He’s not the one I’ve been after since the season opened, but he’s a fine little buck and I’m glad to have him.
Neck shot as he was looking over a thicket at me.
6.5CM 129 Hornaday IL. All of 69 yards !

Congrats, nice buck

Kimber Hunter/SWFA 3x9MQ

Those gaiters I wearing are to keep those darned tiny burrs out of my boot laces, socks and pant legs. They work pretty well!

Well done!

All right, way to go. Congrats.

That'll eat!

Damn nice buck. Grats

Nice - congrats!

VERY nice buck BT. Good job.

Congratulations

Any 4x4 blacktail is a keeper. Good job. I've been working on the same one for a week and a half and have seen him twice. Come close. Going to hit him hard the next few days.

Hey Man I Posted Congrats & a few words.........

Didn’t show up ?? W T H ?

I’d be Happy with thatun!!

Jerry

Fireball2, the one I was really after is a toad. I watched him and a companion buck during the summer of 19 grow their antlers. I would catch them at day break as they left the ag fields and slipped into the timber.
When they shed their velvet, they left the ag and disappeared...... I found another buck and finally got him mid season last year.
So we’ve been seeing them off and on again this year, but sporadically. The area they live in is a nightmare to hunt. You can’t still hunt it - way to noisy and steep. You can see into quite a bit of it, but from almost 500 yards away.
I had him at 325 yards on opening day and the shot just never happened - and I haven’t been able to get eyes on him since. I have a shed from one of the two bucks and if the other side is a match, he’ll be around 150” BC.
I’ve been passing up a lot of forks and three points in hopes of a gift...... that’s how I look at today’s buck.
I’m pleased to have him and have no regrets. Now I can work on that cow elk tag!

Good luck with your quest!
BT53

That’s a dandy!



P

Congrats on a nice buck.

Nicely done!! I need to get one of those someday.

Nice buck, Congratulations!

Nice Blacktail...

Nice deer, congratulations on a fine deer.
Looks like you and your 6.5 gave that deer a nice dirt nap.

Excellent!!

Congrats Alan... nice buck I'd say...

I came face to face with a 6 pt ( western count) walked up to 20 to 25 yrds to him.. as he just lay their and looking at me..

biggest deer I've seen in my 25 years here in Oregon...old monarch... he just walked around the same way you'd see a lion in a zoo walk around...like nothing in the world could scare him...

So far I could still go out and find him.. close to the house and occasionally in my back yard...


was over real near Fireballs House...the first week of season....saw an awfully big buck over that way also..
just laying on a knoll in the sunshine.. around 4 PM... had to weight 250 lbs +.... another big deer by Oregon standards..

was 50 yds from it on the road...50 yds in the other direction, some guy was mowing his lawn.. and I bet that buck was in his yard where he was laying...but a lot of bucks this year running around...

mowing the lawn on Tuesday, I came across several big piles of Elk scatt in the yard... its early for them to be down from the surrounding hill this early...

best hunting I've seen in years is in the local neighborhood.. filled with CA transplants.. the anti hunting kind....

Very nice black tail! Way to go!

CJ

There's two kinds of blacktails. Mountain deer, wild ones, and yard deer. Last weekend you can hear all the shots ringing out in the valley as people shoot their pets. I'd rather hunt the mountains for one big buck than shoot 100 yard deer.

Yard deer is good eating.



P

You gots lots of yard deer...:)

In this case sloppy seconds look pretty good to me, congrats!

This is a view of some of the country I hunt.
A few steps left of the rifle is a 50’ drop off - to the right up the hill is stupid steep to the ridge top maybe 20 yards up.
Target buck usually shows at the top of the far ridge in the left side corner. That’s 325 yards. My original target buck showed up there on opening day... but the shot never developed and I never laid eyes on him the rest of the season.

and there are two types of Oregon hunters....( well three types, but I am not including road hunts in their diesel F 250s)...

Those of us that hunt the mountains...

and those of us who have no issues with a 100 yd or less deal....

younger I was the first type... aging... I'm either one... out in the mountains when I have the time and the suburban type when I don't...

Last year it was here in Merlin, this year out near Galice....

now that's the way to do it!

That’s a cool perch!

Nice! Congrats!

Seafire, I’ve spent a lotta time in the Galice country ( mostly in a raft or drift boat ) and it’s some of the most inhospitable ground I’ve ever seen! If I had a choice of deer hunting there or being a fisherman, you’d only see me on the water....... my hats off to you guys that take it on 🍺

Nice looking buck. I may have missed it, but did you shoot him offhand? Sounds like a quick shot type of thing.

A small black oak helped me get steady.
At the shot he simply disappeared and seconds later five or six does blew out of the thicket like quail....

I've hunted the Bear Camp country a lot over the years, but the fires cleaned out most of the vegetation in the areas I did best in. Deer numbers are very low in the areas I hunted traditionally up there. For some reason either spraying or naturally, after a fire vegetation in southern Oregon seems to grow up woody scrub brush, not lush vegetation that deer like. Here's a couple of Merlin area bucks from years past.

Yea, I’ve been over Bear Camp several times from Foster Bar. I didn’t see any place I wanted to wander off to.....

Those are nice bucks, Fireball 👍. Is that a sack of morels I see with the top pic?

We camp at Almeda for several days in August and float the river with a bunch of family and friends. The fires nearby will hopefully bring in some good deer hunting soon.

No, just old wood. Like I mentioned deer numbers in the entire area are way down. I hunted there the first two weekends this year and found one area that had a good buck but truly went too many miles with too little sign to stay interested, and it doesn't take much to keep me coming back when there's a good buck involved! LOL

We ran into a work crew up there and stopped to chat. They were spraying all the green new growth "to give the trees a chance to get going". They had a crew out hand spraying what they couldn't get with a helicopter in the tightest ravines. In other words the goal is bare dirt and trees, nothing else. Not much priority given to hunting or wildlife in that kind of "multiple use" management.

BUT, the Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife will sell you deer tags all day long and give glowing reports of increased deer numbers every year before season. LOL. Like some of us haven't seen that song and dance before.