Oregon Deer Hunt 2014

[blhenson]

Had four rifle hunters with tags at the ranch this year, in NE Oregon (one was me)...A new hunter got the deer on the far right. We also had a bow hunter who got a 155

Probably doing the photo bucket link wrong...but here goes...hopefully when I screw it up, someone else will tell me how to do it right...

 

[blhenson]

DSCF0377.jpg Photo by blhenson31 | Photobucket

 

[winmagman]

Here ya go. Looks like a great hunt to me.

 

[blhenson]

Thanks for the picture post....It was a good hunt....Two were closeups, under 100 yards, by two new hunters. The two bigger bucks had a bit of distance...both single shots to the neck, one by a .270 Model 70 using a 130 grain set at @250 yards, the other at 295 yards Rem 700, .264 mag with 140 grain SST. All loaded here at the ranch. We're liking the SST's for deer, and have used them on some cow elk with good effect, but the cows are all close in and are head or neck shots.

The smallest deer was shot with a 140 grain VLD Hunting, out of a 7mm rem mag, was impressive, but the sample size is small enough that we didn't use it on elk.

 

[blhenson]

Another picture of one of the deer, after we'd packed it out of the canyon. Not too bad, 3/4 mile or so...but 1000 feet of that was vertical...

 

[Shootin4fun]

Nice hunt. How big is the ranch? Do you plant food plots for them and all that kind of thing? Do you have trail cams stationed around the land?

I hunt deer in the Sierra Nevadas and it is very tough to find them. 4/4 in a week would be an amazing feat here (unless we could shoot does). Last year it took me 13 days of hiking/spotting/stalking from dawn til dusk. We can only shoot bucks, so the groups of does I kept encountering were frustrating except that the buck I got was no doubt attracted by them.

Funny thing is, when its not hunting season here you see may deer randomly in the woods, in rural neighborhoods, crossing the road, and dead by the side of the road.

 

[blhenson]

We run on about 4500 acres, but border public land that is virtually inaccessible to the public. We farm on high benches next to deep canyons, anywhere from 1000 to 1800 feet deep. We don't intentionally plant food plots, but have hay fields adjacent to the canyons and timber, so pull in a lot of deer, and too many elk. Opening day of deer season I saw 29 bucks (most smallish). The rut is on now, and the biggest bucks are up out of the canyons with the does in the fields. Most folks don't end up in the canyons with the bigger deer, they shoot something before they get there. So they don't even get hunted most years. I went down low this year and picked up the larger of the deer.

i have a couple of trail cameras out, more for bear than anything else.