PA firearm season is cloe to kicking off. Very excited to be in the field with my daughter. Would love to see some pics of some of you alls best hunting memories or biggest bucks. Share what ya got

My best buck to date

Greatest day of my long hunting career. Daughters first deer!

All time B&C Sitka Blacktail. That hunt hurt.

Nov 2008…My Dad’s last buck he ever got, my Daughter’s first year she wanted to go hunting, my biggest, nicest buck and I took it with my .500 S&W mag revolver. We shot those bucks within 5 minutes of each other. Great day on so many levels!



Also, Dec. 11, 2019…my daughter’s first deer



Awesome day!

Doc_Holidude

Awesome pics guys! Keep em coming

Great story and pic, Doc! And kudos for getting it with the .500 S&W.

Damn, beautiful buck!

Wow, awesome blacktail

Me with my father and his last buck. This was a FL deer so it was a good deer for that area. Took it on a buddy's place. The animal hanging behind it is a hog. This was my father's last hunting trip before he began chemo. I lost him the next year, 2013, to lung cancer.


Miss ya Pop.

Sorry to hear about that. Always tough to lose your dad. Mine was 1999.

sorry to hear, but that is a great deer and a lasting great memory!

My son's first deer when he was 11. It was his first hunt with a gun on Junior Hunt Day 2002. 20ga Rem 870 Junior Model with a 3" Beneke slug. I had two API Grand Slam climbers and sent him up the tree above me so that I could help him climb. We had rehearsed this a bunch of times when he went hunting with me a handful of times. I told him that between 7:00 and 7:30 a buck is gonna walk across the creek at the bottom of the hill, but he thought I was bullschitting him (which I was). 7:15, here he comes. He walked directly to us. My son shot him 15 feet from the base of the tree. That was a good day.

November of 2019 I got this guy. 35 yards with the crossbow quartering towards me and I almost missed.



12 days later I caught up with this guy. He and I had a history. Almost exactly a year earlier I made a bad shot and stuck it in his shoulder with no penetration. I found the arrow and no blood trail. I saw him on three different occasions that year and he had a distinct limp on the right front. Fast forward a year and he showed up again 2 days prior to this, but I couldn't get a shot. The morning after Thanksgiving 2019 he showed up again for the last time. The wound from the previous year had completely healed over and his limp was almost gone. It was just a scar with some irregularities of the shoulder bone.

Both are awesome. Love the big smile on your sons face. Memories that will last for lifetimes!!

Great pics!

Greatest for me has little to do with biggest, heck, I didn't even pull the trigger.

My dad, 7 months after a pretty scary stroke.
I was beneath his tree in a cedar thicket and rattled this buck to him - couldn't see the deer but I could watch him prepare and take the shot. Allergies kicked in soon thereafter.

Skane, great to see this picture again.

I shot this buck with a Browning 1886 Montana Centennial rifle in 45-70...

Amen SKane. One of my all time faves, son's first bird almost 25 years ago.

Great pic. Thank you for sharing!

Great pic with an awesome rifle!

love it!

My father when he was younger in the 1940's and later when he shot his last deer at 91 years old...

Best Mule Deer, 43 1/2" spread





Pretty good Whitetail from 2021

Rio7

I am guessing this is my ‘greatest’ buck but I have never scored him nor any of my others that are of the same rough maturity and size.

Nice T. Montana?

shrapnel, Great Pic's, Rio7

Great bucks and stories. Thanks.

Killed this 11 pt 202 lb bruiser last Friday. I've killed heavier bucks and one with more points but this is my best overall.

Bill N, That's a big Whitetail, Good Job. Rio7

Best buck with a bow...

No sir…that was within walking distance of the Elk Horn bar in Bondurant.

This is my best Montana buck (I think).

AWESOME!!

Best with a Model 1894 in 32-40...

Damn! HUGE bucks! Well done, gents!

This was when I had hair...and it was brown!







And my wife...about the same time...

Amen Scott !

