Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What antler charcteristic is your weakness?

I forgot this one.

MASS!

Wide, tall, mass, cheaters, back scratchers, large brow tines.

I get plenty of doe tags so meat is not a problem for me and my hunting area is full of dinks. When traveling 300+ lb deer with mass and tall tines is what I seek. At home I'd just rather kill does as I have not seen what I would call a good buck yet , I'll eat my buck tag its fine by me. They ain't gonna get any bigger being dead.

This worked.

Who's house?

That one Skane killed a couple years back had me drooling on my screen, if I shot that one it would all be downhill from there on no matter what crossed my path.


MM

This one got my attention today on my Game Camera. Came in on the 22nd of Sept 8:30 AM. Tom

ive seen it in person, its more impressive than the pics. matter of fact, scott has a bunch of dandys ;-)

I'll vouch for that!

IMHO tapes and books are about worthless. Unless of course you like to brag... I don't care for bragging and don't care for folks that do it.

Nice buck Steve!

My take.... I"m constantly trying to improve genetics... I shoot whats not good for the herd every time I see it. Until I'm out of tags.

I"m finally getting a solid 10 point pool at home and am starting to think about whacking every legal 8 I see that I have tags for, IE breeding age ones. Leave the 10s alone and life will be even nicer IMHO.

Can't believe I got to the point of passing a 10 though... had not ever shot a 10 until about 5 years ago.

Out and about I"m just as happy to eat a cull or doe if the herd needs thinning.

I am a meat hunter. I will NOT shoot promising bucks though, even if they are all I see.

Caveat is we have a long season, a good herd, and at least 4-5 tags..

At the risk of being flamed, any 1 1/2 is fine by me; buck or doe. That stated, I've passed on probably 40 or more small bucks in the past 10 or 15 years, but have chewed on several does in that time. In my opinion the machismo of ONLY shooting huge bucks has probably done more to keep young people from embracing hunting than the Democrat philosophy.

While I generally agree with that, you may be painting with a pretty broad brush there.

Some don't do it for the machismo. There's plenty of folks that get to the point in their hunting careers where it's about the challenge. And a mature deer is like a totally different breed of deer.

We should all do whatever makes our own socks go up and down. (unless you're from MN and target button bucks.. )

There's nothing macho about it for me, and I make no apologies for my "go big or go home" policy. I've shot enough game in my life. If I want meat, I'll go buy a side of beef. I could be talked into an oryx/gemsbok/eland meat hunt though.......

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Location - location - location !. Challenge - challenge - challenge !

Mass got this one killed last Friday

And a big Cheater didn't hurt.

fishnut - Great buck!!

GOOD LORD FISHNUT!. I grew up in a hunting environment where shooting does was not done much, and shooting a small buck almost as good as shooting a big one, then when i killed my first buck, a half rack' basket @13 I thought, killing this deer was easy, he was stupid, i know there are big bucks here, how cool would it be to outsmart one. Thats not to say i havent killed any deer since that day 19 years ago that wern't, but ive shot a lot more mature deer than anyone I grew up hunting with. Shooting small deer was empty for me, chasing big deer, even when i dont kill (every other year usually) is what keeps me addicted

Beauty!

What I try to shoot in the way of deer depends entirely on where I am,what I might bump into,and what is offered up.

I killed the Dink-A-Thon contender last year because it was seasons end, and I was hungry,having been outfoxed by a toad up in Maine earlier in the season.

Such is hunting.