Good Luck on Opening Day!

[haoleboy]

Opening Weekend. Shot this guy yesterday following a doe at 4:45pm

 

[Flying_Mustang]

Short story: Just after the crack of dawn Saturday, sitting in my blind freezing my fandango off (despite foot warmers and hand warmers), here comes a fat doe and a yearling. I would have held off for a buck, but I saw the doe limping. Turns out she was missing the lower part of her left front leg. It was all healed up, but she was a tripod. Knowing she was going to go through my property over to the neighbor's farm (The Killing Fields), I dropped her in her tracks. I'm giving myself bonus points for a mercy killing AND enjoying some tasty venison.

 

[mark71211]

Hunted this weekend and only saw four turkeys some tree rats and one rabbit. My hunting club of 24 members only got four deer total this weekend but some of the guys were waiting for a wall hanger and passed on a bunch of does.

 

[mark71211]

Posting just so you know, if anyone needs a taxidermist, send me a pm. ALBY on here can be 1 reference for you if you need one.

What the going rate to get a shoulder mount done when and if I do get a wall hanger? I would like to know about how much I got to start putting away to get one done. You got any pic of some of the work you have done?

 

[foxtrapper]

What the going rate to get a shoulder mount done when and if I do get a wall hanger? I would like to know about how much I got to start putting away to get one done. You got any pic of some of the work you have done?

I charge 485.00 and put in the details. I would need half down at drop-off. Also if you bring it to Uncle Buck's processing in MD Line, I can pick the cape/head up for you, but you would still need to tell me the pose you want and can send me a check. I also need your hunt lisc #, confirmation #, date of kill, and county of kill.

You can browse pics at www.brushwolftaxidermy.com

Here is one buck from last year. Below the pic is a diagram on how to cape a buck. The under leg cuts should be made where the brown fur meets the white fur.

 

[sykesville]

Beautiful work Foxtrapper

 

[foxtrapper]

Ok, I hunted today and had a few seconds I could have made a shot, but was waiting for the 3 deer to come more into the open so I could select the biggest. Well they hung up behind brush, or had just a butt sticking out, then disapeared behind some real thick stuff, and trotted out a while later and completely out of view. I waited and they never came back. Oh yeah, things started off with me busting them up, so I froze hoping they wouldn't go past the bamboo. They didn't. Things ended with me walking up the driveway to see where in heck they had bedded after trotting off while I was in my blind. Well I spooked them up and they were way over from my shooting area, so I went back down the other way as I wanted to put some lure out for my fox traps. While down there, I saw the 3 deer run across the neighbor's property parallel to me. Egads I really spooked them now. To add to the insults, a fox had dug the bait out of my 2 holes without touching the traps. So I made a different style set at both and used only lure/fox pee. I also hung a buck tarsal gland up in a tree.

Oh yeah, when the deer action wasn't happening, I got to watch ALOT of squirrel action.

 

[SOMDSHOOT]

I finally got mine last night at 5:13PM at 15 yards. I was on the ground at the edge of the field fr this hunt. Dressed at 130 and this buck is a bit longer compared to any other deer I have ever taken. This rascal is like a stretch limo. This season has been pitiful so I'm smiling all over myself with this deer. I also include a photo op of my point-of-view from the ground.

The Buck came out of the Right hand corner of this photo on to the field at 15 yards. There was a smaller 4 point right in front of him, so, I just let them both make their way on to the field before I took the shot.

This buck was taken with my trusty Rossi 20 Gauge slug gun and a Remington BuckHammer in 20 ga. / 3". The deer didn't make it past 20 yards before he fell. Not a drop of blood on the field. He was snout to the ground as soon as it hit.

 

[corelokt]

SOMDSHOOT
Nice deer and nice land your hunting there....Congrats

 

[tdt91]

Well my forth time out today and still no sight of Deer. I'm wondering if my oily skin is tipping them off to me.

 

[SOMDSHOOT]

SOMDSHOOT
Nice deer and nice land your hunting there....Congrats

Thanks. Our farm is about 1200 acres total. I got these total of three photos, sort of a panoramic view of the main field. This is the "hook" side of the large "J" shaped main field. The center photo is looking across the " bottom of the J hook" we'll call it. The green on the field is Wheat planted about 3 weeks ago.

.

