Top States for Mature Buck Harvests

[Bowsnbucks]

I believe many hunters equate rack size with age/maturity. I'll bet most hunters will shoot a larger-racked buck for their area - - - and not give a thought to its age or whether it's "mature".

In my experience hunting Pa. and Maine, finding a "mature" buck (one 3 1/2 or older) is a product of (1) luck, (2) thick, ugly cover where no one wants to tread, (3) good food sources within easy distance for the buck, (4) and lighter hunting pressure. Gotta gain some years to be "mature." Find those things, and your chances improve. JMO.

 

[Turkish]

A lot of it has to do with the extra nutrition from the increased cropping - especially soybeans, but also corn to some extent. Until recent years most fields in this area were hay or pasture. Now you can get a farmer to farm an 8 or 10 acre field.

I have also increased the cover through hinge cutting at both places and native grasses at one of them. The native grasses are really good after leaves fall but not so much when it’s still real hot. The hinge cutting is a plus year round.

I also think that passing young bucks with lots of potential is helping. Sometimes they get shot by someone else, but occasionally it works out.

How much acreage do you control again? And do your neighbors cooperate?

 

[Native Hunter]

How much acreage do you control again? And do your neighbors cooperate?

100 at one place and 20 at another. At the 100 I have people hunting close on 2 sides. One cooperates pretty well and the other not as much.

The 20 is remote and hard to hunt but I only have people hunting on one side close by. This year my 20 has the biggest deer, but that isn’t always the case. I have a good elevated blind at both places and can hunt some ladder stands too. Not sure about the neighbors at the 20, but they don’t seem to be brown is down.

PS - my dad has a 90 that isn’t bad but it is mostly cleared land in fescue. Sometimes he has a good one or two passing through but I don’t hunt there or work there much.

 

[H20fwler]

Wife uncle shot this one that scored 171 and the state biologist aged it at 3 1/2

I can’t imagine how big it would have been at 5 1/2, don’t think it would have stayed as clean. Older bucks around here usually start growing kickers.

The world record Beaty Buck was supposed to have been 3 1/2 also, at least that’s what the article in North American Whitetail magazine said at the time.

Not the Beaty buck it was 4 1/2, meant to say the Hanson buck.

 

[BenA]

How much acreage do you control again? And do your neighbors cooperate?

Don't let him fool you. I bought in the same county he's in thinking I'd be neck deep in booners. Come to find out, he's got a secret weapon that I've yet to find out where to buy some.

 

[Turkish]

Don't let him fool you. I bought in the same county he's in thinking I'd be neck deep in booners. Come to find out, he's got a secret weapon that I've yet to find out where to buy some.

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That’s the way it goes. He’d make a helluva coonass!