tvc184

[b]And last but not least, the last of our bow kills for bucks this weekend. Another hunter in our group took this 8 point that weighed 210 pounds. [/b] [IMG][Hidden Content]]

[b]Here is another cull that one of my group took out. He is a mature deer but only a 7 point with no brow tines. He would have been a decent deer with the tines. [/b] [IMG][Hidden Content]]

[b]This one came out and chased him off. The ranch might take him this year. He is a bruiser for sure. [/b] [IMG][Hidden Content]]

[b]Here is one I had out in front of my stand for a while Saturday morning. He has the potential to be a good one in the future. I aged him at 3.5 (maybe 4.5) years old so he has another 3 or 4 years of growing yet.[/b] [IMG][Hidden Content]]

[b]Not a bragger but he is my first buck kill with a bow. I have a few does and javelinas but this was a break through.[/b] [IMG][Hidden Content]]

[quote name="westend1" post="901634" timestamp="1289233470"] [quote author=tvc184 link=topic=75731.msg901621#msg901621 date=1289232843] We had a guy bring his 14 year old daughter and she got a 110 pound doe with a bow. If anyone wants to argue that a 30 pound compound bow won't send an arrow through a deer, I can tell you that it can. [/quote] Good for her, but, I thought you had a minimum pull weight of something like 40-45 to be able to hunt whitetail.  Is that just an old wives' tale? [/quote] It was changed the last legislature from a 40 pound minimum. That is why I brought it up. There was a big debate over a lighter bow killing a deer and would it just wound an animal and blah blah blah. People forget that a 40 pound recurve 30 years ago was shooting a wooden arrow about 140 feet per second. Now we have 30 pound compounds shooting a carbon arrow with a razor blade broadhead at 190 feet per second.

We had a guy bring his 14 year old daughter and she got a 110 pound doe with a bow. If anyone wants to argue that a 30 pound compound bow won't send an arrow through a deer, I can tell you that it can.

And this is beating a dead horse but for many (or most) leases, they can go MLD and hunt two months longer with a rifle and kill without concern of antler restrictions.

I believe that no matter what limit they set, they assume that you should use caution and not shoot a "legal" animal as if you could run out and measure it and find out that it is 13.001" and therefore okay to shoot. You have to draw the line somewhere and most 3.5 year old deer will reach 13". If they have a lesser standard, then 2.5 year old deer can be legally shot and that would defeat the purpose of a more mature deer herd. A more exact method would be aging them on the hoof and shooting a mature (3.5) year old deer but if you think people have a problem with horn width, wait till it becomes more subjective as, "That one sure looks 3.5 years old to me". I was hunting at a ranch and a guy killed a basket rack 6 point and swore it was a mature deer. The deer was a healthy young deer that was about 105 pounds and had a very thin neck and pencil thin horns. It seemed clearly a yearling but this guy was adamant that it was mature. When you set a horn limit, no matter anything else, is easy to measure. If they are close, don't shoot. If they are easily outside of the ears, fire away. Remeber that the intent of the law is not to kill all 3.5 year old and 13" horned deer. It is to grow a more healthy mature herd.

I'll show a better pic of that deer when I get home in a bit.

[quote name="ST413" post="900908" timestamp="1289171745"] Love the effects of this rule but it can sure be hard to tell if some of these deer are legal or not. [/quote] I think that is the intent. If it is close, why shoot?

[quote name="Lefty99" post="900696" timestamp="1289160172"] [quote author=643 link=topic=72280.msg900425#msg900425 date=1289146370] [b]Exxxxxcuse my ignorance BUT what makes this a cull[/b], he's got good tine length, brow tines OK, could it be he's just OLD, BTW I wish we as hunters could come up with another word rather than cull... [/quote] S. Texas is makes him a cull ;) [/quote] Yep. At 20 more inches and it would be a $5,000'deer.

He was 190 pounds on the hoof and has a green score of 124.5.

I took this 10 point cull out of the herd this morning. I arrowed him at about 20 yards. [IMG][Hidden Content]]

Great sentiment by Vidor for a long time fixture of Indian football.

Saturday morning might be a good day to be on the lake after the wind settles. A lot of deer hunters might be out for opening weekend and others won't brave the cool morning. Could be a great day for chasing birds.

[quote name="lu cards" post="892624" timestamp="1288501584"] was told tonight png is in regardless of what happens next week. [/quote] Nope.

