deer season

[elmer]

It's hard to believe the early season starts a week from tomorrow. With the hog situation, high weeds, and lots of acorns it's going to be a tough season in east Texas. Oh well the wife prefers the pork anyway.

[Oldshooter]

Not to mention the ignorant 13 inch rack rule! The young and does are gonna suffer this season!

[elmer]

Since I hunt on a ranch that is under the MLD level 3 rules we have always had management goals of only taking 4 1/2 or older bucks and given a higher quota of does to take than buck tags. We also have fairly strict definitions of cull bucks. Reviewing the last two years records our average inside spread was 16.5 and varied from a low of 13 7/8 to a high of 18. Not bad for east Texas.

[Oldshooter]

That is good, my problem is that for young and inexperienced hunters a 13 and 7/8 buck is not a "shooter". Cause not many can tell a 11 and 1/2 from a 13 AND 1/2. I'm not in favor of shooting young underdeveloped deer but that restriction in the southeast Texas places I sometimes hunt is a show stopper and deer hunting may go the way of duck hunting here! Í'm a meat shooter my self cause I cant digest horns, but I'm afraid that rule in these woods (in the short term) will cause kids to give up hunting and embolden poachers!

[elmer]

I am also primarily a meat hunter as well. I like to take a couple does each year and maybe a spike. I have shot one "trophy" buck in the last four years. It looks like this year I will be be mainly hunting hogs because that is what is available and if I don't take out several I won't have any deer left in my area.

I am hopeful that the recent Trinity river bottom flooding will help. Historically when we get a few feet of flood water the hogs will move on for a bit, but the deer show up on the game cameras the day after the water recedes. So maybe for a couple months I will get a reprieve from the hogs. I have also put hog panels around my feeder.

[rockbilly]

I drove out to my place to check feeders and the water source and found a small spike buck draped over the gate, it was a fairly fresh kill but the buzzards had already started working on it.

The place next to mine does day leasing so I assume one of their bow hunters killed it and after seeing it decided they didn’t want it, hung it on my gate and left.  This has been an ongoing problem for several years, .He over leases, lets them kill anything in sight, and leave anything they don’t want for the varmints and buzzards.  Last year opening day of gun season he had eleven hunters on a 278 acre place, they killed 14 deer, anything that moved got shot.  I talked to the Game Warden about this, he said as long as they were legal they could kill every deer they seen and he could do nothing about it.  It just kinda pisses me off that I have worked so hard for near thirty years to develop a good herd with good genetics and some jerk kills them before them have a chance to grow up.

Sad thing, the only way this can ever be corrected is with a funeral…………when he dies maybe the next person will think more in line with myself and the other property owners.

[Oldshooter]

One can only hope! Thats an arm load of hunters on 278 acres!