Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting I hit the PA deer lottery!

Great story and hunt.....Thanks for posting....And shot with an Amish machine gun...

Cool story. Have never seen a wild deer with tags.

That’s a super cool hunt you went on congrats on the genuine trophy (ear tags or no) deer there you earned it!

I love those big woods like and and share your sense of adventure that sounds like a ball buster hike but what satisfaction!

Thanks for sharing I look forward to hearing what comes of the mystery tags.

My favorite tagged animal story came from a friend of mine. It was a radio collared caribou, that he had helped release on a transplant some 50-60 miles away just a couple months before.

She was probably trying to go home, some 500 miles away, but ran into an arm of the ocean, short-stopping her intention even before he legally collected her from a different, already established and huntable herd.

No reward, though she was wearing a $1500 collar. He felt kind of bad, F&G having gone to all that expense only to have a collared animal killed that soon after the transplant, even if she was off her grounds.

The first caribou I ever killed came from that same established herd, a few years earlier, and was ear-tagged, showing she was one of the original transplants to establish that herd 13 years before. She was 15, old for a caribou, teeth very worn, fat and calf-less in mid-August.

A 12 mile pack out, more or less downhill... fair horse trail for 5 of that, good FS trail for the last 7..but we had horses that time. I killed a few more over the years back there, and back-packed them out.

I was much younger then.....

I;ve been using snow machines and an ATV for the last 10 years. Mo better!

Years ago here in PA they had something like a dog collar with a big battery/electronics packet on it.
I saw 2 a couple years apart, let them both pass. Both were doe.
Had Game commission guys give a talk on the tagged deer at my local club. Interesting how they scatter during rut, and the travel some do.
One swam the Susquehanna river almost every day. That was amazing.
Also had talks on elk, otters, bob cats, and fishers. All very interesting.

Very nice PA buck!

Super deer jackpot.

It did not escape notice that your pump was aiming at our groin/torso area in one of the pics, yikes!

Trust you dodged a muzzle sweep mishap!

Great story, looking forward to hearing the outcome of the tags.

Great story!....thanks for posting 👍.....Hb

Congrats on your success!

Ron

UPDATE - So I got a call back from a nice young woman working for PGC out of College Station today about those ear tags. I gave her all the information she needed and then she filled me in on the trapping program and this particular buck. Turns out he was trapped and tagged on May 18th, 2017 as a newborn fawn as part of an ongoing fawn survival study being conducted by PGC. So that would make him 3.5, much more believable than 6.5. She said according to the data she had that he was trapped within 24 hours of being born. I asked how she knew that and she said it's mother was also tagged and wore a GPS collar and had an implant that could tell them when she was giving birth (by body temperature). I asked about the 2 different tag numbers and she said that he was never re-trapped, but rather they don't sedate the fawns that young when they are trying to get them tagged, so they just grab 2 tags out of the bag and don't worry about matching them up as they want to release them ASAP.

What I did find interesting was that where he was trapped and where I shot him were only a couple miles apart. I had always been told that young, 1.5 year old bucks get kicked out of their mother's home range and need to find their own new territory. Sort of nature's way of preventing in-breeding. Apparently that is not always the case.

Anyway, she did say I would get the $100 reward for participating. I thanked her for the basically free deer tag this year and promised to reinvest it in next years tag. She told me there were plenty of tagged deer in that area so maybe we would talk again.

Cool story and info all the way around! Thanks for the update!

Great follow up Brent, thank you.

Thanks for the update bb. Interesting stuff.

Thanks for the update!

Very cool story. Thanks for sharing.

Cool story! Thanks.

So look what showed up in the mail today! Not exactly what I expected, but appreciated none the less! I guess this brings the story full circle.

Deciding a place is too perfect not to spend some time in is my primary scouting tactic

Well played!

Really enjoyed that and thank you for sharing.

Well done for taking matters into your own hands - that memory will live for a long time!