horst

Happy New Year Mike

Come on over, better hurry though the fish is goin fast:D May have to, I do like my smoker so it not really to far fetched;)

Ive got the same gun and wouldnt recomend going real cheap if you want to see its potential.The Wolfs a cheap gun but with the right load theyre really great shooting little guns, better then some of the more expensive models Ive shot in the past really. Im shooting a Nosler trophy grade 250 grain bullet with about 75 grains of 777.Put a mid price range variable power scope on it with high rise universal mounts.Cant thinkof what scope it is right off and the kids got the gun out deer hunting right now. It also shoots the Hornady bullets really well, i went to 185 grain bullet with it , same powder load, and we were shooting stationary clay pigeons with it at 100 yrds.Both bullets you can buy in 100 ct boxes and buy the sabots seperately for less than some of the ones that come with sabots included.

Just took the fish out, and started the jerkey.Fish came out good, maybe a little salty but definately edible.now if my jerkey will cook before bedtime Ill be in good shape:D

Was cutting up and wrapping the deer my son got yesterday morning.I had the meat saw and everything else out so I decided, why not make jerkey while im at it, seemed easier then freezing everything then dragging it all back out again. So I started slicing the strips for the jerkey and got 5 or 6 lbs of it cut up when it dawned on me I had absolutely nothing to put on it.I finally found a recipe I had the ingedientsa for and whipped up the marinade for it to soak in over night. Meanwhile my father in law just got back from fishing in Minnesota, my wife was out there and he gave her a package of fish to bring home and told me to call him.Turns out he wants three northern pike smoked for New years. Ok, I let the fish thaw while I cleaned up a little bit of the mess from cutting deer up and went to make the dry rub for the fish.No salt, my brown sugars turned into concrete, and ive got 7-8 lbs of fish completely thawed out.Off to the in laws to gather ingredients again:eek: Now Ive got jerkey marinading, fish marinating, the kitchen looks like a slaughter house and it occurs to me I have 14 lbs of meat to smoke and its 0 degrees outside.Currently Im fighting to keep my smoker temp at a decent level, i have it full of fish, and have all he jerkey on skewers with a fan running on it hopefully drying it somewhat before it goes in the smoker, the kitchens still destroyed, ands Im gonna be up most of the night watching the jerkey if things dont improve. Im not sure how a 2 hour project like packaging my deer turned into a 2 day project but I really hope I dont see another dead animal for at least a week:D

I could be wrong but wouldnt that kinda screw up the area for hunting?I know Ive watched bucks hit the same rubs time after time in some cases and Id have to think if they came back and there were just stumps where the rubs were it would be kind of self defeating for the guy cutting them down after a period of time:rolleyes:.

From everything Ive read you still need a peep sight.Cost is around $160 for the ones Ive looked at

Thanks, I tried a search before I posted but couldnt get it to come up:o

Anyone tried one of these yet?Just curious, seen them advertised and looked at them online but nobody around here carries them, just wondered how well they worked or if they worked at all.

I forgot, and it may not still be true but awhile back I bought a CVA sidelock and it never worked properly, the hammer was misaligned and didnt hit the nipple right, the gun wouldnt go off unless you tried the same cap repeatedly.CVA customer service screwed me around for 6 months and never did fix the gun, its collecting dust in a closet now. Same time frame my buddy had a Knight he had bought and owned for several years, one day he forgot to grease the breachplug and it siezed up, there was no getting it out.Despite being entirely his fault and on a gun they no longer produced Knight had him send it in and fixed the problem free of charge. Like I said its been awhile and both companies have changed in that period quite a bit but at the time this happened you were getting much better service from Knight then you could from CVA, just something to consider, they ay both have good CS now for all I know, hope I never have to find out:D

Thank you all, I never did get my nap but it was a good day.For a change we didnt have any Christmas get togethers yesterday so I just hung out with the kids and they threw me a small party last night after me and my oldest boy got back from hunting. It totally sucked when I was younger:DMost gifts I got came under the heading Happy birthday/Merry Christmas, killed two birds with one gift I suppose that way

I own both, have had my knight for something like 5 years and my CVA for 2 years.Both were in a similiar price range, both shoot well and have killed several deer without any serious problems. But the Knight has held up better then the CVA, I hunt pretty aggresively and am hard on equipment.I hunt the late season as well which subjects the guns to all sorts of weather variation, rain, ice, snow, cold, warm, sometimes all in the same day.The Knights got a little rust showing up now and minor pitting in the barrel, the CVA has unexplainable bare spots on the barrel where the bluings gone and a spot inside the barrel thats gotten progressively worse no matter how much I clean and oil it. They both function excellently yet but IMO youll get a lot longer life outof a Knight then you will a CVA.

