gommer
New Member
Picture at the bottom may not be for the squeemish, you've been warned!
Well, I found my way here by way of sniffing for used gear.
Got kids so my stuff... doesn't always stay -- my stuff. I rarely ask questions not because I know everything but largely because the internet exists and most topics have been discussed ad-nauseum, and thus -- more often than not, I'm able to find it somewhere.
So, in this regard I'm more likely to respond to query than to generate it. Being that I would not consider myself much of an expert in hunting, particularly in long range hunting, I mostly intend to lurk. Being in NW Arkansas -- most of the shots I take I have to choose between a pointy stick and the gun. In fact, I took a 4 point a few years back at less than 1 yard -- which as amusing as it may seem to ponder, I was really weary about doing a sub 1yd shot with a bow mostly because I was concerned the arrow might not be off the string before it touched the deer.
That said, I'll start off by explaining where we hunt! We've lived in this area for generations. My family owns quite a bit of farm land in the area. One particular farm is where we hunt. It's surrounded on one side by a commercial cattle farm that is not hunted, I think it's about 2k acres. They leave their grain out. Needless to say, the deer that roam through the area are not small or malnourished.
On the property we hunt, which totals about 130-140 acres, there is only one open area of notable size -- it's about 500yds long and 170yds wide. So my longest shot is going to be around that 500yd mark. Whether that's considered long range or not I imagine is going to vary. Here in NWA -- that's ELR, lol.
Now, I have a cousin who has a 1k yd range -- so we do shoot long range, but we don't hunt there. We very rarely shoot there, too. It's just... it's out there.
I digress... so on this property we do hunt, it's pretty absurd in terms of the deer population. I don't know why. Day 1 of rifle season out there wounds like WW3. Yet I've been out there and seen a herd of does run through that looked like it was 20-30 deer strong.
I have so many stories about how absurd the deer population is in that area... I'll just start with this most recent seasons hunting day.
I say hunting day because my son tagged out on day 1 and I didn't want any more deer to clean, lol. As my Dad used to say -- best way to ruin a good deer hunt, shoot a deer.
So, on to the story! My son comes by around 5. Me, I'm old. I'm tired. I'm not ready.
So about 5:30 we leave. I decided McDonald's breakfast would be nice. So we wait at McDonald's until it opens at 6. By the time we get to the gate -- light is starting to creep up. Woops!
So we pull in, I hit a light up the hill and can see several deer about 300yds up from the gate. There's almost always deer up there when we get in so I always pop a light up there to see if they're up and around or bed down. It was about 15 degrees so I wasn't sure if they'd be bed down or not.
Anyway, we pull in, drive for a few minutes until we get to the calf feed pen (basically a pen with grain for calves with an opening too small for full-grown cattle to get in -- for anyone not familiar) and park. We park there because that's where my uncle parks when he's loading grain into the calf pen -- which is obviously a dinner bell for deer. I can't tell you how many times I've found deer asleep in that pen.
So we get out. I'm tired. I had surgery a couple weeks prior so I'm sore. I want to be there, but I don't want to get a deer myself so I leave my gun in the truck. But, I brought my coffee and cigars, though! Usually we have stands setup but we pulled them down last year as she had hardwoods cleared out and the stands needed to come down to be sure we weren't in the way of equipment. So we just walk about 200yds down into the woods and pick a fallen tree in some briars -- on the other side of this patch is a largely open area about 1/10 of an acre that is all acorn trees. So, a heavily trafficked area.
We get situated, rake all the leaves and twigs out of the general area we'll be sitting so we can move around without making noise. Get out the coffee thermos, fill my mug (yeah, I got ridiculous this trip), and light myself a cigar (yeah, got more ridiculous).
Less than a minute later we can see up through the trees, about 400yds away on the neighboring farm, a doe is running full speed our direction. Ugh. Just lit this thing!
Another minute or two go by and we can hear her coming to us, so I put out my cigar. Ugh. Generally, you don't hear deer out here -- you see them. But today, this little lady was on a mission. When she does show up, she looks exasperated. She stopped about 20ft away, right in the middle of the acorn patch. I imagine this was part of her routine. When she stopped, she looked back at where she'd come in. Took a few deep breaths, and went back to running.
Maybe 20-30 seconds behind her came a small 4 point buck. My son tried to get a sight on him, even made audible noise to attempt to get his attention. At this point, we're laughing at that encounter went down. I light my cigar again.
