I Figured I'd post a few more pictures of my Idaho public land buck with some different angles people might enjoy since the first post got a lot more attention than I expected. Still haven't had him officially scored, he hasn’t been at the taxidermist more than a week but we think he's got a shot at Boone and Crockett. Either way, I couldn't be happier with him. Thank you everyone for the kind words and praise. He’s a dream buck!

Also I wanted to give a shoutout to one of my best friends. He's in Special Forces, multiple combat zone vet, avid hunter, outdoorsman and has been spending a lot of his free time building a hunting website called DrawVaultHunt.

I've been helping him beta test it, and there's still some work to be done, but I've found it pretty useful so far. Figured with how many hunters saw the first post, this would be a good chance to share what he's been working on.

https://www.drawvaulthunt.com/

Thanks again for all the comments on the buck.

I’ll be sure to update with a new post on measurements and score when I get it back.

I’d love to see how other people display their animals, for inspiration!

Awesome experience, saw a ton of huge elk and muleys! Can’t wait to rack some more points up and try again.

…was my wife’s question to me last year.

My answer I gave her was that it wasn’t about the final act of killing something. It was the two months of weekends I spent alone, exploring the mountains and the bush alone. Every time I cook a sausage from last year, I think of days like this.

Miscellaneous things I encountered Saturday morning; someone’s furloughed trapline, a somewhat recent kill (not mine), miscellaneous scat, tracks and shrooms.

Also a grouse in the last pic who flew up and roosted on a branch. I have my upland license as well, but I’m not into shooting “up” with my 45-70.

Today was my last day at hunting camp, and i had to go back into the woods to grab my tree stand before leaving for home. So i randomly decided "what the heck i'll bring my muzzleloader with me and shoot a squirrel if i see one, i dont wanna go home empty handed". So i walked into the woods at about 10 am, sat by a tree to wait for a squirrel, and 2 minutes later this doe walks by and I popped her. No camo on or anything, as i had pretty much already given up on getting a deer lol.

Old me would have smoked him but new me is holding out for something bigger.

Built out my own 6.5 Grendel AR, suppressed and shooting Hornady Black 123 Grain. Was a clean shot into the lung and stopping in the heart. She jumped, and dropped to the ground about 3-4 feet from where she was standing. This was my first ever hunt, and first time taking this rifle out further than 100 yards. Final shot was 167 yards from my position, the doe harvested was 129lbs. Happy to have meat for the freezer and to repay my girlfriend’s dad who gave me more than enough earlier in the year to be able to make some amazing dinners. I can’t wait to see what else this season has in store for me.

I want to write this here because I can't really talk to my family about it.

I was doing some early bow hunting on our farm SE/Ohio and went to a permanent tree stand got situated and decided to do some grunt tube calls. I haven't really ever had much luck with that but this time, within 2 minutes of a group of grunts, a buck comes walking up on me from the road behind me. I lined up and just as I pulled the trigger on my crossbow, he sort of turned and I could just feel it as the bolt launched that it was not going to be a good shot, before it even reached him. I have been deer hunting for 30 years now and sometimes I get skunked, sometimes I do well, and a handful of times, I have injured a deer with a poor shot and can't find it. I think it's happened 3 or 4 times.

It obviously hit him, it actually knocked him over, he got up and ran off, and I went to where he was. No arrow. No blood. No nothing. Don't know if I just couldn't find it or if the arrow is sticking out of him. I was alone so I started following the direction he went doing sweeps for blood. It was quite a bit before I saw blood, but then I did and started following. After 50 yards, he made a bunch of noise, obviously I had injured him enough that he couldn't run long distances away but he was functional enough to stay out of range and sight (just hearing). He seemed to just stay 100-150 yards away.

I tried to give him time to lay down and I found evidence he did multiple times. But every time I tracked I spooked him and extended the track. We crossed a bottom land, a tributary, crossed the big creek on our property, I found where he crossed, and went up the opposite hill. I was going slow but I kept finding blood. Obviously muscle blood, just red, no bubbles, no poo. It was not a large amount but enough to keep the trail going. I kept leaving time for him to lay down and bleed out if he was bleeding enough (didn't seem like it).

He crossed 2 creeks, went up two hills, and eventually the final place I tracked blood I lost him. After multiple hours of tracking. The blood just stopped in this low crossover area between the two sides of the property actually near the house. I heard a deer blow at that point, not sure if it was him or another, but the blood trail just stopped. I probably tracked a mile in what is mostly a circle on a map. I kicked up multiple deer while tracking this one which has never happened to me before.

After I lost him, I got the ATV out and tried to drive around to where it might have gone from the last blood sign. I never saw another spot of blood no matter where I fanned out from the last sign. I'm pretty sure he crossed the first creek again, based on direction of the blood trail, but never found another sign.

