Pressured Deer Are EASY To Pattern

[GarGuy]

Yes sir. Either way it would be a bestseller and a sell out.

I was only kinda joking. Years ago I filmed, produced, edited, and starred in the best selling bowfishing video ever made.

[STex]

Hey Steve, do you sell hints on your place ?

[GarGuy]

Sir,
I would like to know how you hunt.

In all seriousness, I pretty much lay it bare in this thread if you want to dig the nuggets of information out of the rest of it. In the last 10 years or so, I have picked one or two deer i thought would go over 150 and hunted them exclusively. Thats the most frustrating, yet rewarding thing a fellow can do. I have ruined a couple of deer seasons by doing that. I guess I better tell a story to go with it. Next post....

[GarGuy]

Hey Steve, do you sell hints on your place ?

Not really. I have booked a few for friends that understand what they may have to go through to kill one. It worked like this... I finally get a whopper coming regular and call the hunter. He has to drop everything and get here for one or two hunts before the wind changes. I cant expect most folks to do that. Next year i may do a few more as i hope to pick up quite a bit more property.

[GarGuy]

Heres a story yall might like. All my life i have been a deer hunter. Killed my first one when I was 6 and had missed half a dozen before that. Anyway, I killed a nice deer from time to time but back then, any deer was a good deer. As I matured, I started moving slowly toward trophy hunting.

I well remember the first trail camera that I ever saw. I was working at WalMart and the one hour photo dpt had an indoor/outdoor security camera! WOW! It hit me that a guy could use that in the woods! It ran on 10 d cell batteries and held a 34 exposure roll of 35mm film. I bought one for like 499 bucks! I knew where there was a bunch of scrapes and my mind was just whirling about the possibilities.

It was common knowledge back then that one buck owned a scrape. We would set up on a scrapeline and a 6pt would work through and get shot. Yep that was the buck making those scrapes! I left the camera out 4 days. When i came back to get it, the whole roll of film was used. I almost burned my truck up getting to Walmart to develop that film. To my utter surprise, there were SEVEN different bucks using that scrape! WHAAAAA?????? we all knew a scrape belonged to one buck! One issue though, it was obvious that the whirring rewind and clicking flash scared each deer.

Still, I had a pile of corn out that deer were killing, It was late Sept and I put the camera there. Two days and the film was used up. Little did i know what awaited me would change me for the rest of my life. I paced impatiently while they developed the film. i could hear the girl oohh and ahhh at the pictures behind the camera. On those pics was a buck beyond my dreams. He was 8x8 typical with the craziest tine length i have seen to date. He had a 12 inch droptine off the base of each G2, his beams went past his nose and then turned down like drops another foot! Triple brows on both sides too. My heart is beating fast right now thinking about him. Even his g5s were a foot long.

I printed a bunch of pics and got with a friend who scanned them onto a computer to lighten them up and see better. We printed a couple of 8x10s as well. I immediately went and pulled that camera as i was afraid it would scare him off. I knew right then that no other deer would do for me. He was a huge secret . My family all saw him but only a couple people knew where in the DCNF he was located.

It was just a few days until bow season and i was working nights. That meant i could hunt morning and evening every day if the wind was right and i did. I saw that deer twice. Once he walked across the road in front of me when I got there before daylight and another time, he came in to 40yds, surveyed the corn for a while and walked away. That said, there was no lack of action! I had mature bucks in that honeyhole every day! I had never watched and passed mature deer before and this was a huge learning experience for me. I had some absolute monsters eating at 20yds for hours at a time. One pattern that became obvious was the amount of times that a true old timer came in only AFTER another 4 or 5 year old deer had been there.

I had a trail that I used to corn that,just by accident, was different from the trail I used to get in the stand. DOZENS of times, I watched those deer circle and check that trail before coming in to eat. I ended that season without a deer for the first time since i was a child and got a lot of ridicule from my friends(most didnt know of the deer) because I was known as a deer slayer. What I DID get that year was a ton of experience dealing with mature deer at close range.

That deer is long dead of old age and all the pics i had of him were burned with my 20 year journal and lifetime of photos by a bitter ex. the few on a computer were lost in a computer crash. Five years ago, i married my dream girl, sold my house and moved to hers while we planned on building another. In the move, I found that 8x10 picture of that deer! I almost cried. I brought it down to my Dads and we all enjoyed it for a few days until someone(My Mom im sure) put it away. Its here somewhere, but I have turned the place upside down looking for it. She remembers putting it between the pages of a magazine to protect it....

If and when it shows up, I will share it with the GS. The deer is beyond dreams! Thats where this curse of focusing on mature deer began.