 

[xtreme43s10]

I finally got mine last night at 5:13PM at 15 yards. I was on the ground at the edge of the field fr this hunt. Dressed at 130 and this buck is a bit longer compared to any other deer I have ever taken. This rascal is like a stretch limo. This season has been pitiful so I'm smiling all over myself with this deer. I also include a photo op of my point-of-view from the ground.

The Buck came out of the Right hand corner of this photo on to the field at 15 yards. There was a smaller 4 point right in front of him, so, I just let them both make their way on to the field before I took the shot.

This buck was taken with my trusty Rossi 20 Gauge slug gun and a Remington BuckHammer in 20 ga. / 3". The deer didn't make it past 20 yards before he fell. Not a drop of blood on the field. He was snout to the ground as soon as it hit.

Congrats on the deer

 

[wilcam47]

I finally got mine last night at 5:13PM at 15 yards. I was on the ground at the edge of the field fr this hunt. Dressed at 130 and this buck is a bit longer compared to any other deer I have ever taken. This rascal is like a stretch limo. This season has been pitiful so I'm smiling all over myself with this deer. I also include a photo op of my point-of-view from the ground.

The Buck came out of the Right hand corner of this photo on to the field at 15 yards. There was a smaller 4 point right in front of him, so, I just let them both make their way on to the field before I took the shot.

This buck was taken with my trusty Rossi 20 Gauge slug gun and a Remington BuckHammer in 20 ga. / 3". The deer didn't make it past 20 yards before he fell. Not a drop of blood on the field. He was snout to the ground as soon as it hit.

congrats! Looks like some good chili and backstrap dinner will be in your future! Try my chili recipe in the cooking thread

 

[jac43k]

Some awesome pictures. I'm in the field tomorrow, maybe I'll have a picture to post.

 

[SOMDSHOOT]

Thanks for the kind words fellas. I will tell you this though, I have deemed my stands and trail cameras absolutely useless this year. It fascinates me to no end how much time I spend setting in stands only to get the best bucks while setting on the ground on my old black milk crate.

And, adding to my weird hunting stats, this is the 5th buck I have taken in 8 years on a Full Moon phase.

Another interesting fact of this hunt was that I got this buck on 11/26/2012 and the last buck I got last year was on 11/27/2011 almost a year to the day. I have the date of kill and what it was written on the wall of the home built walk-in cooler in the garage.

My father showed up on the field while I was dressing this buck and the first words out of his mouth were, "Boy you just couldn't help yourself could you ? Just had to wait for the Full Moon huh." This unprovoked and unscheduled "Full Moon Buck" thing has become something of a "tradition".

While I was setting on my trusty old black milk crate that evening I kept saying to myself, "Come on let's keep it up" and when I saw this buck come out in the corner, I almost fell off that milk crate. I had one of those "SOB I can't believe it" moments. Just keep in mind, the deer hunting has been really really bad on the farm this year. I'll assume this buck was in the alignment of the planet and stars or something mystical because this buck was something of a "miracle" to me to even be seen and it was 1000% completely unexpected.

I have to take much more pride in this buck than I probably ever have any other deer in my 35+ years of deer hunting career. This buck has taken many extra hours and I've been through a tough fight this year to even see a deer to shoot at. He's got an extreme amount of investment in him to me.

 

[CaptChaos]

I was probably less than five minutes from getting out of my stand when I heard something haulin' ass down the hill. Due to the fact that I had seen several turkeys that day, I thought that's what it was because deer never make that much noise unless they've been startled or jumped up. I determined that there was definitely more than one, and they were coming pretty quickly, although they stopped behind some really thick holly two or three times. I couldn't see them well and after I figured out they weren't turkeys, I thought they were foxes for a minute but then realized that they were too dark to be foxes. Then I thought that perhaps they were coyotes, despite having not seen any coyotes or signs of them in Calvert County at all yet. Then one of them raised their head and I saw the white under the chin. I have been getting pictures of a group of 3-4 does very frequently and these went straight to my corn pile. They were sort of in a triangle; one was broadside, another was sort of quartering towards and another was facing me on a slight angle. Initially I was going to take a shot at the one that was broadside, but I decided against it as I didn't want the bullet to go through it and strike another deer in an undesirable location. I decided on the one that was mostly facing me and slightly angled to my left. I knew I could get a good shot around the shoulder area, but I waited a bit to see if any other shot presented itself. I had plenty of time-back and forth between my eyes and scope, adjusting my scope power, etc. I got ready to pull the hammer back on my H&R Ultraslughunter and imagined them getting spooked and taking off, so I slowly pulled it back and waited for the *CLICK*-then nothing, they just kept eating and didn't even hear it. With my scope on about 7X, I pulled the trigger with the crosshairs just behind the shoulder while it was down eating. Since this shot was approximately 26 yards and my gun is a tack driver at that distance, I had a great feeling that I would connect. Upon firing, it was dark enough to see the muzzle flash and between that and the dark, I wasn't sure which way they went other than what I could hear and see silhouettes. The one that I thought I hit ran to the right, stumbled, ran back to the left a bit, ran to the right again and stumbled again before running into the thickness of the woods. Another one ran straight back, but seemed to come back again and then followed the first one that I thought I shot. The third one ran what seemed like a huge circle and then ran away to what I believe was about my 12 o'clock, but I wasn't paying much attention to that one. I reloaded, but didn't get another shot.