My best memories, aren't of big bucks, they are sitting in this double ladder stand;







Beside my Wife, Deb & our Son, Doug, being part of them starting out & acquiring the hunting bug !

Obviously, they have both taken bigger animals since, but I'll cherish that hunting year, above all others !

So proud of both of them.

Dayummmm!!!!!

My motto is "luck trumps skill any day".......

Yes sir. That memory will be stuck in my head until the day I die.

199# dressed, double brow and a kicker knocked him out of B&C.

My first buck.

A couple of my best

Nice buck

2021 Whitetails




Good Mule Deer Rio7

Holy chit guys! Monster bucks!

These three are all pretty close to one another.

Great thread! Family pics, great bucks - awesome!

My best yet, 6x7 with a 30" spread.

Wow guys, amzing bucks! So many bruisers. Thank you for sharing. Nothing better than hunting with the fam

My biggest bodied buck is a toss up between these two. Neither were actually weighed.

I dallied up to the saddle horn and drug this one out whole. It took everything I had to lift the front half up (gutted) and slide him onto the tailgate.


This one came out in pieces on my back but I simply couldn't get it all in one trip, and I didn't take anything besides the 4 legs, backstrap and T loins. The ribs, brisket and neck meat all stayed behind. It still took me two trips to get him out.

Nice! The stuff dreams are made of. Most of my deer could fit in the gut cavity of these. 😁

Wow, just wow!

Our daughter’s first deer. She passed hunters ed at 9 years old and with a 98% final test score. I took her, just as I had done for our son, for a 4 day deer hunt. The weather was beautiful and the deer activity was minimal. On our last day I had planned for us to hunt until dark. I have much better luck here hunting afternoons into the evening then I do hunting mornings…so that was our plan on the last day. We poked around a little bit in the morning but we were focused on the evening hunt. We went to the 59’r diner for burgers and milkshakes. I showed her how to read the Gazzeteer map and explained what, why and how we’d approach our hunt that evening. I can still feel her excitement and how much she believed in me during that first hunt. In her young mind she was guaranteed to get a deer because she was hunting with me, Dad. I look back at that hunt and I thank God for that opportunity….at the innocence of her expectations at her trust and confidence she had in me but mostly I’m thankful that I got to share the memories of those first hunts with my children….memories that are forever tattooed on my soul. Someday they’ll get to experience the joy I felt going afield with their children….

Our daughter’s first Mule Deer taken with a Sako .308 and 150gr TTSX at <20’…..

JG, the pic of that Mulie is always great to see.

I love it.

Very cool thread and congrats to everyone on the fine trophies...
I am not a whitetail hunter, but seem to stumble into them now and again. When I bag one it is pure luck.
This is my best. Shot about 1/2 mile from my house at the time.

My best was last year with a crossbow

My granddaughter shot her first deer with me a few weeks ago. That was really special, she is 9 years old.

Rio you still have the rack off of that muley? Would enjoy seeing him on the wall what a giant

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Probably my best whitetail. Not much compared to others posted here. But he's a pretty good buck for where I hunt.

That is a great story and a great buck. Thanks for sharing

That smile says it all!

Hes a great buck, along with so many others. We truly are blessed guys!

dropem, Gave that mount to my son a few years ago he has it in his living room. Rio7

December 2016 in Iowa. 111 yards with a 338 grain Power Belt Platinum from my T/C Encore.

Ron

I got more excited than I have in a long time when this happened.
I’m blessed to have a 7 year old son who thinks I’m Jeremiah Johnson, Bill Dance, Fred Bear, and Mickey Mantle all rolled into one and he’s always ready to hit the weeds or the water for an adventure.

That's what I'm talking about !

Fantastic Aces !

I frikken love this lil' fella !

Beautiful deer and family pictures fellas. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,
Manny

My oldest boy - I was there with him for his first, and his biggest. And I couldn't even tell ya' how many he's killed in between.

Same ridge, 15 years and 150 yards apart.