[Jesus is Coming]

LORD, please don't let anything ever happen to this thread

[Etxbuckman]

Heres a story yall might like. All my life i have been a deer hunter. Killed my first one when I was 6 and had missed half a dozen before that. Anyway, I killed a nice deer from time to time but back then, any deer was a good deer. As I matured, I started moving slowly toward trophy hunting.

I well remember the first trail camera that I ever saw. I was working at WalMart and the one hour photo dpt had an indoor/outdoor security camera! WOW! It hit me that a guy could use that in the woods! It ran on 10 d cell batteries and held a 34 exposure roll of 35mm film. I bought one for like 499 bucks! I knew where there was a bunch of scrapes and my mind was just whirling about the possibilities.

It was common knowledge back then that one buck owned a scrape. We would set up on a scrapeline and a 6pt would work through and get shot. Yep that was the buck making those scrapes! I left the camera out 4 days. When i came back to get it, the whole roll of film was used. I almost burned my truck up getting to Walmart to develop that film. To my utter surprise, there were SEVEN different bucks using that scrape! WHAAAAA?????? we all knew a scrape belonged to one buck! One issue though, it was obvious that the whirring rewind and clicking flash scared each deer.

Still, I had a pile of corn out that deer were killing, It was late Sept and I put the camera there. Two days and the film was used up. Little did i know what awaited me would change me for the rest of my life. I paced impatiently while they developed the film. i could hear the girl oohh and ahhh at the pictures behind the camera. On those pics was a buck beyond my dreams. He was 8x8 typical with the craziest tine length i have seen to date. He had a 12 inch droptine off the base of each G2, his beams went past his nose and then turned down like drops another foot! Triple brows on both sides too. My heart is beating fast right now thinking about him. Even his g5s were a foot long.

I printed a bunch of pics and got with a friend who scanned them onto a computer to lighten them up and see better. We printed a couple of 8x10s as well. I immediately went and pulled that camera as i was afraid it would scare him off. I knew right then that no other deer would do for me. He was a huge secret . My family all saw him but only a couple people knew where in the DCNF he was located.

It was just a few days until bow season and i was working nights. That meant i could hunt morning and evening every day if the wind was right and i did. I saw that deer twice. Once he walked across the road in front of me when I got there before daylight and another time, he came in to 40yds, surveyed the corn for a while and walked away. That said, there was no lack of action! I had mature bucks in that honeyhole every day! I had never watched and passed mature deer before and this was a huge learning experience for me. I had some absolute monsters eating at 20yds for hours at a time. One pattern that became obvious was the amount of times that a true old timer came in only AFTER another 4 or 5 year old deer had been there.

I had a trail that I used to corn that,just by accident, was different from the trail I used to get in the stand. DOZENS of times, I watched those deer circle and check that trail before coming in to eat. I ended that season without a deer for the first time since i was a child and got a lot of ridicule from my friends(most didnt know of the deer) because I was known as a deer slayer. What I DID get that year was a ton of experience dealing with mature deer at close range.

That deer is long dead of old age and all the pics i had of him were burned with my 20 year journal and lifetime of photos by a bitter ex. the few on a computer were lost in a computer crash. Five years ago, i married my dream girl, sold my house and moved to hers while we planned on building another. In the move, I found that 8x10 picture of that deer! I almost cried. I brought it down to my Dads and we all enjoyed it for a few days until someone(My Mom im sure) put it away. Its here somewhere, but I have turned the place upside down looking for it. She remembers putting it between the pages of a magazine to protect it....

If and when it shows up, I will share it with the GS. The deer is beyond dreams! Thats where this curse of focusing on mature deer began.

That was an awesome story.

Before I even finished reading I'd planned to ask if you wouldn't mind sharing the picture of that deer. Now I just want to b---- slap your ex LOL

[Capt.Bryan]

Great story and awesome experience Steve. Most people with a deer lease would consider themselves fortunate. I would say you are the fortunate one for growing up with the National forest around you and to have such a learning experience from it. I have been hunting since I was 6 and I am now 41 years old. I felt lucky that we always had a place to hunt but it was always a corporate lease or a hunting club where you sat in a blind and watched a feeder. I will say on the corporate lease where I hunted I did learn a few things about watching ridges and funnels and not paying much attention to a feeder and that led to to picking up some pretty good shooting skills as the shots may be 250 -400 yards. This season after reading your stories and experimenting on my 12 acres I have learned more than I have in all my past years of hunting. Thank you for telling your experiences and sharing with others willing to pick tidbits of information out of them to use. Keep up the good work and you sir should be on the Comercial as the most interesting man in the world.

[luna-tuna]

Good,good stuff Steve. Keep it coming !!!

[rtp]

Heres a story yall might like. All my life i have been a deer hunter. Killed my first one when I was 6 and had missed half a dozen before that. Anyway, I killed a nice deer from time to time but back then, any deer was a good deer. As I matured, I started moving slowly toward trophy hunting.

