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It’s a hellova buck too!!

Shout out to our local HS football team, Centennial Cougars making it to the state finals in the big boy division next Friday! They beat Lakeville South in the 6A. Way to go boys!

I have coached and fished with several of the boys over the years. Pretty exciting in our house. We still have 2 kids that go there .

Friday sunrise in the chickenbuck swamp. All is quiet.

That's super Ryan !!

Doug helped a buddy, that didn't know what he was doing, butcher a buck, last night.

Was with him, when he shot it, last Saturday too !

Good luck Dave !!

You got a full roster, in camp ?

Snowed again here yesterday & last night !

Ground covered again.

Boy got a little 8 point opening morning, I saw a small 6 - let him walk.

He also saw 3 more 8's that night but didn't get a shot as we've seen glimpses of a nice 10 too so he's holding out for that 10 on tag 2.

I ended up leaving camp early to come back home and take care of some situations that are aggravating. Had to be taken care of.

Teal, congrats to the boy.

You get 2 buck tags? That’s pretty sweet!

Combo tags in Michigan, 2 bucks or now there good for 2 does, but only one deer per tag. Extra doe tags are 20.00 can get up to 10 of them one a day.

November 15th marked the 50th year that I have been deer hunting here in Michigan. I have several deer rifles and am a fan of the Remington pump but it seemed only fitting that I hunt this year with the same rifle (my first gun) that I carried way back in 1973. It's a Marlin 336 in .35 Rem. It still has the original Weaver 4x scope. The only thing I've changed is the lever has been replaced with a larger loop lever. Gloved hands fit better now.
On the morning of the 17th shortly after daylight I heard a deer coming up at a fast walk from behind me. He went past me & stopped in a nice little clearing at about 40 yards. Looking from the rear I could see he was a decent buck but something didn't look quite right. I thought he was a 9 point. Back in '73 and many other years I would have shot him without even counting points. A buck like this was few and far between.
One shot dropped him right there, that shoulder is a real mess but there are benefits to not having a blood trail sometimes.
Turns out what looked a little odd was that he had broken off a back tine from each side of his rack. I really don't mind. Nice to take a good buck with my old rifle again.
I always look forward to reading here how everyone is doing at deer camp. Good luck to all of you.

Congrats Jim of the north.

I’ve had one hellova a day. For now, I’m going to leave it at that.

Congratulations to all the successful hunters! Still hard at it here on the final day of our rifle season with zero deer for our efforts.

Good luck chickenbuckers!

Big zero for chickenbuck rifle season. Much sadness.

This old guy put some miles on his boots yesterday too, only to jump one doe. No scrapes, no rubs, no sign in general. Very low deer numbers for sure.

Goose egg as well for my camp NE of Bigfork. In fact, 5 hunters saw a total of 1 deer all season.

Our camp which is about 40 miles SW of Camp Chickenbuck shot one doe and one ten point buck for nine hunters. Very few deer seen. Wolves killed and ate an 11 point buck opening day evening about 150 yards west of our cabin site on the north end of our large food plot and that event most likely limited our deer sightings. Last afternoon that I hunted I saw zero deer but did see 8 individual grouse parading through a shooting lane. Many coyote tracks in addition to wolf tracks. Lots of turkeys seen around camp. There was an article published in the Grand Forks Herald about our camp this year which was a follow up to an article published by them about three years ago.

Cool! I'll have to look for that.

Wolves and bears have made northern MN devoid of deer it’s a shame.

It will take 10 years to come back once the wolves are actually back to manageable numbers. And who knows how long that will be.

The only way anyone in the DNR will hear the cries is with money.

Tom - Northern Mn is in the same boat. DNR wants to increase the number of bears, bears love fawns. Feds won't allow the states to control the wolves, not that Walz would allow it anyway. Throw in a few bad winters. Sad.

Teal that is one nice deer camp!

Got it done in western Wisconsin on Tuesday morning. Been hunting this buck all fall, he’s 5.5 14.5”g2 almost killed him with a bow on the 9th. 208 field dressed with zero fat when we caped him out