It's Hunting Season: Show Us Your Rack!

This is the last buck I shot two years ago.

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My uncle and I took my dad on a pig hunt in FL for his 70th b-day. It wasn't much of a hunt, especially how it started. They were just going to drive us around, turn on feeders, and have us shoot whatever came out. My dad was up 1st and that's how he got his at about 20 yards with 00.

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After that, we had a talk with our 'guide' and split up. My dad and I climbed up into a platform blind and my uncle went off to stalk one.

I shot this one at 80 yards with my 6.8 AR, 110 gr SPH. DRT.

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I was hoping to get a good eater, he turned out to be bigger than I thought.

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Don't have pics of my uncles, but eventually his stalk was successful.
 
Public land antelope in northern Wyoming. Shot about 15 minutes into legal light opening morning.

6XC pushing a Berger 108 Elite Hunter. Ultimatum Deadline Gen2, PVA 24”barrel, Q Thunder Chicken Suppressor, Triggertech Special and a Leupold Mark5 5-25 PR2.

Seated from a Two Vets Recon with and Anvil 30. 560 yds with a 5-7 MPH 9 o’clock wind. Bullet impacted right at the base of the skull and smashed the first few vertebrae. Dropped on the spot and never so much as twitched. Had him skinned, quartered, and in the cooler before the coffee was cold.
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I can’t bow hunt anymore due to some shoulder injuries and corrective surgery. I’d love to get out with a bow.

Maybe I’ll camo up like Rambo and take it with the Randall mini #1
Film or you are a liar.
I was reminded of being about 13. My Granddad introduced me to a lariat. I got pretty good. I could land a stump or a fence post pretty much every time so it was time to try moving targets. I had 3 little brothers.
Once I got pretty good at roping brothers, and then being threatened by my mother to stop, I had move on to larger game.
My grandparents had a few goats. And chickens, and pigs and cows and horses and dogs and cats.
But back to the goats.
I had the 2 brothers younger than me herd the goats past. Of course, I was after the trophy...the old billy goat with a set balls that made all the girls blush.
He also had a thick set of horns that the old man kept clipped short and not sharp.
As Bill came by the spot where I was posted, I got him perfectly around the neck. Man, he pulled me around like crazy and I was trying to pull myself up that rope to take him down.
Then Bill figured out it wasn't the rope that had him. He charged me fast and I had real trouble not getting hit hard. I was trying to get that rope off of him and he was trying to kill me. I finally got the rope off and my brothers were all crying. They had laughed so much they were hurting. So was I. Bleeding from the nose, a real bad cut lower lip, black eye, several knots on my head, bruised ribs, bleeding wounds on my hands, arms and legs and places that I would figure out were hurt later on.
My Granddad came home from work. After he looked around, fed the horses and such with my brothers helping, he came in the house. He took one look at me and asked what had happened. My little brothers started laughing their asses off and even my grandma was laughing. I told him how I had expertly roped Billy. He sort of smiled and asked me if I wanted to start working off one of the horses.
Definitely...but maybe in a few days.
He sorta grinned at me but I could tell he was trying not to laugh even though he was proud. He waited a good few months but then he would rarely miss an opportunity to give me some shit about goat roping. For the next 40 years.
There is a reason that is a phrase. I had never even heard that phrase when I was 13.

I say all of that because I had a real good friend damned near killed by a cow elk. She was down and he goes and they take pictures and are moving her head around by the ears and all is good. Then he decides to get to work. They roll her over on her back and he has one hind leg in his hand when she decides to not be comatose. He says he got kicked about 50 times before he even realized it was the elk beating the shit out of him. She jumps to her feet and starts to bolt when the other buddy hit her with a 44 mag at 2 or 3 feet. Cow was down but so was my buddy. He was bleeding all over the head and had broken 4 or 5 ribs and collar bone. The other guy ended up gutting the cow but they left her there and got my friend to the hospital. He was in real bad shape. Ripped the left bicep nearly in half, bruised his larynx so bad it was several months before he sounded right, lost a bicuspid, huge gash on his cheek that nearly got his left eye.

The other friend called his own brother and they went and got the cow.