I well remember the first trail camera that I ever saw. I was working at WalMart and the one hour photo dpt had an indoor/outdoor security camera! WOW! It hit me that a guy could use that in the woods! It ran on 10 d cell batteries and held a 34 exposure roll of 35mm film. I bought one for like 499 bucks! I knew where there was a bunch of scrapes and my mind was just whirling about the possibilities.

It was common knowledge back then that one buck owned a scrape. We would set up on a scrapeline and a 6pt would work through and get shot. Yep that was the buck making those scrapes! I left the camera out 4 days. When i came back to get it, the whole roll of film was used. I almost burned my truck up getting to Walmart to develop that film. To my utter surprise, there were SEVEN different bucks using that scrape! WHAAAAA?????? we all knew a scrape belonged to one buck! One issue though, it was obvious that the whirring rewind and clicking flash scared each deer.

Still, I had a pile of corn out that deer were killing, It was late Sept and I put the camera there. Two days and the film was used up. Little did i know what awaited me would change me for the rest of my life. I paced impatiently while they developed the film. i could hear the girl oohh and ahhh at the pictures behind the camera. On those pics was a buck beyond my dreams. He was 8x8 typical with the craziest tine length i have seen to date. He had a 12 inch droptine off the base of each G2, his beams went past his nose and then turned down like drops another foot! Triple brows on both sides too. My heart is beating fast right now thinking about him. Even his g5s were a foot long.

I printed a bunch of pics and got with a friend who scanned them onto a computer to lighten them up and see better. We printed a couple of 8x10s as well. I immediately went and pulled that camera as i was afraid it would scare him off. I knew right then that no other deer would do for me. He was a huge secret . My family all saw him but only a couple people knew where in the DCNF he was located.

It was just a few days until bow season and i was working nights. That meant i could hunt morning and evening every day if the wind was right and i did. I saw that deer twice. Once he walked across the road in front of me when I got there before daylight and another time, he came in to 40yds, surveyed the corn for a while and walked away. That said, there was no lack of action! I had mature bucks in that honeyhole every day! I had never watched and passed mature deer before and this was a huge learning experience for me. I had some absolute monsters eating at 20yds for hours at a time. One pattern that became obvious was the amount of times that a true old timer came in only AFTER another 4 or 5 year old deer had been there.

I had a trail that I used to corn that,just by accident, was different from the trail I used to get in the stand. DOZENS of times, I watched those deer circle and check that trail before coming in to eat. I ended that season without a deer for the first time since i was a child and got a lot of ridicule from my friends(most didnt know of the deer) because I was known as a deer slayer. What I DID get that year was a ton of experience dealing with mature deer at close range.

That deer is long dead of old age and all the pics i had of him were burned with my 20 year journal and lifetime of photos by a bitter ex. the few on a computer were lost in a computer crash. Five years ago, i married my dream girl, sold my house and moved to hers while we planned on building another. In the move, I found that 8x10 picture of that deer! I almost cried. I brought it down to my Dads and we all enjoyed it for a few days until someone(My Mom im sure) put it away. Its here somewhere, but I have turned the place upside down looking for it. She remembers putting it between the pages of a magazine to protect it....

If and when it shows up, I will share it with the GS. The deer is beyond dreams! Thats where this curse of focusing on mature deer began.

This deer would have been a world record even with the deductions for the two drops. Incredible.

[LonestarGent]

Cool story and info for a new hunter. Thanks!

[GarGuy]

This deer would have been a world record even with the deductions for the two drops. Incredible.

I showed those pictures to a well known South Texas ranch owner. He had a fit! He begged me not to kill the deer and said he would provide an dart gun if I would dart him and pay 100 grand for him. Of course I asked him if that would be legal and he agreed it wouldnt be a good idea. That was long before high end breeding was prominent. He had deductions other than the monster drops with extra brow tines. This fellow felt the drops on the end of his beams would be measured as beam length and put his beams in the mid thirties. The reason i was showing this fellow was because i knew little about scoring a deer then. He felt the typical frame was 230 ish.

[Patton]

What a story, I never skip over this thread when I see you have updated it. I have read them all, but I don't think I ever reading what your biggest deer killed was. Is there a monster that stands out among the rest?

[GarGuy]

That was an awesome story.

Before I even finished reading I'd planned to ask if you wouldn't mind sharing the picture of that deer. Now I just want to b---- slap your ex LOL

That journal and photo album.....It meant a lot to me and she knew it. I would snap a pic and then write a short story with all the critical data points. There were hundreds of pages.

[Etxbuckman]

That journal and photo album.....It meant a lot to me and she knew it. I would snap a pic and then write a short story with all the critical data points. There were hundreds of pages.

That's a crying shame. Hopefully you can find that picture at your mom's house. Myself and everyone on this forum would love to see it I'm sure.