Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Mule Deer.

"SCI Estate World Record"

Congrats to the breeder.

I have no idea where that came from. It's not in the photo I put into the Campfire's photo-posting program!

Maybe Rick Bin has a secret "tape app".....

Maybe it means they're "taping" you...

Does breeder and feed mix get listed for estate records?

It should.

More responsible for the record than the shooter!

My god your wife takes awesome pictures.....are those from some sort of digiscope system, or a DSLR zoomed in, or something else?

For what it is worth, here is my biggest bodied mule deer (shown here a few times) from the Wyoming high country. I am guessing a combo of good nutrition and genetics, as well as age allowed him to be what he was. Only 26" wide and nothing ground breaking as far as antlers, but a body Mike Obama would envy...

Thanks Montana Man, you had some brutes too.

Truth. I figure the feed mix is as closely guarded as the Pfizer Jab mix.

T Inman:

Cookie has 3 DSLR's. Little if any cropping, but just slightly trimmed to fit the typical computer screen. The topmost image you linked to was taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark 4 using a Canon 100-400 mm lens zoomed to 270mm. I would have to look up the data on the other images. I was not there, but her story was she was backing off the trail so they could get by, meaning they were close. Probably inside of 50 yds. I was unknowingly about 100+yds somewhere behind and upwind of the pair in the out of sight background, and I suspect they were hustling away from me.

The 100-400mm is her bread-and-butter unit being easily handheld, but she also has a 500mm prime when one needs to stretch out. The DSLR's come with several sizes of sensors. Some are smaller than the full frame 35mm sensor and are often called crop sensors. I.e. they are only capturing the central portion of the image the lens is routing into the camera. I think that camera is a 1.6 crop. Another common size is 1.4.

That being, if one has a 100 m lens, the image captured is the optical equivalent of using a 160mm. If one puts on the 500mm, it's the optical equivalent of an 800mm (i.e 1.6X500). If one gets into photography, the real $$$ go into lenses.

There are some newer less expensive lenses coming out now, but their light gathering abilities are a bit weak, and one finds them wanting early and late in the day. I think one can get some 100-800mm glass now for about $2k, but again they are poor in low light. Very sharp when out in bright daylight though.

Have a good one,

Lol 3 miles? That's nothing.

Another High Fence Deer, I prefer to call them "Canned Hunts", so what! lol

He’s out of range, let me shake this bag of corn feed, he’ll walk right over.





P

EXACTLY!

While they drink beers and puff Mary Jane spliffs 100 yards away from the feeder in a nice warm vehicle or stand, with a laptop streaming Porn Hub videos lol

Canned hunts are not hunting.

At the big buck contests, I see a few 30" bucks, not like it used to be, they all used to be 30"+.

I have never shot one larger than 26", but many of the bucks around here can easily be big bodied and 300lbs with a 20-24" rack.
I think we will see the return of cranker bucks if we have a better management of habitat created by forest fire's, which is most of the local Mule deer Country.

I love hunting Mule deer and shot quite a few like this.
A poor pic.

Beauty! That's a classic BC muley.

I've talked to ranchers in Northern NM who tell me they had a lot of mule deer over 50 years ago and 30 inch bucks were common. Now they say they wouldn't allow a hunt because the deer population is so low and all due to NM Game laws. They say they have almost as many mountain lions as deer and haven't seen a big buck in decades.

When your 50 years of deer management has not produced results and the bastards stick with it there is a skunk in the works.

Mule Deer;
Good evening John, I hope that you and Eileen had a well behaved weekend and you're both healthy, warm and dry tonight.

We're supposed to be getting a bit of a dump onto the passes tonight - up to 40cm they say - but we can use the snow so we'll take it.

Thanks for putting up that photo again, every time I see it I just shake my head as it's one of the bigger bodied mulies I've ever laid eyes on.

For sure our experience is only with southern BC mulies which aren't typically that big and I've only handled about a hundred of them over the years give or take, so not as many as some by a long shot but perhaps enough to recognize an outsized specimen.

A buddy killed one that had to be close to 200lb into the cooler, but we boned it all out except the two hind legs.

This one went 145lb boned out on the mountain with the back and front leg bones in that number, but we boned the rest out in the bottom of the shin tangle pucker brush canyon it ran down into before I ended it.



The photo was the 2nd trip down there that day and it was a cluster of epic proportions, thus my eyeballs looking like two pee holes in the snow....

If I was to guess, I'd think it was 185lb carcass.

I've killed one more that was likely within 10lb of it, but the truly big ones like yours is we've just not seen here, in nearly 40 years of chasing them.

Thanks again for the photo John, that one always makes me grin and I never tire of seeing it.

All the best to you and Eileen as we hopefully head into spring.

Dwayne

Other biological factors in the size of mule deer (including antlers) is that during the Great Depression there were plenty of drought years, along with plenty of subsistence poaching. Consequently the numbers of mule deer were at a low point--until WWII, when a lot of hunters were otherwise occupied.

After the war the general climate in the West was wetter, and mule deer populations increased due to more browse. They also reproduce quicker than elk, does generally having two young, versus one calf per elk. This is partly why mule deer populations rose rapidly after the war. But even after soldier/hunters returned, there weren't nearly as many as there are today. As a result, bucks had more good feed--and less hunting pressure. Thus they grew bigger, and older. In fact, some states (such as Colorado) allowed hunters two bucks a year.

Eventually elk populations started rising--and it's been demonstrated more than once in various studies that larger elk populations tend to result in fewer mule deer. And elk populations continue to increase in much of the West, partly due to more of 'em spending more time on private land, where hunting pressure is lower.

All of which is why so many huge-antlered mule deer were killed in the 1960s era--and fewer 30" bucks (or however you want to measure antlers) are taken these days on public land, or even private.

Thanks!