Great stuff as usual guys. Thanks for sharing.

skeen, great set of pic's. Looks like the boy and the deer have matured nicely.

This has been a good thread. Nice Big Buck pic's and some good family shots with the little one's.
Someone should start one with Elk.

gunchamp;
Good afternoon your time sir, I hope that the day before American Thanksgiving is being kind to you and yours.

Thanks for the thread and of course thanks so much for those who've shared such wonderful animals and memories with us, I appreciate and enjoy threads such as these immensely.

Whenever this topic has come up over the years I've had the same response, so I'll apologize to those who've known me here for years and might have seen it a time or three.

Anyways, this was opening day of the BC Youth firearms season, a season which I'd help fight to get established long before our girls were born, but indeed that made it the foundation for a special day.

They shot these two bucks when five of them fed up a draw to within maybe 30yds of us. I'd told each of them to pick an easy one that they knew they could make a good shot on - neither one of them chose the 4 point because it wasn't a shot they wanted.



In a lifetime of hunting, I've never before or since had 5 bucks feed up to us while we were sitting out in the open on a hillside, but honestly folks that's exactly what happened.

They'd decided between them who got first shot and it was more or less bang, then a count to perhaps three, another bang and two bucks piled up within maybe 15 yards of each other.

Funny too I absolutely knew at that time I was both blessed to experience it and that it was going to be unique and likely unsurpassable for the rest of my hunting life.

That moment on that morning beat my best mulie buck, best whitetail, the California bighorn, moose or any bear I've personally shot. It even beat the first time I had a bull elk come in to a call with our youngest beside me as her eyes got wider and wider. That bull never showed itself by the way, but we both still talk about it as another high point in a life spent up in the mountains behind the house.

Thanks again to you and one and all who've participated already and to those who will after this.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all on your side of the medicine line.

Dwayne

Northern MI in the Huron National Forest.

2015 Archery season, 170". He's what I call my "miracle buck". I hunted 5 mornings and 4 evenings the week of the rut and passed up probably 70-80 shots at does and smaller bucks, having set a personal minimum of a 140" buck that season. I was finally rewarded Saturday morning around 8am when this guy came in "on a string" after hitting my rattlin' bag and then the grunt call. All things considered, it was an indescribable experience.

Thank you very much for taking the time to share that story. This is what hunting is all about. The memories ive made with my father and brothers and now my daughter have made me a very happy man. Seems the same for many of you.

Beautiful pics guys. Happy thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving all. What a good day for this thread. Some of these photos really conjure up images of the hunt and how the buck got outsmarted.


My "best" aren't always the biggest, but the ones that took the most effort to outsmart really get me horned up. For mule deer archery, the best ones are some of the ones I didn't get. I've had some amazing hunts that in the end left me holding an unpunched tag. I cherish those hunts as much or even more than any I've been successful at. My biggest killed mule deer with a bow is this deer flanked by two blacktail my grandfather killed in 1924. Coming up on 100 years ago on the blacktail.

Walter, the big sunuvabitch deer! (Think Norman, On Golden Pond.)






Walter was a big boy, scored #7 biggest mule deer killed with a bow in Oregon at the time, but my best blacktail outweighed him. I rattled this blacktail in to 20 yards where he busted me and took off like a shot. I rolled him as he reached the trees 75 yards away and I'll always remember him rolling into the hemlocks as he reached the edge of the timber going mach 2. He wasn't dead when I got there and I put two more 7mm-08 in his chest at point blank range and just waited for what seemed like an eternity for him to die.





When I reached the road with the first load of meat and horns I ran into a father and son hunting. I'll never forget the father looking at the deer, then looking at his son and saying, "That's what we're looking for". I asked the boy how long he'd been hunting and if he had gotten a deer yet. He said it was his first year and he hadn't seen one yet. I asked him and his dad if they wanted to see where I got it and they both said "Yes!".

