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Whitetail Deer Season Journal
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To start the last weekend of buck season I got out of work a little early and traveled to our hunting property. I arrived at about 3:00 and hurriedly changed into my hunting clothes.
By 3:40 I was in a treestand near the oldhouse feeder/food plot area. Temperatures in the low twenties and a stiff wind out of the west made for a cold evening. The first half hour went way too slow.
At about 4:15 a spike and two young deer came in. His spikes may not have been 2 inches long but he was acting like the boss. A doe came in next and didn’t let the little spike boss her around like the young ones.
At about 4:25 a spike with long spikes came in and took charge. The little spike was put in his place.
A couple of minutes later the nine point that we had been seeing came in to take charge.
I had passed up this buck in bow season and again last week on Nov 23rd. Last week I had decided to wait for the other nine point but he didn’t show up and hasn’t shown up on the digital scouting cameras since the week before buck season.
The temptation was too much and I went ahead and took the nine point. He weighed in at 120 pounds. It looked like he had lost a good bit of his body weight since October. I’d like to know what he would have weighed then.
We had been watching this buck for two years. He first showed up as a young seven point and was a smaller nine point last year. I was tempted to let him go for one more year but couldn’t hold the trigger.
Update: I've finally used my Deer Aging Tool to determine this bucks age and it looks like he was 4 1/2. This would have made him 2 1/2 when we first saw him two years ago, which is what we had guessed.
I'm not real impressed with his antler development for a deer this age. I have to wonder if the dry summer we had last year didn't stunt the antler growth this year.
Our trophy nine point. I couldn’t get my normal model to get in the picture so I had to do the duty myself. I apologize.
Ryan arrived later in the evening and wanted to hunt Saturday morning but he was feeling a little under the weather so couldn’t scrape himself out of bed. I wasn’t too upset since I was able to stay in bed myself.
My brother-in-law also hunted Saturday. He hunted hard until 2:30 PM and only had one doe sighting to show for it. The temperatures were in the teens and low twenties so the deer weren’t moving. I was out filling feeders and messing with scouting cameras and never saw a deer. It’s unusual for me to travel out through the food plots to put out all of the scouting cameras without seeing one deer. Although I’m sure deer numbers are still high, it’s days like these that could make you think they had all left the state.
Next week is doe season. I’d like to get back out and help Ryan get a chance at a doe. I think I’m done for the year.
Return from the December 3rd Journal to the 2005 Deer Season Journal Index.