Less than 5 minutes later -- in comes another buck. This one a decent 6 point. He came in nose to ground, sniffing that doe's trail, I suspect. My son is gesturing to me asking if he should take it, and I just shrug and point back to him as to say that's up to him. So, seemingly having decided to take the buck -- he lines up a shot and tries to get the bucks attention. He makes ticking noise, and ends up finally getting it's attention with a whistle. Takes the shot when the buck is about 20ft away. He runs maybe 10 feet and drops. Notice I didn't put my cigar out this time? Haha
So this place we're at is about 75 yards from the large open field I've previously described. We give this deer about ten minutes to make sure he's fully expired peacefully (as peacefully as can be, I guess) and we get up -- on the way to go check him, I say let's go check the field. So we do, my son walking first being I had to finish that mug of coffee, obviously.
He's walking about 30ft in front of me and walks about 50ft into the field. I'm not sure why he walked out that far into the field, but he did. About 400yds away there were 5 deer. Of those 5 deer, 3 immediately began coming TOWARDS us. One, in particular, seemed to be the boss. And boss boy came trotting, yes - trotting, right up to my son. As he's trotting up to him from 400yds away, I can't tell what it is -- my son turns around to me and whispers it's a buck, and asks me what to do. I shrug, he asks again, I point back to him and shrug again, the deer drops into a small valley area -- just out of visibility, about 70 yds out, when he comes up on our side I can see the rack, the spread, my son turns back at me again looking bug-eyed, lol, and I immediately say shoot it.
Still trotting, the deer comes up to maybe 15ft away and starts sizing my son up. Doing that head-bob thing deer do when they are trying to see something. We're both just trying to stand still and breath as little as possible since, as I said previously, it was in the teens and every breath made a cloud. Particularly with an adrenaline rush like that.
Obviously he didn't want to shoot it head-on like that, so we just stood there while this 8 point sized up my kid (I say kid, he was 20 at that particular time) for what seemed like minutes. Realistically, probably 30 seconds or so, but it was a long - intense 30 seconds. Once he decides he doesn't want to... not interested in my son, lol, he starts back to trotting, this time away and to our left. So he gets 30ft away -- my son starts making ticking noises. Doesn't care. 50ft away, whistles. 30 yards away - I straight up YELL, HEY! The buck stops and turns back looking at us. Almost perfect broadside, but not totally perfect. So my son is there hesitating because it's not perfect broadside. I loadly speak to him, "Take the shot!"
And so he does. The buck gave a big kick and took off for the field line. It was hard to tell if he made it into the other side or not, we were both concerned because that's the longest we've ever seen a deer run after a shot. He was worried he'd missed, or worse, wounded him. Which was fair, that was very intense. I can only imagine myself at 20, not hardly the man he is.
This got me thinking, too, that's two deer to clean. My son is tagged out now, and thank goodness I didn't bring my rifle because of the other 4 deer, two of them followed along with this big boy and they were both bucks, too. The other two I lost track of so I'm not sure but I suspect it was a full on boy band.
Anyway, as is customary for us -- we gave him time to expire. First the customary 10 minutes, then add some time by going and getting the truck. Figure on the way, might as well pickup the thermos, check on the other dear, etc, add some time.
Maybe 15 minutes have passed and we're at the truck. I open the door, grab my McDonald's Dr Pepper - take a big old swig when I notice my son is drifting off from the truck looking at something. He turns back to me and says "there's a deer over there." I respond, "don't care, got two to clean already."
Unable to let it go at that, he takes a knee and scopes it in. The deer is about 200ish yards away at the edge of a tree line. He looks back at me and says "I think it's a buck" -- to which I respond "so?" -- and he says, "No, Dad, you need to look."
So I pull my rifle out of the truck, push my scope up to 18x and give a good look. Yaup, it was a buck. A 10 point.
I go back to the truck, open my box of ammo, load a couple rounds in, chamber a round -- this is an AR-10, BTW, I did not plan to hunt today -- so chambering was not a quiet affair by any stretch. I guess 200 yds was enough that it calmed the slam -- or he was deaf, either way -- I walked over and got a solid brace and took the shot. He took a hop and slammed to the ground like a brick.
So, there it was... maybe an hour into the first day of hunting and we had 3 bucks. A six point, an eight point and a ten point.
Hunting on this farm has always been a blessing. That was the first time my son had come out with me since my Dad passed away. I like to think my Dad had something to do with how that day turned out. He would have loved the story. A four, six, eight, then a ten point showing up -- in that order.
Anyway, glad to be here -- hope to see and share future stories and maybe helpful information!