About 15 minutes later, I texted my brother-in-law to see if he was still there as his stand is approximately 150 yards from mine, opposite a large hill and lots of woods. He was, and was actually just out of his stand when I took the shot. He came over and we proceeded to look for the blood trail. We looked for what was probably 45 minutes or so and did not find a single spot of blood. I was quite confident that I hit it, so we kept at it and were able to tell exactly where the deer slipped in the mud and ran through both streams, based on footprints and water splashes. Since we found no blood and it was so dark at this point, we gave up the search, with me quite disappointed and thinking that I must have missed it, despite being a 26 yard shot.

On Sunday morning after my hunt, I got down out of my stand and decided I was going to look where I thought the deer went. After about 15 minutes or so of searching and going through some pretty thick woods, I found the doe. She was pretty stiff and cold, since it was about 30 degrees the night before.

My guess is she was about 110lbs or so. Unfortunately, when we started gutting her we thought that the meat was spoiled. After skinning her, we realized that we were right. The smell was quite nauseating. I was quite disappointed as I felt like it was wasted. Either that, or it was sick or something. We also noticed that the gut was still pretty warm, despite it being 30 degrees the night before and the outside being pretty stiff. It may have lived for a few hours? We're not sure. Hard to imagine that it spoiled that quickly, but the smell was undeniable.

My slug went in exactly where I was aiming, but there was no exit wound. Upon gutting it, we saw that I had hit the liver and it had quite a large hole in it. The side of the ribs that it was laying on when I found it had a really dark spot in the meat, and that side smelled the worst.

During the skinning, I recovered the slug in it's hind quarter, in the same side as the entrance wound. The slug traveled in through the back above the shoulder, down the length of the body and stopped just short of going through the skin in the hind quarter. This explains why we didn't find a blood trail.

Here is the Hornady SST, 20 gauge slug:

 

[itsslow98]

30 degrees overnight there is no way that deer was spoiled. My guess is just due to internals sitting inside it smelled bad.

 

[CaptChaos]

30 degrees overnight there is no way that deer was spoiled. My guess is just due to internals sitting inside it smelled bad.

Yeah, it was absolutely repulsive though. Unfortunately, I just wasn't willing to take the chance. Even after we skinned it and I hosed the hell out of it, the outside backstraps smelled awful.

 

[itsslow98]

Yeah, it was absolutely repulsive though. Unfortunately, I just wasn't willing to take the chance. Even after we skinned it and I hosed the hell out of it, the outside backstraps smelled awful.

Yea I dont blame you not risking it.

 

[corelokt]

A couple years ago I shot a doe during early ml season late Saturday. I trailed small drops of blood in the dark then lost the trail, but marked the last blood spot I found. I decided not to give up on it and went back Sunday morning and after an hour search I found her. Gut shot with no exit wound!
I thought it stunk a little while gutting it but figured the meat was still good. The butcher thought otherwise. He said the meat would not make you sick but it would just taste really bad and advised me not to have it butchered. I told him I looked for it well after dark and went back Sunday to find it because I don't like shooting a deer and giving up on it and I'd hate to have it go to waste.
The butchered said it won't be going to waste that other animals would eat it if I put it back in the woods. I thought about trying to salvage some meat by butchering it myself, but after driving 10 minutes I realized the smell was pretty bad and I had the windows down. So I stopped...Jumped out of the car and drug the deer to the edge of a field near the woods and drove off. I felt pretty damn bad for doing this and tried to convince myself it was the right thing to do and that I gave my best effort to recover the deer. It wasn't till an hour later that I realized I left the tag on the deer in my haste to drag it out to the woods.