Approximately what year did it all start?

[RascalArms]

The vibe changed when the internet became a household thing. A huge buck was noteworthy since it wasn't an everyday thing and info didn't travel as fast. Your hunting buddies were the guys you sat in camp with. Now everyone is connected. Plenty have an opinion on what "management" and "real hunting" are, and it takes 5 seconds on a computer to let everyone else know. All it's done is spawn competition and gimmicks. But hey, that's just my opinion

I was about to post something very similar along this line. It MOSTLY changed when the internet told everybody it changed.

Good thread AC. Technology is great in many aspects but the devil is also in the details. I've been guilty but I sure miss the days when everybody was happy with each other when an animal was hung in camp.

[kyle1974]

Everything has changed. It’s not just deer hunting.


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[Graysonhogs]

Yup in 1967 it was a lot different...

Because everyone was on the weed dope.

[Strummer]

We used to take a sack full of ears of corn from the corn crib, and run wire thru them and hang them along the trails in the early 90’s. Always planted a oat patch.

I remember my first feeder timer was a kenco in prolly 95. Corn would stay piled up under the feeder because there wasn’t many deer in those woods. We would hunt all season to see one deer if we were lucky....

I miss the days when you went hunting it felt like the Hansen buck could step out at any moment, and a 150”(often called 150point because very few of the old timers knew the difference) buck was something you dreamed of seeing in person one day....

I forgot all about the ear corn on a wire . We did that too . Can’t ever remember anything other the squirrels eating on it .

[mikemorvan]

Because everyone was on the weed dope.

Uummm, sir - it was marijuana pot.

[Flyway12]

Yall all sound about like me and waterfowl hunting. I'm entering my 30th season chasing ducks and geese and I've just about lost the joy for it.

I didn't know deer camp growing up. I didn't know any of that at all. I chased birds. I killed my first deer in 2004 when I got invited to a buddies deer lease in Hico, TX. I killed a couple deer and didn't circle back around to it for probably 5-6 more years when a friend of mine had a high fence place and needed help with does. Got out of school in 2013 and fell away from it again for several years. Started hunting my wifes family land and that got me into game keeping and management. Archery came about as a necessity to have a chance at bigger deer since they all fell to a rifle. Nobody in our area hunted with a bow so it gave my wife a chance at a nicer older deer (usually 3 1/2). I ended up with a bow and some spots to hunt in some highly known archery only counties in NTX. It's fun chasing the free range low fence deer but I honestly started hunting up here because it was right by the house. I've told folks before if they were the size of dogs like hill country deer I'd still hunt. We recently bought ourselves a piece of land across the border in Oklahoma, went a lot further there than it would in TX. The family eats venison or some form of wild game 4-5 nights a week at least. I got this place up and going for my boys to enjoy and while we'll definitely manage, it'll be more about the health of the animals using our property and not what's on their heads. I'm having more fun these days farming for wildlife than I actually do killing them.

Enjoyed the stories, I wished I could've grown up going to deer camp but I was born to a waterfowling family and waterfowl is what I've known. The boys (1 and 4) will get to learn about deer camp.

[jshouse]

great thread.

i am 44 and no doubt some of my greatest memories are from "the deer lease" between 1988 and 2002, when the more points the buck had, the better he was.

i didnt hunt much from 2002-2011 trying to get a career going, but no doubt the game was much different in 2011 when i bough my first bow.

friday at school before opening weekend seemed like it took forever. as soon as i got home we were off to wherever the lease was that year, hamilton, llano, comanche, eastland, athens (where there wasnt a **** deer within 100miles i swear)...

first buck i ever killed in the early 90s was the first time i ever sat in a stand by myself, in a chair on top of an old telephone booth with a shooting rail mounted on it watching a "draw" in eastland with a marlin 3030...

one of the top 5 meals ive ever had was out of a disc in llano in the late 90s. fajitas with venison, wild pork, and chicken, crisped up corn tortillas around the edge, and a salad with homemade ranch dressing. may have been a couple busch light 16oz'ers mixed in between me and my 2 underage buddies. can still remember us all sitting on 4 wheelers around the fire eating till we couldnt any more...