Well, I found my way here by way of sniffing for used gear.
Got kids so my stuff... doesn't always stay -- my stuff. I rarely ask questions not because I know everything but largely because the internet exists and most topics have been discussed ad-nauseum, and thus -- more often than not, I'm able to find it somewhere.
So, in this regard I'm more likely to respond to query than to generate it. Being that I would not consider myself much of an expert in hunting, particularly in long range hunting, I mostly intend to lurk. Being in NW Arkansas -- most of the shots I take I have to choose between a pointy stick and the gun. In fact, I took a 4 point a few years back at less than 1 yard -- which as amusing as it may seem to ponder, I was really weary about doing a sub 1yd shot with a bow mostly because I was concerned the arrow might not be off the string before it touched the deer.
That said, I'll start off by explaining where we hunt! We've lived in this area for generations. My family owns quite a bit of farm land in the area. One particular farm is where we hunt. It's surrounded on one side by a commercial cattle farm that is not hunted, I think it's about 2k acres. They leave their grain out. Needless to say, the deer that roam through the area are not small or malnourished.
On the property we hunt, which totals about 130-140 acres, there is only one open area of notable size -- it's about 500yds long and 170yds wide. So my longest shot is going to be around that 500yd mark. Whether that's considered long range or not I imagine is going to vary. Here in NWA -- that's ELR, lol.
Now, I have a cousin who has a 1k yd range -- so we do shoot long range, but we don't hunt there. We very rarely shoot there, too. It's just... it's out there.
I digress... so on this property we do hunt, it's pretty absurd in terms of the deer population. I don't know why. Day 1 of rifle season out there wounds like WW3. Yet I've been out there and seen a herd of does run through that looked like it was 20-30 deer strong.
I have so many stories about how absurd the deer population is in that area... I'll just start with this most recent seasons hunting day.
I say hunting day because my son tagged out on day 1 and I didn't want any more deer to clean, lol. As my Dad used to say -- best way to ruin a good deer hunt, shoot a deer.
So, on to the story! My son comes by around 5. Me, I'm old. I'm tired. I'm not ready.
So about 5:30 we leave. I decided McDonald's breakfast would be nice. So we wait at McDonald's until it opens at 6. By the time we get to the gate -- light is starting to creep up. Woops!
So we pull in, I hit a light up the hill and can see several deer about 300yds up from the gate. There's almost always deer up there when we get in so I always pop a light up there to see if they're up and around or bed down. It was about 15 degrees so I wasn't sure if they'd be bed down or not.
Anyway, we pull in, drive for a few minutes until we get to the calf feed pen (basically a pen with grain for calves with an opening too small for full-grown cattle to get in -- for anyone not familiar) and park. We park there because that's where my uncle parks when he's loading grain into the calf pen -- which is obviously a dinner bell for deer. I can't tell you how many times I've found deer asleep in that pen.
So we get out. I'm tired. I had surgery a couple weeks prior so I'm sore. I want to be there, but I don't want to get a deer myself so I leave my gun in the truck. But, I brought my coffee and cigars, though! Usually we have stands setup but we pulled them down last year as she had hardwoods cleared out and the stands needed to come down to be sure we weren't in the way of equipment. So we just walk about 200yds down into the woods and pick a fallen tree in some briars -- on the other side of this patch is a largely open area about 1/10 of an acre that is all acorn trees. So, a heavily trafficked area.
We get situated, rake all the leaves and twigs out of the general area we'll be sitting so we can move around without making noise. Get out the coffee thermos, fill my mug (yeah, I got ridiculous this trip), and light myself a cigar (yeah, got more ridiculous).
Less than a minute later we can see up through the trees, about 400yds away on the neighboring farm, a doe is running full speed our direction. Ugh. Just lit this thing!
Another minute or two go by and we can hear her coming to us, so I put out my cigar. Ugh. Generally, you don't hear deer out here -- you see them. But today, this little lady was on a mission. When she does show up, she looks exasperated. She stopped about 20ft away, right in the middle of the acorn patch. I imagine this was part of her routine. When she stopped, she looked back at where she'd come in. Took a few deep breaths, and went back to running.
Maybe 20-30 seconds behind her came a small 4 point buck. My son tried to get a sight on him, even made audible noise to attempt to get his attention. At this point, we're laughing at that encounter went down. I light my cigar again.
