Worst ND deer season in years

[Idaho Ron]

Sounds like I ned to go there! Ron

 

[rabjr]

Friend of ours in ND sent this photo to us last year...how does anything find food enough to survive a winter like this

Well that is only about a foot of snow! Remember the deer are tiny :rotf:
We only get one deer a year here in Idaho. It amazes me to hear that some states allow so many deer to be killed by one hunter. 6, 8, 10 deer a year. If I could shoot that many deer I would be doing some experimenting with some different loads and guns.I get a Muzzleloader tag about 1 year out of 4. Ron

Hey, I don't bust your balls for shootin Conical, don't bust my balls about our tiny deer! :wink:

 

[Idaho Ron]

:rotf: :rotf: :rotf:

 

[buttonbuck]

Here is a bit that is totally crazy The Peoples republic of Illinois wants to raise their resident deer hunting fees from 15.oo a tag to 25 and a resident Hunting fishing and habitat stamp combo liscence as well I am not sure how much but it 24.75 now. Heck I am going to the Dakotas It may cost me more to hunt deer in my home state than elsewhere. :bull:

 

[texcl]

They lowered the nr doe tag fee to $50 recently and are allowing the nr hunters to buy more, I think unlimited, tags in order to get more business and keep our fee's the same in addition to killing off more doe. You can still buy a nr bow buck tag over the counter here for $250. I think they are going to limit the nr bow tags soon as there are complaints of too many nr's hunting the bow season. ND does have a solid stance on helping it's residents 1st. For pheasant and waterfowl we have a season that only residents can hunt then later on nr's are allowed to hunt. I'm always amazed that these critters can survive the winters, last year it was below freezing (below 0 most the time) from october to almost april and we had lots of snow and then a massive flood during the spring, but we still have good numbers of game, not as good as the year prior but compared to other places still good. The deer are so well insulated that you can shoot one and leave it out for 4 hours and it will still be warm when you butcher it in -10 temps. The 1st year I hunted here me and my lab were pheasant hunting and my dog kept stopping and digging down in the snow, so I'd fuss at her and we'de move on then I got tired of fussing at her and I let her dig for a couple seconds expecting her to come up with a mouse or something. All of a sudden a rooster popped out of the snow and flew straight up, I was so surprised I didn't shoot. After that I let Sandy do her job and we limited out within the hour.

 

[Tajue17]

in Mass its 27.50 + 5.10 for a Muzzleloader tag +5.10 for an Archery tag + 5.00 for every Doe tag you buy, fishing is 17.50 and this will be the first year we have to pay 10.00 for a saltwater license--means POOR ECONOMOY and we get the bill..

as for the first post about the deer,, I got an 8=pointer the 1st week of archery and haven't seen another deer yet and I hunt alot!

6 deer down and 4 tags left in ND,,, thats amazing that he call's it a bad year--> its beyond my understanding :hmm:

 

[roundball]

"...The 1st year I hunted here me and my lab were pheasant hunting and my dog kept stopping and digging down in the snow, so I'd fuss at her and we'de move on then I got tired of fussing at her and I let her dig for a couple seconds expecting her to come up with a mouse or something. All of a sudden a rooster popped out of the snow and flew straight up, I was so surprised I didn't shoot. After that I let Sandy do her job and we limited out within the hour..."

Kinda like shooting fish in a... er, uh, snowbank!

 

[texcl]

yeah, it was sort of easy, the hardest part was walking out there in 3 feet of snow or so.

 

[rabjr]

yeah, it was sort of easy, the hardest part was walking out there in 3 feet of snow or so.

Thats what snow shoes are for. :wink:

 

[DTCoffin]

Well i haven't seen anyone comment on the Maine deer herd so here it goes :barf: .Between coyotes, poachers,logging outfits cutting all the deer yards and heres a kicker, the state decided to clear-cut the median along I-95 from around the town of Howland north, all that awesome feed on the ground equaled about 200+ road kills( not to mention the moose)and if you consider at least 1/3 of those were does carrying youn-uns,add a bunch more.Thats a significant number of road kill.Were there still deer harvested this year, sure but at a local store/tagging station that normally tags 50-100 deer they had a whopping 20 i think this year.Sad state of affairs our deer is .

 

[DTCoffin]

whats the hunting terrain like there?Open or wooded?Also when is your ML season?As the money i spend driving around looking for a decent place to hunt that isn't posted ,it might be cheaper to make a road trip :haha:

 

[rabjr]

People just don't care anymore. We see here it here everyday and sooner or later it will reach everybody. We have generations growing up knowing nothing about hunting, having parents who have nothing to do with guns. Last I knew we here in my State were under 6000 hunters trying to hold back a growing herd. One blamed for lyme disease and a lot of crop damage, ornamental plant damage and car damage.

That nice little area over there would make a place for a beautiful home....we destroy good habitat everyday so we can live compfy, mean while we take the food out of all the animals mouths and people gripe and moan if we shoot one.

