lack of bigger bucks??

[laker1]

Areas like 172 has estimates of 26 hunters per sq. mile some years, many areas have 15-20 hunter/sq mile and that includes land that is maybe half fields,so you may have 40 hunters in the 320 acres that is potential escape habit.

There is a reason 70% of the deer are shot the first few days,most of it the deer are pushed one way or another and are going to run into hunters.

[Coach1310]

If we end up with deer like Iowa, Illinois, Kansas etc..... Be prepared to hunt public land unless you are one of the fortunate ones to own land.... Big $$$$ leases and buyers won't be far behind!

[Jameson]

...Be prepared to hunt public land unless you are one of the fortunate ones to own land.... Big $$$$ leases and buyers won't be far behind!

It looks like all my hunting will be on public land this year. I'm already prepared. Bring on the bigger bucks. Let's do this.

[Wanderer]

Areas like 172 has estimates of 26 hunters per sq. mile some years, many areas have 15-20 hunter/sq mile and that includes land that is maybe half fields,so you may have 40 hunters in the 320 acres that is potential escape habit.

There is a reason 70% of the deer are shot the first few days,most of it the deer are pushed one way or another and are going to run into hunters.

It's interesting area 172 keeps getting mentioned. That's where my story took place. There's a reason why the 16 day season sees so much pressure on the first two days followed by very little on the second weekend. It's seems like there's more participation on the last Saturday and nothing on the last Sunday.

I tell our kids they need to be out there opening weekend if nothing else and the second best would be the last weekend. That second weekend is always really slow.

[PurpleFloyd]

I personally witnessed this one year.

Zone 1, and not alot of deer in the area but opening morning I had a hot doe come by with a 6 pointer in tow. Later came other 6s and forks sniffin up the does trail. I took the 5th buck that came through, an 8 pointer. My buddies neighbor took one of the 6s after it passed me. We had 8 open buck tags and I could've dropped every last one of those bucks as they came by 5-10 minutes apart but I only took one.

My buddy's neighbor recounted the story about the hot doe coming through with the 6 that he shot and my buddy told him they passed me earlier at about 15 yards along with other bucks. The neighbor got kinda bent outta shape and asked why I was hunting if I wasn't gonna shoot a deer? My buddy told him to be happy that I left one for him.

I've cross tagged bucks too just so I could keep hunting. The most bucks I've taken in one year was 3. Sure, you let one go and he might get shot - but then again, he might not. I wouldn't have an issue with eliminating cross tagging of bucks. Of course that's how is in Z3 now anyway. NO problem.

When you hit the peak of the rut and land on the hot chase corridor you can do a lot of damage while others are sitting out there a few hundred yards from you wondering where all the deer are.

When you shoot a deer do you leave it lay there all day and would you have just let them lay all day in your example as you stacked them up looked cord wood?

We cross tag and party hunt but when we shoot a deer it gets tagged, loaded on a truck, hauled to one of the guys houses, hung, gutted and we talk for a while before we head back out. Everyone pretty much helps out with that. That activity probably disrupts any convoy of deer and I am guessing had you shot and removed the first buck you wouldn't have seen all the other ones because you would either be tending to your harvest or the activity would have pushed them in a different direction. If someone else would tend your stand while you were gone and took one from it then it wouldn't matter who pulled the trigger. Deer around here are way too spooky to just keep walking in if there are a lot of shots being fired as they would havehad to be if you sat in the stand and shot them all as they passed by.

[PurpleFloyd]

It looks like all my hunting will be on public land this year. I'm already prepared. Bring on the bigger bucks. Let's do this.

You won't have any problems with having guys set up 50 yards in every direction from you to get a crack at all those big bruisers? I will believe that when I see it.

[Jameson]

You won't have any problems with having guys set up 50 yards in every direction from you to get a crack at all those big bruisers? I will believe that when I see it.

They already are setting up 50 yards from me in every direction to get a crack at any deer. Bring on the bigger bucks. Let's do this.

