|
Another Great Hunt Behind Me |
|
|
Written by Webmaster
|
November 28, 2006
As expected the opening of the Oklahoma gun season was exciting, we saw a ton of deer, and it was a great trip, as always. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring anything back that gives me a reason to pay my taxidermist anymore money this year.
I should have typed this update a few days ago but Andrew and I got back into town on Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. I’ve been very busy since I got back doing everything from the family Thanksgiving get-togethers, buying a Christmas tree, putting up all the decorations and going all out on the Christmas lights this year. I’ve finally got the time, so I figured I’d post an update.
As I said, we saw a lot of deer and we got over 5,000 photos in less than a week on three cameras. However, we just didn’t see many mature bucks. The mature bucks we did see just weren’t in the shooter category that we were looking for. We saw a load of young bucks, some with amazing potential and several 2.5 to 3.5 yr old bucks in the 125-135” B&C range but nothing bigger. We did get trail camera photos of one nice bigger buck that might push the upper 140”’s but we never actually saw him in person. The rut also appeared to be in full swing and we saw a lot of bucks chasing does, bucks and does paired up, I got video of a 130”+ 8 pt having an all out fight with a smaller 8 pt and I even watched the big 8 pt actually breed a doe. Very cool stuff to be able to sit back and watch.
Andrew and I both were able to kill a doe, so our basic QDM (Quality Deer Management) efforts were successful. My dad hunted a few times and he also killed a doe one morning. The weather was perfect for most of the hunt with lows down to the upper teens and highs up to the mid 50’s. The last day of our hunt there weather wasn’t so great as the wind had shifted to the south and was gusting to 30 mph and the temperatures rose to the low 70’s. We decided to stick around on Wednesday morning before heading home and try to kill some ducks. We had seen thousands of mallards on the river all week and the thought of killing a limit before heading back to Texas was too tempting to pass up. It ended up being time well spent since Andrew, my dad and I all killed a limit in under 1 ½ hours. To top it off we ended up killing a banded drake mallard. I called in the band number to the 800# listed on the band and they will be sending out a certificate and giving us all the information on the duck. That was something very exciting for all three of us.
So all in all we had a great trip and had a lot of fun, even though we didn’t kill a big buck. I’m already thinking about next year’s hunt and I can’t wait to see some of these young bucks we passed up and see how they’ve grown in a year‘s time. It will be fun and exciting as always.
-Jason |