Older bucks dont guarantee a healthier herd, it doesnt even gaurantee the end result being more trophy deer. Does need thinned out but after a certain point youre also thinning out the number of bucks youll see the following year,were in the middle of large herd reduction ourselves and the results {for my area} are not good.Were seeing does in way fewer numbers, the average size of the does we see is half what it used to be, and after a certain point we started seeing less bucks as well. The does are the ones that reproduce, both buck and doe fawns, every doe that gets wacked means theres gonna be between one and 3 less deer around the following year, youre killing her plus the fawns she would give birth to. Taking to few does is bad but taking to many can have a bad effect on the herd as well.I dont know the situation in PA but Ive seen first hand what going overboard on slaughtering does can do.Once a state starts that its very hard to convince them that theyve gone overboard and get them to stop.The reality on the grounds often quite different then the numbers theyre showing the public as well, theyre estimates seem to be on the high end of things.

Thanks Randy, my days started off well, my 3 year old woke me up to tell me happy birthday, unfortunately it was 3 in the morning and he wanted to stay up and visit afterwards.Right now Im hoping mom gets home from work so I can have a birthday nap:)

100-120 nice buck 120-140 big buck 140+

Theres a lot about antler restrictions that just doesnt make sense.Heres a scenario, You got two bucks born the same time, ones got awesome genetic potential and the other has poor potential.Which bucks gonna become a legal deer first?The genetically superior one more then likely correct?So that means you can shoot him at a younger age than the one thats going to take another year or two to reach the same size.You just killed the good buck and left the inferior one to breed as he becomes more mature. Maturity and genetics get viewed as the same thing in many cases and its just not the way it works. You now have a mature buck with bad genes and a stunted rack doing the breeding and youve killed the better buck when in reality he woulda been the you wanted doing the breeding even at a young age. The only thing that would work would be a age limit its the only way to tell what a deers potential is is to let him live long enough to reach it, and that would be unenforcable and not possible for many people to accurately age a deer to any degree of accuracy. If the goal was to make everyone happy the obvious answer would be to quit trying to turn it into a trophy state and let people shoot whatever makes them happy.Guys looking for bigger bucks could hold out and guys just wanting to kill a deer could do so.

Something else I noticed, in the link it shows theres been 480 bucks killed so far that have shed thier antlers already, these would be deer people shot thinking they were does and probably getting tagged as does.Season runs untill the 10th, Im rather curious how any total shed antler bucks there will be at the end of the year now:confused:

Good post and a nice buck as well Billygoat. Last year and this year Ive been taking several kids hunting and seen a few get there first deer, and sometie thier second third, or even fourth.Its made me reevaluate what Im hunting for, there was a time when the same doe or small buck would put a smile on my face that it puts on thiers. I spent several years preaching to anyone that would listen how shooting small bucks means we wont have any big bucks next year, Ive seen guys that consider shooting does to be some sort of taboo and teach thier kids that garbage. This year it didnt seem as important, I didnt buy a hunting license for the first time in years and just spent my time taking kids and even adults out who ordinarily wouldnt get the chance to kill a deer.I never mentioned antler size, didnt tell anyone to not shoot that doe because there was a chance we could get a buck, and didnt tell anyone tolet a small buck walk in the hopes of getting a shot at a bigger one. It was the most fun Ive had in years and I never picked up a gun, I got just as excited as they did when we got a shot and took the time to teach them a little of what Ive learned over the last 20+ years of chasing deer.I took the focus off the animal and put it on the whole experience instead and it was pretty cool.

Wardens almost to understanding at times.About 4 years ago there was a deer hit out on the highway, it made it out into the field where we lost sight of it.Called the GW and told him there was a crippled deer out there still alive and would he come out and put it down.He said just take your shotgun out there and put her down and takeher home if you want. Ordinarilly this would have been great but it was 9:30 at night on the side of a busy highway and the sherrifs office was on thier way out to look at the car {sherrif wont put down wounded deer here}.I opted to pass on that as he hadnt called in to tell them I was running around with a loaded shotgun out in the field

