Wish me luck

[jtmattison]

Well everyone, Ohio's gun season opens tomorrow and I will be hitting the woods for the first time with my .54 GPR.
I will be hunting a public area close to home so my odds for success are low but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.
Maybe the deer god will be on my side tomorrow.
Due to my hectic work schedule and busy family life I have to make the best of what I can get in the outdoors.
I'll let you know if I connect.

Huntin

 

[roundball]

Good luck...and remember the basics...a hunt is still successful if:
1) You don't hurt yourself;
2) You don't hurt anybody else;

Go get'em!

 

[Ohio Joe]

Good luck!

Don't fall asleep like I usually do... :haha:

Seriously... I usually fall asleep... And it's the best rest I get during the year. Just being in the woods is reward enough. :thumbsup:

 

[Stumpkiller]

Good luck!

I never fall asleep. I just close my eyes for 15 minutes at a time so I can focus carefully on listening for the "tap, tap . . . tap, tap" of little hoofies. I can't help it if my buck grunt call sounds like a snore to the untrained ear.

 

[swank]

Best Wishes from another Ohio Hunter. I can

 

[cayugad]

Good luck Huntin... our muzzleloader season starts today. So the army of modern hunters are finally out of the woods and a fellow can just wander around. Hope I have better luck then the last week, although last night my friend in another section of the land took a nice 10 pointer. Not a wall hanger, but a nice deer. It was the only deer he had seen the entire season....

 

[jtmattison]

Well my one and only day of hunting for this season came and went with no deer sightings, live deer that is.
I enjoyed a quiet day in the woods, and yes, I dozed off a little.
I did see some disturbing things after the hunt.
I drove around to some different parking areas to see if anyone else had connected.
At one area I saw the carcasses of two doe's that apparently had been killed earlier during the archery season. They were butchered in the parking area and the remains were rotting there.
I'm no expert on law but Ohio requires deer to be tagged with a temp tag and then taken to a check station.
These deer were cut up on the spot. I would say they were not checked at a station. In that case would you say they were poached? I would.
I went to another parking area and as soon as I got out of the truck I could smell rotting flesh.
Without much searching I found the carcass of a large buck rotting away. He had a perfect X shaped hole in his ribs from his killers arrow.
This deer was a different story from the others. About half of him was wasted. They took the loins and backstraps, hams, and that's about it.
The entire neck was there. The ribs were there and almost the entire legs. I would guess there was a good 30 pounds of meat left behind.
Oh, and of course the skull cap was cut off with the antlers.
He was a dandy buck. I'm no aging expert but looking at his teeth I would say he was 3-4 years old.
He was a big boy.
So all in all I had a relaxing day that ended with a bit of disappointment but life goes on and there's alway's tomorrow.

Huntin

 

[Stumpkiller]

Doesn't it just kill you. Near where I hunt they found a fellow with 22 deer hanging in his garage a few years back. Just a tad over the three allowed . . . if he had the single management permit available that year and hunted dual seasons.

Every year I find at least two deer who were never recovered, or were "released" after being shot. I have a collection of antlered skulls in my yard, some very respectable (one obviously worked at with a hatchet at the base ?? I guess it was too ripe when another passerby found it before me).

This year I witnessed a couple guys shooting multiple times in bursts without bothering to check for hits. @$$holes.

NY has a hotline for reporting poachers, but you have to catch them in the act. They don't have the resources to take DNA samples and tire impressions to track down all the bottom-feeders who fill tags multiple times like you found evidence of. Pity.

I'm sure such things are factored into the deer harvest targets by the state agencies. When you consider what cars take out, poaching must be relatively low. Probably still behind dogs wearying them to death. All you can do is turn their butts in if you spot them. Legally . . .