-WARDOG-
FNG
I live in the mountains of northern Idaho and see many whitetails all day, every day.
8-pointers are a dime a dozen during the rut.
This is the first year I have passed on all bucks in northern Idaho. I hunted hard like I do every year for elk then white tail. In my area a tag allows for harvest of either sex.
I have taken a lot of deer, and to make it more of a challenge I handgun hunt as much as possible. Or I should say that I carry a specific revolver and will use it to take a healthy buck within my range of 80 yards. But I'm no dummy. I carry a rifle as well, just in case I see a trophy elk or buck, or cougar, or wolf that is beyond my 80 yard revolver range and I really don't want to pass it up.
This is why I passed on all white tail bucks last season:
I get a gauge of the deer herd health just by paying attention to populations, observing the physical appearance of the deer I see, reports from Fish & Game, and what some other specific hunters with a solid reputation have seen.
In 2017, and again in 2021 our area had a high mortality of white tail (WT) and Mulie's (Mu's) due to hemorrhagic disease (Blue Tongue). On top of all of that our cougar population, and wolf population also grew.
Many of the does and quality bucks that I had been watching year after year on my property never returned. No doubt that mother nature is a cruel bitch and being on the menu of multiple predators can't be easy.
Now, since I live here, I know all of this history and current state of the deer population. Most non-resident hunters don't know what I know. This is where some of the problems come from. In my area, the state has mismanaged non-resident tags for years. NR hunters pay a pretty good price for the chance to hunt WT's and Mu's. They pay not only for the tags, but also the travel expenses, lodging etc. So the NR hunters I see in my area may pass on a few 3x3's, but when they get within a week of closing season they don't want to go home empty handed and have nothing to show there wives for all of the expenses of the trip. They also want to make sure they still have time to get their meat butchered up before they head for home. So they blast any fat doe or mediocre buck just to make meat. The state can fix some of this by requiring NR hunters to hunt bucks only, and to make the bucks a certain size.
I was holding out waiting to see if a couple of the bucks from the previous year were going to return within handgun range. I saw a few of them at night, laying under my apple tree 15 yards from my front porch, but they didn't show themselves during the light of day.
I just didn't feel that the population had bounced back enough to justify putting a mediocre buck in the freezer when I still had elk left.
8-pointers are a dime a dozen during the rut.
This is the first year I have passed on all bucks in northern Idaho. I hunted hard like I do every year for elk then white tail. In my area a tag allows for harvest of either sex.
I have taken a lot of deer, and to make it more of a challenge I handgun hunt as much as possible. Or I should say that I carry a specific revolver and will use it to take a healthy buck within my range of 80 yards. But I'm no dummy. I carry a rifle as well, just in case I see a trophy elk or buck, or cougar, or wolf that is beyond my 80 yard revolver range and I really don't want to pass it up.
This is why I passed on all white tail bucks last season:
I get a gauge of the deer herd health just by paying attention to populations, observing the physical appearance of the deer I see, reports from Fish & Game, and what some other specific hunters with a solid reputation have seen.
In 2017, and again in 2021 our area had a high mortality of white tail (WT) and Mulie's (Mu's) due to hemorrhagic disease (Blue Tongue). On top of all of that our cougar population, and wolf population also grew.
Many of the does and quality bucks that I had been watching year after year on my property never returned. No doubt that mother nature is a cruel bitch and being on the menu of multiple predators can't be easy.
Now, since I live here, I know all of this history and current state of the deer population. Most non-resident hunters don't know what I know. This is where some of the problems come from. In my area, the state has mismanaged non-resident tags for years. NR hunters pay a pretty good price for the chance to hunt WT's and Mu's. They pay not only for the tags, but also the travel expenses, lodging etc. So the NR hunters I see in my area may pass on a few 3x3's, but when they get within a week of closing season they don't want to go home empty handed and have nothing to show there wives for all of the expenses of the trip. They also want to make sure they still have time to get their meat butchered up before they head for home. So they blast any fat doe or mediocre buck just to make meat. The state can fix some of this by requiring NR hunters to hunt bucks only, and to make the bucks a certain size.
I was holding out waiting to see if a couple of the bucks from the previous year were going to return within handgun range. I saw a few of them at night, laying under my apple tree 15 yards from my front porch, but they didn't show themselves during the light of day.
I just didn't feel that the population had bounced back enough to justify putting a mediocre buck in the freezer when I still had elk left.