I took them both down there and relived the entire rattling sequence and showed them where I had been sitting and where he had come from and how it all happened. The boys eyes were huge as he imagined it all happening in real time, but with him instead of me I'm sure! LOL They thanked me and the dad was especially thankful that a stranger would take the time to do this for his boy. They offered to help me pack the rest of the meat out and I accepted. The deer is awesome and this mount represents just one of so many incredible hunting memories I have hunting blacktails. Getting to impact that young man at such an impressionable time was super, super special for me.

All of you know what I mean, hunting is so much more than the mount on the wall. I feel sorry for the haters that don't understand what hunting is about. Honestly, even some hunters don't understand what hunting is about. For me it's the memories.

Reminds me of the day, Deb got twin bucks & I lost my buck tag for that year !!

Heard the shot from the house, get text, shot a buck, I head outside to get the quad going, get another text - There is another buck coming, can you get here quickly & quietly - No chance !!!

What do I do ?

Me: Shoot it !

But, I'll have to use your buck tag !

Shoot it !

Bang



She was a happy Lady !

While, always blessed by the family, getting it done, & as purely meat hunters, I have still been able to get a couple of notable Ungulates !

Best racked deer to date;



Biggest bodied buck to date;



& 2 hard earned two & a half year old bull moose;





Happy Thanksgiving to our southern neighbours !

My nicest muley…

Nice deer Doc!

Sitka

Best buck with a bow.

Two of my best. One on the left was shot with a bow. The one on the right with a CVA Optima .50 cal.

Hey Shrapnel, I understand that man in the center is your father. I swear he looks very familiar to me. Did he by any chance hunt sheep in AK around 1980? Looks like he’s got a Browning 1886 in his paws. I had one of those in 25-06 but had to sell it while in college to pay for some books and a meal ticket. What a shame, I loved it and have always wanted to replace it.

2008 public land whitetail I found while riding a horse looking for cows.

That is a Browning 1878 25-06. No he never hunted Alaska…

Oh yea, a 1878, my bad. Wrong guy, but he looks just like somebody I remember in camp.

Top 3 mule deer(public land hunt) and yes, that is a slight long arm hold.....lol

Great pic!

Wisconsin squirrel…

🤣

lol!

Crawford County, WI produces again!!!!

Sam very nice.

A few days later I smashed this Blacktail in Arizona. It was a cold day in Tucson.




Lol

🦫

Three days before I took that blacktail above, I put a relative in this stand. He had been working 9 days a week and needed a break. Got a dandy coues!

That’s what I’m talking about! Academy Award winning, better than any long arming by those elk guys…

#Trending

LMFAO

🦫

Some nice deer

Green county Pa. 10 point buck.

I hope you have that prairie dog pic framed somewhere.

It was a good day when I finally bagged this S.O.B. He gave me the slip for over a month.

Damn .... this thread is awesome....

That's why I stay out of Colorado. Getting too old to tangle with those critters.

I have numerous bests.

Greatest kill ever?
A 10 foot 1 Boone & Crockett Brown bear.
I'll never have a more satisfying hunt.



Most adrenaline filled hunt.
Self guided solo elk hunt.



Best deer.
29" wide muley...



Most scenic, far from home hunt.
Western Alaska Caribou.



Best family hunt..

Always with my son...

Daughters first buck



Sons first buck. Can’t find a picture of the darn deer but it was right after I took this picture.



Best friends first deer after I convinced him to try hunting for the first time



Then we hunted together when he took his first buck!



My little brothers first elk





His first bull



I know I have more but those are the greatest trophies in my book.

👍

Yukon Mountain Caribou. 412 7/8" B&C.

A few weeks ago SW Kansas muzzle loader.

Good stuff.

Mountain Goat taken in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area of CO. Took me 22 years to draw the tag. Goat was taken on Mount Huron at about 13,800 feet in elevation.


Western Roan taken in Cameroon. Both horns taped more than 34 inches.

No horns but meat 200yds from the ponderosa

My biggest whitetail, 2009 east central Alberta…