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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

bowhunter1023

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
49,616
288
Appalachia
I managed to get a few of my cams checked at the farm yesterday and it was certainly a mixed bag of pictures in terms of having good, bad, and ugly pictures. Here is a look at what the cams had to say about the last two weeks on our farm...

The Good

I started a scrape along the edge of the corn that will give me a 22 yard chip shot if I actually catch a shooter coming to check it. This was the first scrape I doctored up with Smokey's Preorbital Gland Lure and it seems this doe felt it was worth checking out...

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The primary reason for starting this scrape was I feel it lies right along Captain Jack's loop and while he didn't work the scrape, he did walk through this area as I had expected him to...

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With a moratorium on doe kills this year (that may get set aside for one particular doe who has a giant button buck fawn) it was a pleasant surprise to have 3 mature does with multiple fawns using the food plot. I also set a cam up to watch the main trail leading in/out of my sanctuary on the Hippie Ridge end of things and captured pictures of does every morning for two weeks...

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The Bad

I have no idea how a deer who had his picture taken thousands and thousands of times as a 2 and 3 year old become so camera shy over the course of one winter, but Captain Jack DOES NOT like the cameras this year. I have to stand on the front of my four-wheeler to check this camera and it is more than 30 yards from him in this picture, yet he seems to be clued in on it. It could be the scrape tree I planted as this was the first time he had been past it, but it seems like it is the camera he is sketchy about...

[video=youtube;pHGng45IGtA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHGng45IGtA&feature=g-upl[/video]

These two girls decided to help themselves to our farm and while they were at it, deciding it would be a good idea to drive through the middle of my food plot not once, but twice. I'll be out there this evening trying to track them down and it won't be a fun evening for them when I do find them...

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The Ugly

This little guy is cool, but ugly at the same time!!! He's the one working the scrape in the second video from the transplanted scrape tree...

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Now these little bastards are really ugly! I can't believe I have four in one pic!!!

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This is part of the good, but for some reason it will only allow me to include one video at a time...

My scrape tree experiment is off to a good start and that gets me excited for what may come in the next 6-8 weeks!!!

[video=youtube;fKybs_Jo1vk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKybs_Jo1vk&feature=g-upl[/video]
 
I tried smokey's pre-orbital on the licking branches too. They seem to be using the scrapes now.
 
Great thread and update Jesse! Love the scrape pics and vid! Hope you track down those two trespassers and go up in some of dat ass! What is going on in there minds?!? "Hey Mavis, that looks like a nice farm to ride around on, hold on while we cross this ditch." WTH! Dumbass stupid people nowadays!
 
Gordo said:
I need to give that a try. Any pointers?
Click to expand...

The scrape tree?

I read an article recently and for the life of me, I cannot find it, but I think it was Scott Bestul in a recent edition of North American Whitetail. He wrote of a buck he was hunted that entered a small food plot two nights in a row from the same trail, but never came within bow range of his stand. Because the scraping phase was beginning to heat up and due to there being no suitable scrape branches around this food plot, he decided to create his own. So he went in the next evening with a set of clean clothes, gloves, and post hole diggers, cut a small tree with a good scrape branch, then dug a hole and set the tree as you would a fence post. When he was done, he doctored the scrape, put on his hunting clothes, and climbed in the same stand he had been in the previous two hunts. Later that evening, he killed that buck as it made a bee line to the tree to inspect the scrape.

The food plot I planted in this bottom sit between my sanctuary on one ridge, and standing corn on the other ridge. Here is a view of the bottom as you look west. My sanctuary is to the left and the corn/acorns are to the right...

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The deer use this bottom all the time and the edition of a new food source will only add to the usage. With all the activity, it makes for a great place to observe and decoy. There are no scrape branches along the edge of this bottom which is 75 yards wide by 250 yards long, so I thought it would be worth the effort to create my own. I chose a stout maple with a good licking branch as my scrape tree and so far, it seems to be working. Here is a look at it after I transplanted it...

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Jesse said:
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I have no idea how a deer who had his picture taken thousands and thousands of times as a 2 and 3 year old become so camera shy over the course of one winter, but Captain Jack DOES NOT like the cameras this year. I have to stand on the front of my four-wheeler to check this camera and it is more than 30 yards from him in this picture, yet he seems to be clued in on it. It could be the scrape tree I planted as this was the first time he had been past it, but it seems like it is the camera he is sketchy about...
Click to expand...

From the first pic you showed of him I get the "holy shit" look and would have been interesting to see what he did after if it were in video mode. Perhaps he is spotting that red glow from the IR and is becoming wise to it?
 
Made a trip out to my new farm at lunch to check the three cams I have there and damn if the coyotes didn't come out of the wood work! I had at least one on all three cams and one of the cams had a coyote every single day/night. I know where I'll be spending a good bit of time once it gets cold!!!

I knew with the beans drying up and the bucks shedding, things would slow down here and they did just as expected. I was able to get one series of Dozer however and I have reconsidered my decision not to shoot him. I'll arrow this deer if given the chance...

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Damn yotes...

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I'd like to see what the thoughts are on his score and age. I used a scale to measure his ear to ear spread and assuming that is the standard 18" it is said to be, I get an inside spread of 25". I have brows at 7.5" and 8". I'd guess his main beams to be 24-25" range. All four tines (G2s and G3s) appear to be in the same 5.5 to 6" range. I'd be shocked if he had much more than 30" of mass and that puts him in the 120-125" range. He seems so much bigger than that, but I don't seem him scoring a lot more. As for age, I think he is at least 4.5, if not older. My buddy and I were talking that he could be to the point of going down hill and last year's rack may have been much better. I personally feel he is 5...
 
Jesse
I shot one like that a few years back that was 21" ID with short tines. It ended up netting 107. Your appears to be a couple inches higher.
BM
 
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