Solo hunter dead heads

[Teaman1]

Do any of you solo hunters ever worry about getting antlers stolen while you pack out meat? Random thing I’ve always wondered about

 

[Ross]

I stash and tie to tree hidden from kill

 

[Marble]

Ive only hidden one. Big public land 340ish bull right off the trail. Lots of people knew I killed it. Including one guy who tried to claim a bull I killed. Not many people ive ran into in the woods that rubbed me so wrong like him.

 

[Akshphntr]

Definitely. I shuttle my meat and horns keeping the horns pretty close to my view cause a predator could drag them off too....

 

[BK Ammenwerth]

That’s a real POS that would take another guys rack. Hard to believe but nothing surprises me. The world is full of good people and bad. However in the hunting world most I’ve run across have been good people but bad apple exist.

 

[wyosam]

I've never given it a thought. Heck, the last good bull i killed I ended up leaving the head on the mountain for over a week. Packed out the meat and it was time to go back to work, so I left the head for my next set of days off.

 

[Scrappy]

I've only been elk hunting the last two years so very limited experience here. The places I have been hunting I haven't seen another hunter. It never crossed my mind that someone would stumble upon my kill. It seems to me like it would be like a needle in a million haybales.

 

[Northernpiker]

I hate to worry about the horns being stolen...so I don’t kill anything!

 

[BluMtn]

If anybody wants to steal my spike elk antlers they are more than welcome to. Thanks Washington state.

 

[Randle]

The only set I had "stolen" were at home. I took that 5x5 bull an hung the antlers from a step ladder behind the house out of sight to let the bees clean the skull. I came home that night to find my antlers gone. Insert...panic, with bewilderment. I could not fin them anywhere. Later that night my neighbor came by an asked if I shot an elk yet. When i told him what happen he laughed and said he came home to find his pup dragging them up his drive. We had a good laugh.

 

[530Chukar]

We normally get them back to our camp with the first load of meat. At that point they stay therein a tree while we shuttle out the meat. They’re the last thing to come out with the camp load. I’ve got a cable lock that I then use to secure them in the back of the truck while we’re in town or at a hotel overnight.


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[TradAg02]

I don’t worry about antlers at the kill site; but I do cable-lock them to a tree in a random hidden spot once back at the truck. Most of the guys who would stumble upon a kill site in the areas I hunt are there for the experience. However, there are plenty of road hunters in the area who just want the antlers to brag about.


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[Marble]

In the late 90s, my hunting partner killed two bulls in a little bit of fresh snow. He hiked out that day, got a load of horses and and returned to find just the carcasses. No horns no meat. Never found the guys that did it.

About 8 years ago I killed a cow and bull about 500 yards apart. The bull was shot through the back of the head and its horns split. I slit its throat then went to get my dad to help with all the work. About 10 minutes after I left the bull, I heard a gun shot near where my bull was. When I returned (20 minutes later) to my bull, there were 2 men and a 18 year old standing at my bull. One guy was starting to gut my bull and said he thought someone shot it and couldn't find it. BS!! This guy owns property near where we were and has tried to run us out several times, called the sherriff etc. He owned a guide service there and his guides were just huge Aholes. Cant beleive the guy had the guts ti trg to take my bull.

Knowing this guy I'm sure he shot his rifle and then tried to say he shot this bull to his buddies.

 

[Teaman1]

Wow, that guy sounds like a real winner. I’m sure 99% of hunters wouldn’t touch it as most people I bump into seem like nice guys. I’d just hate to have my first good one get stolen

 

[orionsbrother]

Be circumspect, but not paranoid.

It amazes me that there are people who are lacking that voice in their head as well as a moral compass.

If I was an azzhole and stole someone’s rack, every time I looked at that rack, the voice in my head would be screaming, “You’re a Douchebag!!!!”

I’m a realist though. We secured my buddy’s 7X8 when we went into town.

I just don’t understand it.

I have to laugh at myself though. Now that I’ve replaced and upgraded a lot of my threadworn, beat up, old, heavy gear... I sometimes worry about camp because I now have some gear and a shelter that would be worth packing off the mountain. I never gave a second thought to the old gear.

Like someone else alluded to... kill a spike and leave the rack outside your fourteen pound tent with your six pound hollow-fill sleeping bag...no worries.

 

[Mike Islander]

Some guys will get pec implants. Same kind of guy who would steal antlers and brag about them. Ultimate douchebag. Thankfully they are very, very rare.

 

[Pbast81]

We have always tied ours up in a tree behind camp. Never thought of the cable lock idea but I will definitely being bringing a couple along this year now!

 

[Still Hunter]

Had a friend who was like a father to me and my brothers , he took his teenage sons, 15 & 17, with him to Colorado back in the late 70's . The Boys shot a nice bull and they found it . They left the bull to go get their Dad who was hunting a ridge over. When they got back to the boys bull four locals had already tagged it , gutted it and quartered it and were loading it up. After some heated discussion he had to back off and let them have the bull rather that risk one of his son's getting shot. He was a Colonel and had spent several tours in Vietnam. Had he not feared injury to one of his boys it would have been really ugly for the locals. He sure wanted to leave them right where he found them.

 

[Teaman1]

Some people are pathetic....

 

[jspradley]

Some guys will get pec implants. Same kind of guy who would steal antlers and brag about them. Ultimate douchebag. Thankfully they are very, very rare.

They are very rare but they tend to strike more than once.

I'm like the rest of the relatively normal folks in here, I couldn't look at a stolen or poached skull and see it as anything other than something to be ashamed of but some people find pride in being douchebags.