[Wanderer]

When you shoot a deer do you leave it lay there all day and would you have just let them lay all day in your example as you stacked them up looked cord wood?

We cross tag and party hunt but when we shoot a deer it gets tagged, loaded on a truck, hauled to one of the guys houses, hung, gutted and we talk for a while before we head back out. Everyone pretty much helps out with that. That activity probably disrupts any convoy of deer and I am guessing had you shot and removed the first buck you wouldn't have seen all the other ones because you would either be tending to your harvest or the activity would have pushed them in a different direction. If someone else would tend your stand while you were gone and took one from it then it wouldn't matter who pulled the trigger. Deer around here are way too spooky to just keep walking in if there are a lot of shots being fired as they would havehad to be if you sat in the stand and shot them all as they passed by.

If I have multiple tags to fill, I'll shoot a deer and leave it lay for at least an hour before getting out of my stand. I don't do all day sits very often so it's pretty rare that one of my deer lays more than 1-2 hours before being field dressed. In the scenario that happened, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour and a half to stack up the 5 bucks. The one I shot fell within sight so I knew he was down and was mine.

It was opening morning and several other members of my party were nearby but I wasn't going to pull them off stand and disturb the woods anymore than with a single gun shot. It's somewhat hilly there and the woods are dense; one shot won't clue in most deer that are travelling 5-10 minutes apart, especially if there's estrous in the air.

The years I've taken 3 bucks (happened twice), one year they were all on separate sits and the other year two bucks happened to be running together and they both got it. To answer your question about stacking em up: People who have shot a lot of deer know to sit tight after your first shot cuz there's just as good a chance you'll see another as there was to see the first one. In full blown party hunting, numbers are the game.

We don't cross tag until after opening weekend by the way. Everyone wants to have some time to fill their own (one of the reasons I didn't dump as many of those bucks as I could) but as the season grinds down, people get pretty loose with their tags.

[PurpleFloyd]

They already are setting up 50 yards from me in every direction to get a crack at any deer. Bring on the bigger bucks. Let's do this.

Oh Boy, Oh Boy!

[96trigger]

Quote:

We cross tag and party hunt but when we shoot a deer it gets tagged, loaded on a truck, hauled to one of the guys houses, hung, gutted and we talk for a while before we head back out. Everyone pretty much helps out with that. That activity probably disrupts any convoy of deer and I am guessing had you shot and removed the first buck you wouldn't have seen all the other ones because you would either be tending to your harvest or the activity would have pushed them in a different direction. If someone else would tend your stand while you were gone and took one from it then it wouldn't matter who pulled the trigger. Deer around here are way too spooky to just keep walking in if there are a lot of shots being fired as they would havehad to be if you sat in the stand and shot them all as they passed by.

Not necessarily true. I have seen plenty of deer get "stacked like chord wood" during a deer drive. We used to do a lot of deer drives. My uncle once shot three deer during the drive, he shot all three while they were jumping over the same fence, in the same spot, just minutes apart. My brother in law shot a nice buck, and then shot a doe minutes later. When I was young, I once let a young 6 pointer pass when it came in with a doe, I shot the doe and then 10 minutes later the buck came back, so I shot him too. A rutting buck, especially a young one, can be extremely stupid. When they are getting pushed, there is so much noise and so much confusion, their only instinct is to get out, and often, that means in a line one right after another, especially if they are running together. We did much of the same thing as your group, only our sitters didn't quit shooting after one deer, I would say most people that do deer drives don't hunt that way. That sitter might be only person to see deer, and if they saw 3 deer, they were expected to shoot 3 deer. At the end of the drive, we would gut and hang our deer, then on to the next drive. Our ways of thinking in my hunting party have since changed drastically and we don't do any deer drives any more. We sit, and pick off deer all week. We have found we have the same or better success with this instead of pushing all the land. We are able to hunt longer and have a much more enjoyable season.