Less than 5 minutes later -- in comes another buck. This one a decent 6 point. He came in nose to ground, sniffing that doe's trail, I suspect. My son is gesturing to me asking if he should take it, and I just shrug and point back to him as to say that's up to him. So, seemingly having decided to take the buck -- he lines up a shot and tries to get the bucks attention. He makes ticking noise, and ends up finally getting it's attention with a whistle. Takes the shot when the buck is about 20ft away. He runs maybe 10 feet and drops. Notice I didn't put my cigar out this time? Haha
So this place we're at is about 75 yards from the large open field I've previously described. We give this deer about ten minutes to make sure he's fully expired peacefully (as peacefully as can be, I guess) and we get up -- on the way to go check him, I say let's go check the field. So we do, my son walking first being I had to finish that mug of coffee, obviously.
He's walking about 30ft in front of me and walks about 50ft into the field. I'm not sure why he walked out that far into the field, but he did. About 400yds away there were 5 deer. Of those 5 deer, 3 immediately began coming TOWARDS us. One, in particular, seemed to be the boss. And boss boy came trotting, yes - trotting, right up to my son. As he's trotting up to him from 400yds away, I can't tell what it is -- my son turns around to me and whispers it's a buck, and asks me what to do. I shrug, he asks again, I point back to him and shrug again, the deer drops into a small valley area -- just out of visibility, about 70 yds out, when he comes up on our side I can see the rack, the spread, my son turns back at me again looking bug-eyed, lol, and I immediately say shoot it.
Still trotting, the deer comes up to maybe 15ft away and starts sizing my son up. Doing that head-bob thing deer do when they are trying to see something. We're both just trying to stand still and breath as little as possible since, as I said previously, it was in the teens and every breath made a cloud. Particularly with an adrenaline rush like that.
Obviously he didn't want to shoot it head-on like that, so we just stood there while this 8 point sized up my kid (I say kid, he was 20 at that particular time) for what seemed like minutes. Realistically, probably 30 seconds or so, but it was a long - intense 30 seconds. Once he decides he doesn't want to... not interested in my son, lol, he starts back to trotting, this time away and to our left. So he gets 30ft away -- my son starts making ticking noises. Doesn't care. 50ft away, whistles. 30 yards away - I straight up YELL, HEY! The buck stops and turns back looking at us. Almost perfect broadside, but not totally perfect. So my son is there hesitating because it's not perfect broadside. I loadly speak to him, "Take the shot!"
And so he does. The buck gave a big kick and took off for the field line. It was hard to tell if he made it into the other side or not, we were both concerned because that's the longest we've ever seen a deer run after a shot. He was worried he'd missed, or worse, wounded him. Which was fair, that was very intense. I can only imagine myself at 20, not hardly the man he is.
This got me thinking, too, that's two deer to clean. My son is tagged out now, and thank goodness I didn't bring my rifle because of the other 4 deer, two of them followed along with this big boy and they were both bucks, too. The other two I lost track of so I'm not sure but I suspect it was a full on boy band.
Anyway, as is customary for us -- we gave him time to expire. First the customary 10 minutes, then add some time by going and getting the truck. Figure on the way, might as well pickup the thermos, check on the other dear, etc, add some time.
Maybe 15 minutes have passed and we're at the truck. I open the door, grab my McDonald's Dr Pepper - take a big old swig when I notice my son is drifting off from the truck looking at something. He turns back to me and says "there's a deer over there." I respond, "don't care, got two to clean already."
Unable to let it go at that, he takes a knee and scopes it in. The deer is about 200ish yards away at the edge of a tree line. He looks back at me and says "I think it's a buck" -- to which I respond "so?" -- and he says, "No, Dad, you need to look."
So I pull my rifle out of the truck, push my scope up to 18x and give a good look. Yaup, it was a buck. A 10 point.
I go back to the truck, open my box of ammo, load a couple rounds in, chamber a round -- this is an AR-10, BTW, I did not plan to hunt today -- so chambering was not a quiet affair by any stretch. I guess 200 yds was enough that it calmed the slam -- or he was deaf, either way -- I walked over and got a solid brace and took the shot. He took a hop and slammed to the ground like a brick.
So, there it was... maybe an hour into the first day of hunting and we had 3 bucks. A six point, an eight point and a ten point.
Hunting on this farm has always been a blessing. That was the first time my son had come out with me since my Dad passed away. I like to think my Dad had something to do with how that day turned out. He would have loved the story. A four, six, eight, then a ten point showing up -- in that order.
Anyway, glad to be here -- hope to see and share future stories and maybe helpful information!
memtb
