bucksnbows
01-01-2009, 02:47 PM
Ok last week I posted a thread that my season was over. Well as luck will have it I was able to make it out yesterday. I had one tag I could shoot a buck with (bow) and an anterless tag still not filled. I thought maybe I should take my bow and see if I could get lucky on a nice buck, but opted that filling the freezer was more important. So I made a call to my father in law to see if he wanted to go. He couldn't make it but offered to let me use his 300 mag. (I normally just use a Ruger .44 mag rifle when and if I use a gun). I took him up on his offer and went and picked up the cannon. I left a bit earlier in the morning due to the snow we were getting and glad I did because it took an extra hour to get to the farm.
Once I got there I decided to hunt a small gun shack that is back in a cedar swamp about 150 yards in from a cut bean field in hopes of catching some deer moving back into the cedars to bed. After sitting for about 2 1/2 hours without seeing any activity I decided I would still hunt a little bit back to our little garage/cabin. After moving about 100 yards I caught a deer coming at me. So I sat down against a big cedar and waited for her to get closer. Then I noticed abunch of deer coming behind the little doe. So I scanned the group of deer and located the one I wanted to shoot and waited for her to cross the opening that was in fron of me about 30 yards away. She hit the opening and BOOM!!!!!!! dropped her in her tracks. My lord what a devistating weapon a 300 mag is.
Well I decided to be greedy and went and bought another anterless tag. I was confident that I would get another that night and since I never hunt fields because my gun( the .44) is only good for about a 100 yards and now that I have a 300 mag. with me a good old evening field hunt was the plan. I got into one of the box blinds we have over looking the back end of our bean field that connected to the neighbors corn field. Let me tell you when the deer started to come out they came out like rats. I quit counting at after 68 deer were spotted. I never did take a shot at another doe because the thought of how far I was going to have to drag her. So I held back. After walking back to the road a neighbor stopped by and we talked for a minute. He told me on his way home he counted over 90 deer in our field on the other side of the road from where I was hunting. Thats ove 150 deer that were on our 280 acre lease. Thats actually sickening to me. I am going to find out how many does my neighbors are killing and encourage them to shoot more. My group shot 12 does and 2 bucks this year. We have now killed 117 does since 2000 on the same farm. I think we are doing our part in trying to knock the doe population down a bit.
Once I got there I decided to hunt a small gun shack that is back in a cedar swamp about 150 yards in from a cut bean field in hopes of catching some deer moving back into the cedars to bed. After sitting for about 2 1/2 hours without seeing any activity I decided I would still hunt a little bit back to our little garage/cabin. After moving about 100 yards I caught a deer coming at me. So I sat down against a big cedar and waited for her to get closer. Then I noticed abunch of deer coming behind the little doe. So I scanned the group of deer and located the one I wanted to shoot and waited for her to cross the opening that was in fron of me about 30 yards away. She hit the opening and BOOM!!!!!!! dropped her in her tracks. My lord what a devistating weapon a 300 mag is.
Well I decided to be greedy and went and bought another anterless tag. I was confident that I would get another that night and since I never hunt fields because my gun( the .44) is only good for about a 100 yards and now that I have a 300 mag. with me a good old evening field hunt was the plan. I got into one of the box blinds we have over looking the back end of our bean field that connected to the neighbors corn field. Let me tell you when the deer started to come out they came out like rats. I quit counting at after 68 deer were spotted. I never did take a shot at another doe because the thought of how far I was going to have to drag her. So I held back. After walking back to the road a neighbor stopped by and we talked for a minute. He told me on his way home he counted over 90 deer in our field on the other side of the road from where I was hunting. Thats ove 150 deer that were on our 280 acre lease. Thats actually sickening to me. I am going to find out how many does my neighbors are killing and encourage them to shoot more. My group shot 12 does and 2 bucks this year. We have now killed 117 does since 2000 on the same farm. I think we are doing our part in trying to knock the doe population down a bit.