[PurpleFloyd]

If I have multiple tags to fill, I'll shoot a deer and leave it lay for at least an hour before getting out of my stand. I don't do all day sits very often so it's pretty rare that one of my deer lays more than 1-2 hours before being field dressed. In the scenario that happened, it wouldn't have taken more than an hour and a half to stack up the 5 bucks. The one I shot fell within sight so I knew he was down and was mine.

It was opening morning and several other members of my party were nearby but I wasn't going to pull them off stand and disturb the woods anymore than with a single gun shot. It's somewhat hilly there and the woods are dense; one shot won't clue in most deer that are travelling 5-10 minutes apart, especially if there's estrous in the air.

The years I've taken 3 bucks (happened twice), one year they were all on separate sits and the other year two bucks happened to be running together and they both got it. To answer your question about stacking em up: People who have shot a lot of deer know to sit tight after your first shot cuz there's just as good a chance you'll see another as there was to see the first one. In full blown party hunting, numbers are the game.

We don't cross tag until after opening weekend by the way. Everyone wants to have some time to fill their own (one of the reasons I didn't dump as many of those bucks as I could) but as the season grinds down, people get pretty loose with their tags.

Wow. It sounds like you guys up there have a lot of bucks running around to see that many in that short of a time period and that tame that they would keep coming as you shoot.That is certainly a higher number of Bucks than I can ever remember seeing even when I lived in the northwoods of Sconnie.

[PurpleFloyd]

Not necessarily true. I have seen plenty of deer get "stacked like chord wood" during a deer drive. We used to do a lot of deer drives. My uncle once shot three deer during the drive, he shot all three while they were jumping over the same fence, in the same spot, just minutes apart. My brother in law shot a nice buck, and then shot a doe minutes later. When I was young, I once let a young 6 pointer pass when it came in with a doe, I shot the doe and then 10 minutes later the buck came back, so I shot him too. A rutting buck, especially a young one, can be extremely stupid. When they are getting pushed, there is so much noise and so much confusion, their only instinct is to get out, and often, that means in a line one right after another, especially if they are running together. We did much of the same thing as your group, only our sitters didn't quit shooting after one deer, I would say most people that do deer drives don't hunt that way. That sitter might be only person to see deer, and if they saw 3 deer, they were expected to shoot 3 deer. At the end of the drive, we would gut and hang our deer, then on to the next drive. Our ways of thinking in my hunting party have since changed drastically and we don't do any deer drives any more. We sit, and pick off deer all week. We have found we have the same or better success with this instead of pushing all the land. We are able to hunt longer and have a much more enjoyable season.

I thought he was sitting in a stand and not doing drives. My mistake.

[SmellEsox]

The amazing thing about surrounding big buck states like Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and even Indiana now, is that they often shoot 1/3 to 1/2 of their deer populations every year, and yet they still produce more big bucks than MN. We usually shoot about 1/5 of our deer population. Why is that? Is natural mortality or other mortality factors other than hunting that much more prevalent here? The fact that we have places like Camp Ripley suggest that it can be different here if harvest/hunting pressure is changed. Camp Ripley has wolves, bears, yotes, etc. and still has age structure that includes older deer of both sexes. That despite a harvest of 5 deer/sq mi in recent hunts. What is the difference between CR and the rest of the state?

[mntatonka]

Not necessarily true. I have seen plenty of deer get "stacked like chord wood" during a deer drive. We used to do a lot of deer drives. My uncle once shot three deer during the drive, he shot all three while they were jumping over the same fence, in the same spot, just minutes apart. My brother in law shot a nice buck, and then shot a doe minutes later. When I was young, I once let a young 6 pointer pass when it came in with a doe, I shot the doe and then 10 minutes later the buck came back, so I shot him too. A rutting buck, especially a young one, can be extremely stupid. When they are getting pushed, there is so much noise and so much confusion, their only instinct is to get out, and often, that means in a line one right after another, especially if they are running together. We did much of the same thing as your group, only our sitters didn't quit shooting after one deer, I would say most people that do deer drives don't hunt that way. That sitter might be only person to see deer, and if they saw 3 deer, they were expected to shoot 3 deer. At the end of the drive, we would gut and hang our deer, then on to the next drive. Our ways of thinking in my hunting party have since changed drastically and we don't do any deer drives any more. We sit, and pick off deer all week. We have found we have the same or better success with this instead of pushing all the land. We are able to hunt longer and have a much more enjoyable season.