shooting jack rabbits off the 4 wheeler with my ruger 22 in llano and having one richochet off a rock and go through the fender of my honda...

blowing the barrel out of my brothers new england arms 410 by trying to shoot mud out of the end it in hamilton...

spending hours and hours just "ridin' around" on the 4 wheelers in the middle of the day while dads and uncles slept...

i remember thinking pearsall was the mecca of big deer because my "rich" uncle went there 3 or 4 years in a row and brought back monster bucks, telling us they all ran out of the brush when they heard the feeder go off. those bucks werent no bigger than 140" but back then they were giants...

it does suck that my boys havent gotten to experience "the deer lease" and the old ways, i am trying to change that right now though, better late than never.

[Bluesman]

As a Kansas resident in 1965. Climbing trees over trails and using a 1 x 6 with vees cut in the ends. Hunted over game trails and along creek edges at trails.
Finally scored in 68'.

[flywise]

I was in a three sided box lean too stand about 12 feet off the ground in about 1976 if I had to guess. My dad was the hunter and I was zipped up in a sleeping bad next to him outside Florence Tx. Cheap box blinds of scrap wood and bucket feeders with cedar branch sticking out the bottom was the norm until at least 1988. No one cares about score and no one was asking permission to shoot anything. You saw it and wanted to kill it you did just that. Magazines of high fence bucks came about and suddenly people all became antler managers at the expense of their friends, family and neighbors.

[bowhunterhelm]

I grew up hunting in Alabama in the late 80's and 90's. We mostly hunted with dogs and with the if it's brown it's down mentality. I sat on food plots for days not seeing one single deer. That's just how it was back then. I'm now on one of those trophy leases that you speak of where we as a community decide to shoot or pass specific deer.

[Kong]

I miss the day before rifle season back in the late 70’s when dad would come get me out of school early. I loved that day more than Christmas morning and couldn’t sleep a week prior to it arriving. I sure miss those days,,

In my mind it changed back in the 90’s when trail cameras first started popping up and the internet started going crazy. Everyone become a seasoned pro overnight,, It’s become something entirely different since then, some things for the better and some for the worse but I’ll gladly trade today’s hunting for some early 80’s action.

[Snowflake Killa]

I know one thing that is aggravating is cell camera's. Now I know when there not working as before you didn't know until Friday

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[hopedale]

To answer your question I would say 1995...

1992

Given Realtree Monster Bucks got released in 1992 and the Outdoor cable channel started in 2004, I think you're both right.

The hunting video\tv show industry opened the market for new and better equipment for deer hunting. And I believe it gave way to folks wanting to only shoot, "monster bucks."

I to remmber the 5 gallon buckets with the stick, but who else did the pvc pipe tied to the tree with the corn opening at the bottom?

[breederbuck33]

I was born in 1991. Killed my first deer in 1999, and first bow kill in 2002. A lot changed with technology in that 1999-2002 time frame. I remember my dad's first game camera. It was a home made one he bought from a guy. You had to go to the lease, get the film out of the camera, and have it developed. lol The transition from a bucket with a stick to a feeder had already happened when I began hunting.

[Chew]

I got into deer hunting later than most. My dad was a hard core coonhunter and he ran hounds every single week. I was into squirrel and rabbit hunting. Probably went deer hunting once or twice before I left for the Marine Corps at 17. When I got back, I went once or twice more. Then around the age of 25 or so I got the bug bad. Got on a lease between coldspring and point blank for about $450 a year. Built my own box stand and got a .270. Saw a monster buck my first year and missed him because I forgot to take my gun off safe. He only stopped for a second while hid doe took a breather...and then he was gone. I was hooked. Bought a bow the next year (Hoyt MagnaTec) and got busted about 20 times. Bought my first feeder and had leases or property ever since.

My dad hunted deer with dogs as a kid. I went once in Louisiana and it was fun...

My best hunts have been away from feeders....but they are addicting.

I worry about the future of hunting as the country shifts left and the ship continues to sink. They don't want us to hunt. They don't want us to eat what we kill. I fear we will all be outlaw hunters if things don't even out a bit.