Last night I dropped my dad and my 12 year Austin year old off to hunt a food plot on some public ground while I went to look over another area.They were walking down the edge where the foodplot and grove come together and Austin seen a buck lying in the edge of he grove.It was dead and they walked up to look at it closer.It was a nice 8 pointer, a younger deer but had a decent rack for it age. Dad kneeled down and told Austin the deer was still warm, he grabbed the antlers and pulled the deers neck out straight to see if it had been shot by someone.Austing was standing back a little bit watching and when the deers head was pulled out he said "Grandpa, that deer just blinked its eyes" Dad stepped around to Austins side of the deer and seen it had its eyes open now and noticed its front leg was busted.Thinking the deer was about dead he stuck his leg out gave it a light kick in the butt.The "dead" deer suddenly jumped to its feet scared them both pretty good, Dad back pedaled out of the way and Austin waited untill he was clear and shot it through the lungs with his ML. Turned out it had been hit by a car and not shot as they first though, both front legs were broke, Im not even sure how it managed to get up.I wasnt sure how bad the deer was busted up when I got back so we pulled him out to the road and I called the local Game warden, told him what had happened with the deer and that I wasnt sure if we wanted to tag him since i didnt know if he was even fit to eat and would have died anyway by morning. He was great about it, we visited on the phone for about 10 minutes about deer numbers and the amount of hunters Id run into, and he told me to go ahead and take the deer home since it had been run over he would just give me a salvage tag for it and Austin could keep hunting.We got back to town and I dressed the deer out, turned out the smell I noticed was just gas and the guts werent busted up to bad, most of the deers still good as far as I can tell.

LOL I accidently hit the save button in the middle of my post so you didnt get the whole thing:D The insurance industries been a big factor since they began issuing doe tags.But theyre walking a real fine lie now between doing thier job and managing the population, and being ran by the insurance industry.To make matters worse the state legislature got involved in this at the begining and they have no businuess in trying to manage the wildlife, the insurance industry has to much influence over them the way it is:(

The DNR here says we havent killed enough deer this year, they've added another season for gun hunters and extended the late ML season 3 days as a result.My personal opinion is that in recent years theyve went overboard in my area of the state on letting people kill deer, the reason that they havent reached the number of deer they wanted killed is simple, theres not that many deer left in the area.Extra doe tags, any sex tags and record number deer kills have taken a toll. At the begining of this it was a good idea, we had to many deer and needed them thinned out.Some areas of the state I believe are still overpopulated.But theyve went overboard and the results arent good for hunters in this area. This links updated hourly, it shows the number of deer killed in each county. https://hfwa.centraltechnology.net/iowadnr/harvestdata/realTimeHarvest.do My areas Palo Alto county with 363 total deer killed, Clay county with 512, and Emmet county with 223.Keeping in mind this is a total of 3 months of deer hunting covering 4 gun seasons and a 3 month bow season these numbers are horriblly low. Now weve got less deer so less guys are bothering to hunt them which in turn means less deer killed and the DNR issuing more tags to lower an imaginary overpoulation of them.I dont know where they get thier numbers at but the clearly dont match the reality on the ground, their headquarters are in the other end of the state and they have one game warden per county up here. Its a bad cycle weve gotten into and hunters are getting upset about the low number of deer, the DNR is upset because they dont think enouh are being killed, and somethings gotta give.

Looks like Ill be starting over looking for the two bigger bucks:eek: Ive been all over that section and it looks like the big bunch has broken up and wandered out of the section into the surrounding properties in smaller groups of 2 or 3 deer each.Branched out my search a little and theyve scattered over about a 6 sq mile area near as I can tell.How hard can it be to find 2 deer in 6 miles:D

Im not familiar with Ohio but I hunt the late season here in NW Iowa and the weather can play a huge role in things.The deer will bunch up in bigger herds this time of year when it starts getting colder and it can be either very good or very frustrating. Its good when you can locate these herds, but if you cant it seems like theyve completely dissapeared at times.Youre either seeing tons of deer or youre seeing nothing at all. If you have snow its a good time to goto areas such as the cornfield you mentioned or back where the acorns dropped and look for trails that are being heavily used, not just a few random tracks but good trails, deer are actually pretty lazy and will use these same trails night after night. Ive also found the food source itself may not be the best spot to set up, if theres a lotta hunting pressure theyll bed in out of the way spots, sometimes these are a long ways from where theyre eating and its well after dark before they get into the food source.I looked at a foodplot Sunday night and followed the trail backwards and the deer are actually bedding over 1 mile away from the food plot in a very nasty cat tail slough.Ideally Id set up outside the slough but I cant hunt that property so Id have to settle for inbetween somewhere. Generally everything changes this time of year, stuff you hunted earliers not gonna pay off now and you need to get out and figure out where theyre currently running.

I hunt mid day quite a bit but havent fount it to be very productive if I stay in one place.Still hunting can be good, if you can access enough ground I also drive around and glass different properties, if I find a deer im interested in Ill try stalking them.In the late season sometimes well get 4 or 5 guys together and do small drives if things are really slow.Most of these mid day expeditions serve two purposes, I hunt while im out there but also try to get in places I dont normally hunt and see whats in them, kinda like little scouting trips during season.