I find deer drives the most enjoyable way to hunt. There are three purposes to our hunt:

To help bring the population in check

To fill the freezer with as much meat as possible

Most importantly, to have fun.

We've had plenty of people take 4 or more deer in a single deer drive, and that's not always the standers. A few years ago I was in the middle of a drive and took two in the same spot, that same year my dad had 6 laying dead at the end of the same drive (two in one shot, twice, as hard as that is to believe). Sure, we chase a few out the top and bottom of the hill, but they just come back after we leave and we do it all over again the next day. Even after driving the same hill 4 or 5 times in a week, they're still there at the end of the season.

Those good days are usually the first day of the season, the second day we see just as many if not more deer, but most people have a hard time hitting deer on Sunday due to various states of hungover.

[96trigger]

Quote:

I thought he was sitting in a stand and not doing drives. My mistake.

I have been on stand a plenty of times and shot multiple deer. Doesn't matter if its driving or sitting. The point is that it happens more often than you might think. Especially in areas where deer numbers are locally high.

[96trigger]

We have talked about how we miss the camaradarie of doing deer drives. It was fun, and it was exciting. There were multiple reasons why we quit doing them. We still get together as a group every night and rehash the days events and partake in general shenanigans, but nothing too serious. Our group is getting pretty old as well. Many of the guys can't get up and down the bluffs very well anymore.

[mntatonka]

We have talked about how we miss the camaradarie of doing deer drives. It was fun, and it was exciting. There were multiple reasons why we quit doing them. We still get together as a group every night and rehash the days events and partake in general shenanigans, but nothing too serious. Our group is getting pretty old as well. Many of the guys can't get up and down the bluffs very well anymore.

Our group is getting up there in age too, but there's a couple of us that are trying to make new hunters lol. We usually have 15 people, with 6 or 8 driving, and the rest sitting. Obviously the people that are older or not quite as in shape either stand, or get the easy parts of the drives. Early antlerless, we had 8, with only 3 drivers. That sucked, and I was pretty much the only one pushing the hill around. I was pretty annoyed thinking I wasn't going to have any success, but I still managed to chase 4 nice does around to one stander. She dropped two, and grazed the other two, which ran up to the next stander who dropped them.

[bigbucks]

I think we had a little more fun & camaraderie when we did more drive, but it kind of wrecked the next several days of stand hunting. When it was two weekends that was fine, once it became 9 days, we didn't want to do that, although we mostly hunt other properties during the week.

I can remember sitting in a stand well before a drive started, but I was also essentially posting that drive. We had 4 doe permits & 1 had been filled. I shot the first 3 antlerless deer that came & then yelled, don't shoot anymore does. Shortly 3 more came right past me, not from the drive. I could have for sure shot at least one of those. Multiple deer definitely do happen.

I shot at deer off an on for a couple of hours one opening morning. Missed some, killed 2, much later found out I'd actually killed 3, no blood trail on one I thought I'd hit & went on the neighbors. They found it, but never told us. I've shot 2 off the same stand within a half hour several times & often shot one & passed on others after that. Deer don't always know where the shots came from or even what they mean.

[PurpleFloyd]

Quote:

I thought he was sitting in a stand and not doing drives. My mistake.

I have been on stand a plenty of times and shot multiple deer. Doesn't matter if its driving or sitting. The point is that it happens more often than you might think. Especially in areas where deer numbers are locally high.

Yeah, but that is the point. There are many areas where there is not a high density of deer and in those areas success may need to come by different methods than in areas where they are running like bunnies under your stand. As was my original stance you cannot legislate something uniformly across the board and expect to get the same results uniformly across the board. If it seems to work in one area and people want it, then that is a good thing.It is not a good thing when people in one area want to dictate how people in another area of the state that has no impact on them have to conduct their hunt.

