I had the same type of year unfortunately and I haven't shot a good buck for the last 2 seasons, the last one is my profile picture. I saw a few good ones both years but only during bow season and too far to shoot comfortably. Gotta take the good with the bad.
It's all part of it and I get it, but it just seemed to pour it on for a while. I had my eye on a buck who I saw last year that I had to pass and I had him on cam as well this year....but I never got a crack at him. The only real excitement deer hunting wise is that down the road about 10 miles the Huff Buck was shot (211+ typical). So nothing like a new state record not far away to prove the area can produce some big deer! I did check cams yesterday and we had a few decent bucks survive thus far, so maybe I will see them again this coming season. I got some work to for this winter and I'm gonna go back to corn or soybean plots this spring/summer and to try to pull and hold more does. I have found that if I can hold more ladies....my buck hunting becomes far better....since I don't have the cover to hold the bucks.
Things have been busy. Started the new job back in January and I love it, but it keeps me busy. I have a daughter in college in Atlanta that getting her back and forth cuts into time (and for a while I was her math tutor) and my youngest is graduating HS so we have had college visits, meetings, and all that prep work as well (She is going to be a "volunteer" by the way - Tennessee Knoxville). Toss in the MIL being ill so the wife isn't around as much, so I am picking up the slack and I've been busy. I have been doing far more cooking, cleaning, dishes and laundry than burning, cutting, planting, and plotting!
things have been both physically and emotionally a bit draining this year. It started back during last hunting season.... My youngest, who was my little hunting buddy didn't hunt with me much as she was involved in getting ready to graduate HS. That sort of sucked the wind out of my sails a little bit to be honest (probably more than just a little bit). It's funny how, I started all of this for me and MY hunting....and yet, now it has very little to do with that at all. So I sort of slipped into a funk... I just lacked the motivation and the "give a damn" just went out the window. I had one in college who was struggling (emotionally with that) while I had the youngest busy with HS and then college. The youngest finished in the top 10 (maybe the top 5) of her HS class and has since started school at Tennessee (we knew it was a big football school - we didn't know it was a cult!). The one in Atlanta is doing much better this year which is great. The boy still lives at home but he essentially eats there and sleeps there and that is about all we see of him....so we are new to this "semi-empty nest" thing. After doing so much for your kids for so long and having that be the primary focus of your life.....it's tough to sort of start to live for yourself again. So now the habitat work is going to be more about hopefully helping me work thru some of this and re-finding who I am. My kids will always come first, but I got far more time on my hands now than ever before. Work is great, but keeps me busy while I am there, but so far I have not had any of that follow me home....which is a nice change as well. I will try to be a little more active here as I actually miss some of the actual discussions as FB is just frustrating..... Any how, let get back to talking about deer and habitat work!
It has certainly been a journey. So what I am finding as I get older is that we as habitat managers tend to do a lot of "fighting" with mother nature vs working with her. We also do a lot of things that require some level of constant attention. These are bad things for those of us that eventually will not be capable of being on the tractor or the like later in life. So with that in mind, I am working on more long term permanent food sources for the deer (mast trees and browse shrubs) as well as perennial plantings. In my area ag is king so I don't really need to feed the deer in the summer. I am typically surrounded by 100's or even 1,000's of acres of soybeans. As such I focus on my hunting season food sources and the other times of not so plenty. Annual food plots are great and all....but they also can be a lot of work. I am pushing 50 so in the not to distant future I'm not going to want to be out there messing with "working the land" every weekend.
We have been OK here with the rain. Most of the ag crops are turning now. My ag fields of beans are drying down now....my plot beans are a few weeks behind them. I suspect we will see the combine by 10/15. But yes, rain has been hard to come by in some areas.
My neighbor shot a 200 plus a couple years back and then one of his neighbors auctioned off hunts for a fundraiser advertising it as “the farm next to where the 200 was shot”. He was pissed.
So where that deer was killed I am about 5 to 10 miles from as the crow flies. I have not seen any additional evidence in my area....yet, but I know of folks that live closer to that area and the road traffic has increased is what they tell me. To be honest the deer was simply a freak of nature and a 1 in a million odds or worse. The area it came from is known for having more deer overall in our county but that isn't saying much. It is literally a couple hundred acres of woods across several properties in an area that is 75% farm fields. And here cover is king. Our county as a whole NEVER comes close to being near the top for harvests and most people who live in this county hunt in other counties because better hunting is to be had not that far away. All this buck and hunter have proven to me is that sometimes you just get lucky. A lot like playing the lottery. I am sure some folks sooner or later will use this as a marketing tool to drive up land prices but the ag in the area does that enough as it is. We have already had leasing and the like in the area and finding access was difficult before. I have not seen or heard of any drastic changes.... In fact I am surprised at the number of people that have no idea that the deer was even killed. I am not so sure that a kill like that is as "life changing" as some may make it out to be. That sort of news is a big deal in some circles....but in the grand scheme of things....the deer hunting world as a whole is still a pretty small pond.
