Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game "Out west" fact or fiction?

saddlesore,



What power binocular do you use?!

Where I hunted a couple years ago was a three point or better area. I found two deer with my 8X binoculars. I am not always a trophy hunter so I took the first legal deer I found. My scope was a 5-25X52. In order to see the third point I had to turn it up to 25X.

Earlier that year I hunted in a different state and was trophy hunting because I had more time. I found a deer with my binoculars but could not tell if it had four points on both sides, but could tell the antlers were wider than the ears. Up came the scope. When it was on 12X I could tell there were four points on each side and fired.

ringman -- Thank You.

Jerry

I have a sincere question. When you have identified a deer PLUS a buck with antlers....

what is imprudent about scoping it?

I may NOT know if I want to shoot it or not but it is a deer with antlers. If/when the legal points are determined it is time to shoot. If not, drop the sight off the animal.

Here is a buck. How many points can you see? and I'm standing only feet away from it.


This 6 pt weighed 175-178 lbs and had 17 1/2" inside spread. W/o seeing a 3rd point on 1 side, it would have been illegal for me to shoot.

He was pushing a doe in a cutover about 389 yds away. I turned the scope up, and still had to wait for him to turn his head JUST right to see a 3 rd point.

Jerry




ps: I've discussed this scenario too many times before and I 'm not going to argue with anyone about it.

I encountered this "out west" concept myself, back in Michigan. Having lived all over the country, I found it pretty pretty funny how the guys talking about "out west" seemed to think that meant one particular type of terrain.

Here in the coastal mountains on the west coast, all of my deer have been shot inside 50 yards. I've averaged longer distance shots back in the southeast than in this coastal region.

Out of curiosity, how far 'out west' do you have to get before an eastern 6 pt becomes a western 3x3?

Obviously, further west.

Well.... I'm at least West of the Big River.

Ringman is from Oregon.... so.....

Close/far isn't limited to geographical location. Scope choice is personal preference choice.


Jerry

I could get by with a 4-12X in the local place where I hunt. Twelve power is the magnification I needed a couple years ago to make out the points on this buck in the conditions that morning.

Fiction

To an Easterner,it starts in places like Nebraska, Kansas,Oklahoma,and Texas that start to "look" like the west.

Did you have one in the chamber to not miss that opportunity?

ironbender,

When I hunt there is always one in the chamber with the safety on. The safety is switched off on the way to my shoulder. The deer was walking toward some brush that joind the woods about my level. I already determined the antlers were wider than the ears with the binoculars.

Bob Hagel would have been proud. He said take the available shot. By the time I turned up the scope to 12X and saw four on both sides all that was visable was the right flank and back leg. The buck was angling away so I fired right in front of the right back leg. The GSCustom 85HV left the muzzle at 3,919feet per second and exited behind the left shoulder. The deers momentom carried it out of sight. I was ready to wait for several hours before I disturbed it because I didn't know how badly it was hit.

After about two minutes it charged out of the bush dragging its hand legs down hill as fast as a man can run. I put another thrugh the ribs as it went by below me. That one exited where the elbow covers it. You can see them in the photo.

I have lived in the east and west and the places you listed all look like a billiard table to me!!!!!!!

Yup and it gets dryer with short grass prairie,sage brush,tumble weed and stuff like that.Nothing like that back East. To me that's the beginning of the West.Also pretty sure thats the beginning of mule deer country,no?

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mudhen, that's a good map, but I have a question for you regarding the mule deer found in the W TX sandhills that hug the TX/NM line....not even highlighted on this map (gray).

What supspecies are they in your opinion? They are much larger bodied than any mule deer herd found to the N, S, or W. The first one seen out here by a huge landowner here, a friend of my dad's, was in 1971. Where did they come from and how did they get here?

Ben yeah that's kind of what I'm talking about. I figure if it's got mule deer, it's the west!

JG, I don't know the answer to your question, for sure, but I would bet that taxonomists would place them in the Rocky Mountain mule deer subspecies. The Rockies are the biggest of the designated subspecies, and I have seen and measured some very large-bodied mule deer in western Nebraska and western Kansas. Lower elevations mean longer growing seasons and milder winters, both of which help to maximize growth and body size. Then there are also the effects of harsher winters in the northern parts of a species range, where large body size and smaller appendages become a means of minimizing heat loss to very cold winter temperatures.

Biologists don't pay as much attention to subspecies as they used to when naming new taxa was a game that everyone played. For populations that are not physically isolated from one another, there are really no definable lines where one subspecies starts and another ends. We tend to think of differences among populations in terms of ecotypes--subpopulations of animals that have become adapted over time to be successful in particular habitats. The differences probably result from some genetic variation as well as the effects of soils, climate, and vegetation acting on the the individual animals which make up the population as a whole.

Excellent, thank you sir. Your friend Ernie Davis has the same inclination...Rocky Mtn variety.

How far were the deer from you?