Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Birth of a deer camp

You get her to switch to western hunting Jeff and she won't hunt MN anymore!!

Tom.....That would be a great problem to have!

When do you find out about SoDak?

Soon I hope. The deadline was last Friday for internet applications. This Friday for mail in apps.

My daughter and I are doing an antelope hunt this year in the same place as last year. If you go, I would be happy to show you the mistakes I have made so you don't necessarily have to repeat them! First thing is, buy an OnX Maps subscription for your cell phone.

Pronghorn hunting is just plain fun. Not too hard, not too serious, just fun. and compared to other hunts, it is easy.

Berretta,

Were you on public ground?

I've been on a few antelope hunts, all were small fee trespass pass hunts. If/when I go again I want to go public land.

Jeff

Antelope is on the near future list. I really didn’t have a desire to hunt them until I went to Yellowstone a few years back and saw them all over WY.

tzone

I did region A deer for about 15 years. Hunted in the bear lodge mountains,Black Hills N.F. We always had a good hunt. I would be happy to show you were we hunted and camped.

Here is our Wy. region A deer camp. We used to be able to drive in past the gate about 1/4 mile.

Beautiful camp as always!!

The wife thinks I was nuts for selling my other tent. So, I do believe I’m going to get another!

J elky,
Most of our hunt was on public ground and we lucked into some private by asking at the right place at the end. But up until then, it was all public. The road issue is big out there (and hard to determine what is public) and they are way more obsessed with trespassing out there than here I believe. OnX is absolutely critical. Do NOT go out there without it. It really works well for determining property lines while hunting. Next thing is knowing what public land holds antelope (yep, I made that mistake!).

T Jay......I would love to hear more about your Wyoming hunts? Whitetails or mule deer? Assuming public land? Other pictures from your hunts?

B-man....what part of Wyoming were you in? I've hunted south of Gillette, near the Pumpkin Buttes, over my Mayoworth and up near Arvada.

I have photo books with those hunt but few on the computer. I hunted almost every year from 86 to 2002. Almost all whitetails. That area around the tent is the top of a ridge that fish and game and the forest service thinned to help the mulies and in the last few years we saw a few. It was a fun area to hunt, sitting up on the rimrocks looking into the scrub oak. Only bad part was dragging them back up the ridge. Wish the season did not conflict with the Mn. season I would go back.

TJAY,

I'd love to see/hear more too. That camp looks perfect. I'd skip a MN season to hunt out west. I'm skipping the first few days if I draw SD. I'll be back for the second weekend though!

Pronghorns are a blast! Tasty too. We hunted a lot around Douglas, WY. Folks seem to be fairly good about letting us hunt. Always got the thing cut up and wrapped at Tom's in town. His breakfast sausage and jerky are nothing short of amazing.

Funny story. Made a 398 yard shot on a buck whilest my buddy was videotaping. Bang, flop. My dad was there too and watched the whole thing. I had a '98 Expedition as a rest. I gloated for a good 10 minutes and drank a victory beer with the boys before we took the walk to go get it. My buddy says "dang, right behind the ear". I says yep, didn't want to ruin any meat. What they didn't know was that I was holding just above the shoulder as the buck was feeding. The wind (it's ALWAYS windy out there) moved it over and the bullet (300WM 180 partition) dropped like a rock and caught that buck in the head down and over 18" when it was going for another bite. $h!thouse luck. I didn't see and reason to tell them at that particular moment. Made the drag back to the truck only to find the hide came dang near completely off. It was my first antelope. Had no idea the hide came off so easy. Good times.

Well, the new Mn. deer regs are out. I see our area is Hunter's Choice again. Nice not having to sweat out the lottery. Hoping to get in some archery hunting and ML too.

I think we were in "Hunters Choice" last year. But I didn't see a deer from the woods. Saw two while in the truck driving out on the logging road but nothing while hunting. I'm not sure I'm even buying a license this season for MN. You can only have so many irons in the fire.

I went up to WI to take a drive and get out of town for a few hours. I took the 7mm x 57 and my new 6.5 CM out for a spin. The more I shoot the Kimber the more I like it. Recoils less than a .243 it seems. 3/4" groups at 100 yds, 2" groups at 200 yds, 4" groups at 300. That was on me. I'm VERY new to shooting that far. This was only my 2nd or 3rd time shooting that far. I'll have it dialed in better by hunting season. One thing I noticed was that after even just shooting about 10 shots at 300, shooting at 100 seemed like a chip shot.

I glanced at the map, I see they have us as a 2 deer limit area.... blinking in disbelief. MN dnr deer management, Total disconnect from reality is solidly confirmed.

We feel that our deer are finally showing promise of a comeback after the bovine TB debacle, and they're gonna hand out 2 tags to everyone that wants to hunt our area.

What ever.

They make the rules, we follow.

I just looked at the zone map myself. The amount of micromanagement is ridiculous. On one side of a forest road is one zone on the other is a different zone. It's a really really well built logging road. It has class 5 on it but it's because they're always logging parts of the area. We have spots to hunt on both sides. Thankfully, they're both hunters choice. I wouldn't mind seeing pretty much all of northern MN "bucks only" except for the kids.

The DNR deer mismanagement continues to amaze me. I'm not sure why though. We should be used to it by now.

The only way I'm buying a license would be to hunt the 2nd weekend or muzzleloader. Come to think of it, muzzle loader may be fun.

Antelope is probably the most fun hunt I have been on to date with a firearm. I would love to do it again

From what I heard, Ripley is really a crap shoot. If you know the lay of the land, you should try to get as far back in as early as you can so when all the others show up and start pushing into the woods, they essentially drive the deer to you. This is just what I've heard. I have never actually hunted Ripley.