 

[sproulman]

Man the harsh winter we had last year really culled out the herd. Last year I could haved killed a deer every day I went out this year I've really had to work at it, I haven't shot a deer in the last 8 days hunting, that's crazy for around here. I have shot 6 deer so far but I still have 3 or 4 tags left and only 2 deer left in the freezer, that will last till feb. maybe. I just got back from sitting in my stand for 3 hours, it was -10 when I got there and who knows how cold when I left, I know my eye lashes were collecting ice. I hope this winter is warmer and shorter than last year, we need better reproduction this spring. I was talking to some old timers and they said they haven't seen this few deer in years and most of them didn't even shoot a buck this season, guess i should consider myself lucky.

not to be smart but in my area of pa. you would get FLOGGED for shooting 6 doe.want to ruin your hunting keep shooting doe off.
HR has ruined our hunting here in wmu2g of pa.
anyone that shoots a doe in my area of pa. usually cannot raise their heads up to look at you.they dont even respect themselves.

 

[William O.]

Here in South Dakota there are over 27,000 resident anterless deer muzzleloader tags left over that no one wants. There are also over 9000 non-resident anterless muzzleloader tags that are $55 a piece which includes the price of the non-resident hunting license. A non-resident 2-deer anterless tag is $80 including the hunting license. We still have way too many deer. What is ironic is that it cost more for a non-resident to hunt pheasants than deer.

$80 for a non-resident like me to come up there and shoot two deer with my modern rifle, then $55 to use my MLer for one more antlerless? Figuring spending 1559 miles in gas both ways from here to the middle of ND I still save several hundred bucks for what it would cost me here.

 

[roundball]

$80 for a non-resident like me to come up there and shoot two deer with my modern rifle, then $55 to use my MLer for one more antlerless?
Figuring spending 1559 miles in gas both ways from here to the middle of ND I still save several hundred bucks for what it would cost me here.

Plus lodging traveling to, then while there, then on the return trip...I wouldn't go through all that and pay all that for a nice Boone & Crockett buck...and certainly not for a Doe.

It seems to me if SD WRC thinks they need to harvest that many more Does, they need to make the tags 'free'...but even then, it would probably only appeal to a very few local residents.

North Carolina already has 6 deer tags with the license, and 2 years ago introduced Free Additional Bonus Doe Tags becaiuse the herd just keeps growing.

But only a handful of people used them...reason is that the average hunter doesn't fill all 6 tags he already has...PLUS...what in the world is the average guy going to do with 6 deer, to say nothing of MORE deer...you can only eat so many, and its getting harder and harder to give them away unless you do all the butchering for somebody, then that becomes an enormous amount of work for 6, 8, 10, 15 deer, etc.

Now with the above paragraph as a backdrop, get this: since the economy is BAD this year and NC needed more money...they decided to start CHARGING $10 for each Bonus Doe tag...you can imagine the results of THAT decision

 

[texcl]

Yeah, I don't get that, they complain here too about not being able to kill off enough does, common sense would say give away a doe tag with every buck tag, but I guess you don't make money that way. As for shooting all the does in my area if I shot a doe a day for the rest of my life I dont think I'd make a dent, natural patterns cause far more troubles, remember we aren't the east coast there are far more deer than people here and I have access to many many miles of land mostly private unlike most other more populated areas. Shoot I don't even shoot too many deer on my place anymore and I can see the fluctuation anyway. Last year when the deer herded up the average group was around 50-75 animals and the larger groups were 200+. I counted 283 deer before I got tired of counting, behind my house digging for corn in the snow last winter, I havent seen that this year but it's been so warm they aren't all in herds, I actually saw a buck chasing does around this morning, so it's a really off year. If the winter stays warm we'll be set up for a stellar year next year, espeacially since most of the deer stayed nocturnal during the season that equals bigger bucks next year and tons of does if the winter kill off is low. I'm going to post a killer and easy recipe I have been using lately, in the recipe forum, over the next couple of days.

 

[Onojutta]

We have generations growing up knowing nothing about hunting, having parents who have nothing to do with guns.

That is here and now. I turned 30 this year and I am still one of the youngest hunters I know. I think I may have been one of the last of the last generation to grow up with fathers, uncles, grandfathers who were hunters.

When I was growing up, video games and cable TV were just being invented. Kids still played outside for the most part. We built tree houses, played "war", rode bikes, played backyard ball, went fishing, creek stomping, etc.

These days hunting can't compete with cell phones, text messaging, face book, you tube, 237 TV channels, and the techno world of instant gratification. Add to that the dying of family values, rural life, and the increased difficulty of profitable farming and land lost to suburban sprawl and things start to look pretty scary for future generations. I can't imagine the face of the hunting community by the time I am the age of my father, uncles, and grandfather.

I hate to say it, but technological progress and suburban development are killing hunting.

 

[pchwcf50110]

Sounds like I ned to go there! Ron

Idaho Ron, you can shoot as many antlerless deer as you can pay for in 2/3rds of the counties in Missouri. MO is very open to out of state hunters with over the counter tag sales.

 

[Idaho Ron]

How hard is it to find a place to hunt? Ron

 

[texcl]

It, cost more to hunt ducks here than deer I think it's $285 for NRs for 2 weeks and the deer tag is $50. I think ND and SD have been looking at deer as a nuisance for quite some time. I heard that since deer numbers are down this year ND DNR is going to do away with the early deer season,that no one uses, it may just be a rumor though. I could care less as long as they are making the decisions in a reliable scientific manner, and not political hearsay.