I have the feeling that they will find their way down the coast to get into the open ocean. They will follow the tidal flow when it is going out. I don't believe that millions of fish will gang around where the pass was and camp out there. If they do, it should be some great fishing for a while.

No, he means an official that is reffing.

Age and kill the does. Got to get those mouths out of the food chain. I forgot how much a deer eats per week in weight but I did some figuring on it one time and from October to the end of February, a single deer eats something like half a ton of food. If a person is hunting on nearly a 1,000 lease like we were and you kill 10 does early (hopefully in early October during archery season) that is potentially five more tons of food available for the remaining deer. I have heard that a healthy deer will eat up to seven pounds of food a day. For every two you take off of your lease over a four month period, that is another ton of food for other deer. That is something that the old hands that don't believe in killing does don't or won't get. It does not help the herd or the hunting if you have that 1,000 acres holding maybe 100 deer and 85 of them are does. I have seen exactly that on our lease a few years ago. Now we hardly see a doe but see a lot of very healthy bucks. The deer population has remained fairly steady though. We went to a meeting maybe 6 or 7 years ago in Jasper put on by a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist and a private biologist. Someone asked what the quickest way to improve the herd on a small lease like 500-1,000 acres. Food plots? Protein supplements? Changing the soil ph so that more native plants with protein would grow better? Horn management? Both of them said if one thing that will improve the herd the quickest... kill does, kill does and kill does. After we did that, I will concur.

[quote name="mcdonajp" post="889685" timestamp="1288289290"] The past couple years we have mainly taken doe off our lease with very few bucks.  About ten years ago we started a six point or better rule, but like other lease's who try to manage it is hard to do when bordering leases shoot every buck that walks through.  With the new 13" minimum rule and harvesting more doe from our lease we are seeing more and better bucks compared to the past.  Game cameras allow us to monitor several bucks on our lease; granted some bucks you see during hunting season can be from an outside area due to the amount of land they cover during the rut.  [size=10pt][b]Overall, several of us believe it has only helped with allowing bucks to mature and be able to produce larger antlers and the pictures prove it.[/b][/size] [/quote] We had the 6 point or better rule, which was nonsense in my opinion. Why even have such a rule? It is acceptable to kill a 6 point yearling and not a 4 point yearling? It is still a year and a half old deer. We aren't going to mount either rack so why the arbitrary number of points? Like I said though, we did it also for some reason. Maybe that was just the prevailing thinking in east Texas. The meat of a 6 point is okay but the meat from a 4 point isn't. ??? Anyway, about five years ago we went to the almost wholesale killing of does. Not completely but on 970 acres we started popping about 20 does a year on average. That is around 100 does in five years. The first year we did not kill a legal buck per our lease rules which was a 3.5 year old deer or older. The deal was to quit killing the 1.5 and 2.5 year old babies. Two years ago we had a member kill a buck with a 138" rack which is by far the biggest in many years. I think last year we got a 141" buck and a couple of others with good racks. Of course, the state has stepped in with the antler restrictions which pretty much complied with our 3.5 year or older rule anyway. We just got a jump on the rules voluntarily. The bottom line is that killing does and letting the bucks grow up makes for bigger, better and more deer for the herd. A coworker made a statement a few years ago when we started our self imposed management plan. It was, "Where you start is where you will end". If you allow the killing of 6 points, that is what you will kill. The reason is that someone on the lease will kill most of the young deer and very few will ever grow up. If you all a 6 point, that is basically where your deer herd will end. If you go with a 3.5 year old deer, same answer. Once a deer reaches that age and people on the lease are willing to take them, that is generally where the herd will grow to. If you have a rule of 135" or more, same answer.

I talked to a coworker yesterday about our lease up in Chester just outside of Woodville. Another lease member drove the 20 or so miles Chester to Corrigan on Hwy 287. On the drive over there were no dead deer on the highway. On the way back later, he saw 4 dead bucks (or was it 5?) and a dead doe. Seeing a lot of dead bucks on the highways usually indicates rutting activity where the don't really pay attention to what they are doing while chasing does. It is always debatable whether a rut is in full swing in an entire area but if it isn't, it is sure getting close.

I went out in the lake Friday and the birds were really working but it was like a hurricane on the lake. Maybe it will lay down after this cold front tonight.

One video shows the reporter stating that this guy was "inside the tornado".  Uhhh..... no. He was inside the debris field maybe but he clearly wasn't in the center of the vortex. His vehicle would have looked like it was Dorothy's house in the Wizard of Oz if he was.

187th place?