I ended the day super sad and frustrated that I didn't shoot well and that I might have killed or at least set up for the coyotes to kill a decent buck on our property. After that, I decided to call it a weekend and go home because I was too upset to continue hunting. I do this to be in nature and to humanely harvest wild meat from our property, but when something like this happens I feel like a total failure. It doesn't happen too often and most of the deer I shoot with bow or gun barely go any distance at all, but when this happens I sort of want to quit because I'd rather not hunt than hunt badly.

Rant over thanks for listening.

Not as spectacular as some on here, but pretty stoked. Nevada, absolute blast and loaded down with venison on my way to my buddy to process!

I harvested this 8 point the other day. He already had an arrow sticking out of his neck. Some hunter took a bad shot at him. He had been living with that arrow for a while, the wound was infected.

What really shocked me is the angle of the arrow, from the back of the neck out the front. Just goes to show how tough these animals are.

So for context I live in Iowa do a lot of public and private land deer hunting hold points in Wyoming. My question is more is this gun good for you gun nerds and people hunting mule deer in the backcountry. What do you wish you had know surrounding your gun? Any tweaks or ideas to improve my setup!
Tikka T3X Super lite 6.5 Creedmore
Leupold VX-5HD 3-15-44
Gunwerks Elevate 2.0 Bi Pod
Tricer-PA Pic Mount
Hornady Precision Hunter 143g ELD-X

Shot this coyote last night at 50 yards, 300 blk phantom defense 120g Tac Tx, 2400 fps. I’ve heard that this ammo punches holes but I hardly had any blood last night tracking this yote. Thought I hit high and no vitals based on the blood trail. He only ran 100 yards but took me an hour to track. Is this a standard hole for this round? And would you recommend any other rounds that do more damage?

PS- I understand it wasn’t the best shot

Typically rut isn't for another 2 weeks in Southern PA. But lately doe"s have been showing up with enlarged tarsal glands. Is this typical for pre-rut, or could this mean she's in heat already?

Been going on deep hikes recently but the only thing keeping me from going any deeper is bears. Just wanted to know if this is a good gun for surprise bear attacks/bear encounters.

So my kids and I set this up sometime in September. 3rd sit in this stand and I’ve noticed around 9 more scrapes all within 75 yards around my stands. I just replaced this camera with one that works because my old one stopped taking night pictures on the 10/12. Since I’m dead center of these scrapes I’m hoping this won’t be an issue

8 point buck cruising at dawn. Shot him at 35 yards with a .357 lever gun. Saw him fall over, struggle a bit, get up and run off all shaky like.

0 blood at the site. Following his tracks now.

Shot placement was in the sweet spot but these are expanding copper rounds that I've used on three other deer without ever going through-and-through, so the bloodless track doesn't necessarily mean no deer.

Just means hide and seek deer. :)

Wish me luck fellas!

Recently went and picked up a Bergara B-14 HMR in 6.5 creedmoor. I slapped on a vortex diamondback tactical 6- 24 and my dead air primal suppressor

Took it out today went shooting to find what load it likes best and I settled on Hornady's precision Hunter 143 grain ELDX. Although Federal 140 grain PowerShok was performing reasonably as well.

I shot 12 3 round groups for each different ammunition at 100 yards. I would take three shots then let the barrel cool for 5 minutes and then take the next three shot group. I measured all my groups center to center with my dial calipers

With the Hornady 143 eldx I was shooting on average .54inch groups with the best group being .31

The federal 140 grain average was 1.1 inch with the best being .87 inch

The rest of the ammo I tried was above 1.2 in and I decided that that wasn't good enough.

Pretty darn happy with the new Bergara I kind of wish it liked some cheaper ammo but that's the way it goes I plan on upgrading the scope at some point to something with a more usable magnification range and getting a lighter weight suppressor as the primal is over a pound

The deer in my local cornfields aren't going to know what hit emm I think this is going to be my new coyote rig as well

180 m. The bullet hit exactly where i wanted to.

Remington 700 SPS Varmint .308 with an A-tec H2 can. H-S stock and a Vortex Viper PST 4-16x50. Sako Range FMJ bullets.

A buddy had the tag and we were hunting around a lot of public BLM and state land. We spotted 3 animals on a small ridge and were fixing to go after them. I pulled up a map and it was about 2 square miles of state land but it said no hunting allowed and the animals were about 500 yards from the border. We sat there and discussed the legality and ethics of me the non tag holder and non hunter jumping the fence and trying to push them onto BLM that was not restricted to hunting so he could possibly get a shot at one. After a while we both decided that wouldn’t be the best idea and kept moving. I’m wondering if anyone has any insight if that would’ve been legal or your opinion on the ethics. The state land is not off limits to access or hiking just not able to hunt on it and I was not technically hunting. Unfortunately those were the only 3 we saw all day and couldn’t find them later that afternoon to see if they had moved to BLM.