If I were you, I'd be wearing a loin cloth and moccasins and nothing else just so I would look like an old fat man but I'd damned sure be using that Randal as the point of a long spear.
 
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First Mule Deer taken 10/3/24. I have ate Tag Soup for 4 years because... who doesn't like a BIG RACK!

Took him at 469 yards. Gotta admit it wouldn't have been possible if not for learning from this site. From gear selection to handload tuning to positional shooting.... Thank You to all of the helpful members.
 

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Thanks. I was disappointed I couldnt find the bolt, but then while mushroom hunting I showed my wife where things went down as if I were the buck. She pointed at my feet and said, “isn’t that an arrow?” I was almost standing on it 😋
No shit- first deer I arrowed on our new property- a large doe - text book broad side , 20 yards she ran 20 and piled up . I couldn’t find the arrow . Showed my brother where she was standing , he said, there it is . Just the nock was visible in the grass- a green nock no less . He found it in less than 10 seconds after I’d trampled the area for hours .
 
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I have 112 acres in Okrahoma. It seems that everyone here will shoot every buck that they see, no matter how big. It's not a good deal, the bucks never gain any real size and there are LOTS of does. Last year, one week before rifle season, I went to sit in my shooting shack and watch. Over a period of about 3 hours, I counted 36 does and 1 real small antlered buck. I can take 5 or 6 (have to double check the regs) deer, as can my wife, my brother, his wife...I have already told them all, NO BUCKS. We are going to thin out some does. I see 15-20 deer every single day.

280 Ackley Improved, home made 140 Berger VLD @ 3250 fps, 175 yards. Both taken about 15 minutes apart.

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Don't know if anyone has posted a reply to you yet, but generally it is (4) does, and (2) during rifle season if you have the tags in OK.

There is also a holiday antlerless (rifle) if you still have tags to fill.

*****

I'm up to my ears in small 8-points this year. Shot my first at 27 yards this season, thinking it was the bigger 9...but no...it was just one of the larger (small) 8-points. Fortunately I have another buck tag.

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Don't know if anyone has posted a reply to you yet, but generally it is (4) does, and (2) during rifle season if you have the tags in OK.

There is also a holiday antlerless (rifle) if you still have tags to fill.

*****

I'm up to my ears in small 8-points this year. Shot my first at 27 yards this season, thinking it was the bigger 9...but no...it was just one of the larger (small) 8-points. Fortunately I have another buck tag.

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Man, we get one whitetetail tag in Idaho and it’s around $24 for it. A second is an out of state tag, and costs a couple hundred.
 
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Don't know if anyone has posted a reply to you yet, but generally it is (4) does, and (2) during rifle season if you have the tags in OK.

There is also a holiday antlerless (rifle) if you still have tags to fill.

*****

I'm up to my ears in small 8-points this year. Shot my first at 27 yards this season, thinking it was the bigger 9...but no...it was just one of the larger (small) 8-points. Fortunately I have another buck tag.

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I'm zone 4...
2 for muzzle loader, 4 for rifle and 2 more for the holidays.
I have a cool 58 caliber flintlock that I built from a Jim Kibler kit but I am probably not going out with it this year. Just too busy.

As @LuckyLuke80 pointed out, being from Idaho, this more than one deer per season thing is new to me. So is the whole landowner thing here. I'm not complaining.
 
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Had a ball, even though I was hunting solo for the first time in a dozen years.

Young Mule deer forky. I was planning on holding out for something bigger but circumstances were just too perfect to let him walk. He’s been eating alfalfa for most of his life so he should be a butterball.


Alfalfa field sniper position. Steady rest and a clear field of fire farther than I care to shoot. Tikka Varmint in .223 Rem, 75 gr ELDM. 600 yards is my self-imposed limit. Of course he tried to sneak in at 80 yards.

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20 minutes before dark he showed up far to my right. I shot him in the plowed ground just above my top turret.

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Notice the palmation of his antlers. Makes me wonder what he would have looked like in a couple of years (unlikely given the heavy hunting pressure).

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Not bad for a freezer filler.

That .223 is an angry little cartridge. Used it last year to fill my tag at 475 yards.






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