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“Until you see them it’s hard to sell yourself on it, but ultimately you will be pleased with the results.”
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What’s the DB and who does it?
The DeerBlaster is a weekly roundup of the best, funniest, newest and most important stuff about deer hunting – culled from around the interwebz FOR DIEHARD DEER HUNTERS and blasted into your inbox.
The DB is put together by a couple deer nerds 😁 from around the country. We excerpt content (and credit EVERYONE!), comment on content, do some original content…because we can’t get enough deer hunting – bet you’re wired the same!
The DeerBlaster’s a work in progress, just like we are 😂. Any issues, suggestions, whatever, just hit Reply to this email and we’ll get it. Thank you for reading!
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