[96trigger]

There was a mashing of traditions that took place in our group. The younger guys wanted to sit more and be choosy about what we shot. The younger guys were also the ones that were doing the pushing, and we would get hot, and sweaty, and then try and go sit in a stand, it started to get less and less fun for us. The older guys had to rely on us more and more to drag and gut deer and they were less and less comfortable during the sits. Now we make sure that the older guys have good stands with easy access. Many of them are sitting almost all day in those stands. After 4 years of doing this, they are starting to realize that they still see deer and we get just as many as before, actually more, but the quality has really gotten better.

[96trigger]

Quote:

Yeah, but that is the point. There are many areas where there is not a high density of deer and in those areas success may need to come by different methods than in areas where they are running like bunnies under your stand. As was my original stance you cannot legislate something uniformly across the board and expect to get the same results uniformly across the board. If it seems to work in one area and people want it, then that is a good thing.It is not a good thing when people in one area want to dictate how people in another area of the state that has no impact on them have to conduct their hunt.

I have NEVER, nor will I EVER,support mandating something uniformly across the board. I don't know if you think I do, but I firmly believe and have stated in other posts, that only managed and IH areas should ever be considered for addition regulation to promote age structure. Lottery and HC areas should always be off limits for APR, unless we are talking about large tracts of public land where the population could get destroyed (i.e, Whitewater)

[Musky Buck]

I just calculated some of my relatives trail cam pictures etc. and on about 1,000 acres(total and spread throughout the county) of what is known to be prime buck country we are still waiting for a picture of a shootable buck talking Ottertail county. October 25th, cameras out since Mid-August and zero. Not a one. Reference 5 years ago and we had maybe 15-20 decent bucks. None Zero Zilch lol, we did get an interesting shot of an Amish guy at 9:30PM on one camera. The good news was no wolf pictures so far. Hopefully people wont lower their standards and make it even tougher on the yearling bucks, there's enough people shooting every antler they see already or there would be some 2.5 year olds showing up on film, get those combines rolling because that is the hope they're in it deep. By Nov. 17th we'll know what's what.

[mntatonka]

I have NEVER, nor will I EVER,support mandating something uniformly across the board. I don't know if you think I do, but I firmly believe and have stated in other posts, that only managed and IH areas should ever be considered for addition regulation to promote age structure. Lottery and HC areas should always be off limits for APR, unless we are talking about large tracts of public land where the population could get destroyed (i.e, Whitewater)

Managed, maybe. Intensive harvest, no. An area is intensive harvest for a reason, and that's because there's too many deer there. Of course, then you're relying on a DNR in St. Paul that doesn't listen to its' local wildlife managers, so they're usually wrong anyway (which explains the two early antlerless seasons in managed areas).

[Musky Buck]

I can't quite figure out why area 240 went to 2 deer again, deer densities aren't all that great in quite a few of the areas I'm familiar with in 240, won't help at all and wolves are feeding in area 240 year round, I'd say for sure a lack of bigger bucks this year but next year may be better and whose to say a guy doesn't get the buck of a lifetime this year. My way of finding a bigger buck my best scouting tool is a rake, yes a rake. I rake the dirt/edge where field meets swamp smoothly at each trail that enters the field and or if they walk the edge, I scout those in the early AM on the way to one of my stands looking for a large track, I then can determine also if the buck is dead or not (maybe) if that track shows up Tuesday AM I know he survived the 1st weekend for sure etc. The last spot I have a tcam and I pull the card and view it in my stand on a digital camera 40 minutes before shooting light listening closely for deer moving etc. Good Luck.

[Jameson]

...when we did more drive, but it kind of wrecked the next several days of stand hunting. When it was two weekends that was fine, once it became 9 days, we didn't want to do that...

Many of us have noted less deer drives taking place. Interested observation tying the switch to the 9 day season with the less deer drives. I hadn't thought about it, but it probably does have something to do with it.