Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting The hard way

I was sitting along a deer trail yesterday evening with my bow letting my mind run wild as I watched for a late season deer with bad luck.

I let myself get halfway upset. Let me explain. As of now I live in a great state for deer hunters. We have a pretty liberal bag limit that allows us 8 does and 2 bucks if you hunt all the seasons and hunting methods. Quite a bit of public land for those not fortunate enough to have land or be able to afford a lease. Lots of opportunity, some form of deer season is open from October 1 thru Jan 15. A generally mild climate that makes it easy to get out and hunt without specialized gear plus it means good survival for fawn crops. Also we’re fortunate to get to hunt some portion of the rut with either a rifle or muzzleloader or both depending on the deer and the weather. While we don’t kill the multitude of giants like some Midwest states there are some really good bucks killed every year statewide and with some patience it generally isn’t too hard to get a shot at a nice buck if not an absolute monster.

Here’s the part that’s upsetting to me. There’s been a push that’s getting more and more vocal every year, I’m sure you can guess what crowd drives it, to get the wildlife department to make us a one buck state. It’ll improve the buck quality they say. We’ll be killing giants like Iowa and Ohio they say.

But if one looks closer these are the same guys and gals who spend thousands a year on feeders and supplements. Spend hours geeking out on their trail cam pics naming Ol’ Bentbrow and talking about management bucks. The same people who shoot Ravin crossbows that will put 3 bolts in as many inches at 100 yards. The guys who are using the smokeless muzzleloaders during “primitive” season that shoot 2” groups at 300 yards.

Not that my way is any more noble than theirs but when I bow hunt it’s with a recurve or longbow. Primitive season for me involves a sidelock muzzleloader with iron sights that I’m pretty confident in shooting out to about 70 yards. My standard of a “trophy” when using these weapons is not quite so stringent as I hold myself to during rifle season. Nobody makes me hunt this way, I enjoy it. But if they get their way I won’t be able to shoot a buck like the half rack one I missed with my longbow last week if I tagged one during the rifle season.

I guess this was all just to vent and say that I hate how competitive hunting has become with the advent of social media and cell cams, and the like. When I was a kid we had much lower bag limits but we could still shoot a buck with every method of take. And only the disabled were allowed the use of a crossbow. Optics of any type weren’t allowed on muzzleloaders. Nobody does anything the hard way anymore.

The wildlife department wants, practically begs us, to shoot does. 95 percent of guys won’t, period. Most people don’t eat deer or only do so grudgingly if it’s jerky or summer sausage so I don’t see this movement helping thin the does out. I just hope some egghead up there doesn’t get the idea this will help get people to shoot does.

I guess we all hunt for different reasons and have our own way of doing things. I just get so put off by the score [bleep] and now they’re trying to change the way I’m allowed to hunt for their “benefit”. I know several guys, good friends even, who when it comes to talking deer hunting every buck seen or killed has a class, “ oh did you see the buck Joe shot, pretty nice 155” class”. My dad, who has a stack of racks thrown into a heap in his barn that would make lots of guys cream their jeans, has just started telling them they sound like morons when they pipe up with the inches lingo.

Like everything else in life people want it to be as easy as possible to win, succeed, or be the best.

And I have no problem at all letting a buck walk if I don’t think he’s big enough or he doesn’t turn my crank. Don’t get me wrong I’m not ground checking everything with antler above the hairline. I like to shoot nice bucks and usually get a pretty good one with a rifle most years. I even passed an easy shot with my recurve for the first time ever this year because it was a button buck. And I guess it doesn’t make any sense after doing that but I’d happily smoke a forkie tomorrow evening when I’m sitting with my longbow.

I just think it’s BS for the crowd who primarily uses the most high tech methods and gear to decide that it’s now too easy to kill a buck using that kind of tech so let’s make the limit one buck so we’ll have bigger bucks to kill with our high zoot gear.

I have a cousin who’s a good guy and a good deer hunter. He rarely kills a buck nowadays and when he does it’s usually with a bow and usually a wall hanger. He’s expressed some support for the one buck movement due to his neighbors being brown down types that shoot any basket rack that comes along. I understand where he’s coming from to an extent. But having hunted in his neighborhood I also doubt it’ll help anything. In that part of the state regulations are not really important to many of the locals, I’ve witnessed one neighbor hunting with a Marlin 336 during muzzleloader season.

Heck with Echeck now I guess I can just do what lots already do and shoot whatever I want and check it in as a doe if I don’t feel like being done buck hunting.

I’m all for increased opportunity, as long as your increase isn’t my decrease. Maybe it’s due to my primarily hunting private land with nobody else hunting it outside of rifle season that skews my viewpoint.

Like I stated earlier I hate the idea of taking every advantage and then suddenly wanting to change the rules to counteract the results of those advantages. Leaves those of us who like the opportunity to do it the harder way out. I’d rather see the state restrict primitive weapons back to actual primitive weapons than to cut the limit on all of us. Heck let them have an unlimited weapon antlerless hunt to use the crossbows and smokeless muzzleloaders if they want to use them and want does killed. Somebody will find a way to corrupt that too I’m sure.

I don’t think guys like you are a problem Hookeye. You’ve done it the hard way. And for the record I don’t necessarily care if someone wants to use a laser ray gun during the primitive season.

But when use of laser ray guns in the primitive season starts limiting my opportunities due to their effectiveness is when I take issue. I don’t have an issue shooting does, usually do it most years if I don’t have an elk in the freezer. But most of the horn hunter types pushing the one buck change don’t shoot does. They simply want to stop guys from shooting more than one buck to give them a better chance at a monster. Herd health and sustainability isn’t what they’re pushing for.

In reality if it were put into effect it would have about zero effect on my primary hunting area. There is probably less than 5 bucks killed in a roughly 8 square mile roadless area per year anyway. And yes there are some monsters in there and yes it’s private. So no more people will get to hunt it and I won’t have the opportunity to possibly kill one with more than one method of take = the same amount of bucks dying of old age.

Maybe the answer is to enact it on public lands but that’s not the aim of the folks pushing for it either. Their aim is to keep anyone from killing “their” bucks when they aren’t on their place.

"Hard way" "Nobody does anything the hard way anymore" The OP comes across as some sort of purist and he has a father that would call me a moron. Interesting perspectives.