The Hunting Beast

Biggest lesson learned, I already knew, but failed to put into application...what I thought was a Montec, ended up being a CHONG-tec instead. I found a "Montec" sitting on the rail of the porch, where we keep our hunting stuff. I've not bought anything but Montecs since giving up Thunderheads, so I am not sure where the head came from. But I put it on an arrow, and the fletchings lined right up. Cool! I've never had a Montec spin untrue or not all fly the same, so I didn't bother checking the arrow flight. I BROKE THE RULE and paid the price. The buck I was after, stomped off unscathed, after I watched my arrow miss underneath him by a foot, wide open at 30 yds. Only after trying to figure how I could possibly have missed so badly did I find, that the fake Montec hit a foot lower than the rest of my arrows, at 30 yds. I struggled to get over the ordeal for the remainder of the season. If my Son hadn't ended up killing the buck, it would have been a lot worse on me. fyi, the deer was a 165" 11 pt., 4.5+. So I learnt: Just because it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, doesn't necessarily mean that it absolutely is a duck...btw, I did "redeem" myself, somewhat, with a 32yd quartering away shot on a good buck. I watched this one fall within 40 yds.

There is no certainty with big bucks.
The nutritional value of tag soup has lots of ingredients, some of which cause loss of ego and an increase in humility.

Jonny wrote:1. Be more comfortable with my gear and confident in my ability
2. Failure is okay. Wasting time second guessing isn't. Make a decision, go with it and learn from it.
3. Don't let stupid stuff get to you. Hunting is fun and a way to get my mind off life

I'm really bad at #2. I know it and still fail.

mainebowhunter wrote:My lesson? Don't hunt Nebraska with a bow during the firearm season.

Public land here can definitely be tough/crazy in that stretch.

Things I learned from the season.
The front shoulder of a mature buck is evil. It’s not a shot with the bow worth trying. IMO
Keep grinding and never give up. It ain’t over till the fat doe bleats.

My lesson was a big one...
Don’t get hung up on one deer!

I burned dang near the entire season chasing a single buck. I didn’t have access to much land in that area either, so I knew the chances were slim to none. But, he was easily the biggest buck I’ve ever seen on land I have access to. I sat times the wind/weather was wrong just because I had the day off to sit. Did EVERYTHING you aren’t supposed to. Sat the same trees several times a piece, used bad access routes, let my wind blow into possible bedding locations. The works. All because I got antler drunk. This little area had 2 definite shooters and 2 possibles (even being very picky).

I could have easily have taken some deer on public land in the number of days I used up. No guarantee they would have been nice bucks, or bucks at all for that matter, but I could have definitely gotten something. An entire year’s scouting and I used none of it.....

Try to get more mature buck intel before the season starts. This year I had very few mature buck sighting & pics. So most of my sits where basically going in blind on bedding areas I had scouted. Not having confirmation of a mature buck in the area. I hope to get more cameras out this year. And have better visual intel that a mature buck is actually using an area, before heading in. I had only one camera last year. This year I have 3.

tgreeno wrote:Try to get more mature buck intel before the season starts. This year I had very few mature buck sighting & pics. So most of my sits where basically going in blind on bedding areas I had scouted. Not having confirmation of a mature buck in the area. I hope to get more cameras out this year. And have better visual intel that a mature buck is actually using an area, before heading in. I had only one camera last year. This year I have 3.

This sounds like my season. I too set some good spots but didn’t know if any good bucks were using them..only to find out the area that actually held the biggest deer I only hunted once ,,could have hunted it more from different stands if I knew he was there,,..and would have ..next season my goal is the same as yours. Although I have scouted multiple stand sites I’m going to gather more intel( I got cameras now for the first time) and focus on the stands where the biggest deer are when I can..the lesson I learned is you can be hunting a great stand set up and no mature deer in the area using it ,,so hunt the deer not your favorite stands..

I was force fed a tough lesson that I will never forget this season. I learned that if you know you made a decent shot, you shouldn't delay in retrieving your buck in some areas. I shot a beautiful perfectly symmetrical 10pt, a true beast, took the safe play and gave the deer a few hours and came back with help. After arriving back at the scene, and a short blood trail, I found my high 170's class buck ravaged by coyotes, I also learned that when you shoot an old buck in subzero temps, and he gets ravaged by coyotes the antlers can also fall off of your Booner. UGH!!! I wish I could go back in time, just climb out of that stand after a short wait, size up the blood trail and retrieved him right away, unless the sign said to do otherwise. Bummer, tough one to swallow.

I use to go a distance to get away from the parking lot. All the bucks I saw this year were with 100 yds of the parking lot. Lesson learned, hunt closer to the road.

Top lessons learned this season:
1. Sitting all day during the rut is a must. Most of my mature buck encounters occurred between 9am and 2pm.
2. I think I finally nailed down the peak rut time for my area. I hunted November 11-17th. I hunt farmland terrain and it appeared that since a large percentage of the does had been bread and the mature bucks were cruising through the small shelter belts I hunt at least once per day. In the early part of the rut it appeared the bucks would come through every 3rd or 4th day. I am assuming they stayed a little closer to their core areas if there were does available, so if you were not hunting near their core area your odds were significantly lower.

That a 2.5 Year old buck tastes a lot better than a green tag.................
gotta let em grow they say

my lesson still makes me shake my head... when your scouting midday on ledges in a wind storm and you see a buck bedded 50 yards below almost strait down off a cliff and you broke your good range finder and your new one does not cut yardage don't guess 30 yards and find out you should have cut to 15. I had close to a minute to make the shot and still missed. guess I'm getting another range finder this year. o well nothing you can do but laugh at this point.