The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting American Big Game Hunting Hunting doesn't look good in Georgia this year.Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Hunting doesn't look good in Georgia this year. | Login/Join |
| one of us |
Went down to the farm this week & had breakfast with another hunter. He has about 50 cameras on our 4,800 acres & has not picked up a single big deer on his network. He has a few big hog pictures but a hog gets up in the morning & follows his nose. | ||
|
| One of Us |
Hopefully they are just camera shy. Rifle season opens on the 20th and it will be my first time getting on the hunting property this year as I broke my ankle in Africa and just getting over that. Good Hunting,  | |||
|
| One of Us |
He he he... Let that discourage him... One of my buddies has plenty of wildlife/trail cameras out... TONS of deer in the pics all summer... Day and night... Neither hide nor hair of any one of them yet this hunting season... He has been skunked so far this season.. and he was expecting easy pickings from all the sign and camera activity.. Thanks | |||
|
| One of Us |
Deer hate hogs. That may be why they are't coming around. | |||
|
| one of us |
My question is how many deer is he seeing and whats a "big" Deer. | |||
|
One of Us |
Deer hate hogs? Interesting...not in CA. We find them together all the time. Mike Legistine actu quod scripsi? Never under estimate the internet community's ability to reply to your post with their personal rant about their tangentially related, single occurrence issue.  What I have learned on AR, since 2001: 1. The proper answer to: Where is the best place in town to get a steak dinner? is…You should go to Mel's Diner and get the fried chicken. 2. Big game animals can tell the difference between .015 of an inch in diameter, 15 grains of bullet weight, and 150 fps. 3. There is a difference in the performance of two identical projectiles launched at the same velocity if they came from different cartridges. 4. While a double rifle is the perfect DGR, every 375HH bolt gun needs to be modified to carry at least 5 down. 5. While a floor plate and detachable box magazine both use a mechanical latch, only the floor plate latch is reliable. Disregard the fact that every modern military rifle uses a detachable box magazine. 6. The Remington 700 is unreliable regardless of the fact it is the basis of the USMC M40 sniper rifle for 40+ years with no changes to the receiver or extractor and is the choice of more military and law enforcement sniper units than any other rifle. 7. PF actions are not suitable for a DGR and it is irrelevant that the M1, M14, M16, & AK47 which were designed for hunting men that can shoot back are all PF actions. 8. 95 deg F in Africa is different than 95 deg F in TX or CA and that is why you must worry about ammunition temperature in Africa (even though most safaris take place in winter) but not in TX or in CA. 9. The size of a ding in a gun's finish doesn't matter, what matters is whether it’s a safe ding or not. 10. 1 in a row is a trend, 2 in a row is statistically significant, and 3 in a row is an irrefutable fact. 11. Never buy a WSM or RCM cartridge for a safari rifle or your go to rifle in the USA because if they lose your ammo you can't find replacement ammo but don't worry 280 Rem, 338-06, 35 Whelen, and all Weatherby cartridges abound in Africa and back country stores. 12. A well hit animal can run 75 yds. in the open and suddenly drop with no initial blood trail, but the one I shot from 200 yds. away that ran 10 yds. and disappeared into a thicket and was not found was lost because the bullet penciled thru. I am 100% certain of this even though I have no physical evidence. 13. A 300 Win Mag is a 500 yard elk cartridge but a 308 Win is not a 300 yard elk cartridge even though the same bullet is travelling at the same velocity at those respective distances. | |||
|
| One of Us |
You don't have whitetails. Whitetails hate them. | |||
|
One of Us |
On the properties I take care of, if deer are at a feeder and hogs move in, the deer leave. Occasionally we see them feeding in fairly close proximity to each other, but usually it is when 2 or 3 smaller pigs come out and there is only 1 maybe 2 deer at the same feeder. Under normal circumstances however if a group of pigs moves in on a feeder the deer vacate the area in a hurry. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
|
| One of Us |
There will always be deer that you don't catch on a trail camera. It's seems that most of the time it's the 5+ year old bucks. They seem to have a 6th sense once they become fully mature. Also, some properties won't hold good bucks until the rut and then they may end up 10-15 miles away on your place. On 4800 acres with good management, I'd be willing to bet there are several great bucks just avoiding the cameras. Especially in the south where the hunting pressure is generally very high. TN River and the Mountain Man... | |||
|
| One of Us |
In addition...I had a 6000 acre lease in Jackson county, AL that was part of a contiguous block of 10,000 acres that was managed extensively. Each year we would kill bucks during the rut that nobody had pictures of. On the contrary....we had bucks during the summer that nobody in our lease would see or kill during the rut. None of these bucks were killed on the adjoining leases. They were either purely nocturnal or traveled great distances once the rut started. Nothing is a given with mature bucks in the south. Here is a 5+ year old buck that I killed that no one ever had seen or had a picture of. He is an 11 point that scored 147" gross.  Here are several more that I got on camera, only to never be seen or killed that we know of.     TN River and the Mountain Man... | |||
|
One of Us |
Its not the absence of mature bucks that has me concerend. It the absence of deer period. Did a trail camera survey on 475 acre farm i hunt back in august. Its not exactly scinetifc but enough to give you a good idea. After posting cameras with corn in front of them in all the traditonal feeding places. There were only 8-10 does using the place. Of that number only 3 had a fawn. I have seen as many as 22 deer at one time in the big hayfield in years past. Theres exactly 5 using it right now. We have shot way to many does. Coupled with coyotes moving in and reaching there peak my season has been uneventful. 12 years ago i had 120 deer sightings during bow season. This year 13. I have walked in the foot prints of the elephant, listened to lion roar and met the buffalo on his turf. I shall never be the same. | |||
|
| One of Us |
What type of deer numbers were there in your area say 25 years ago? Is this the first year that you have noticed the reduced number of animals or have the numbers been dropping steadily during the 12 years since you had the 120 sightings? Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
|
| one of us |
Opening week end results..........Friday night at our opening night dinner, the owner said we would not shoot bucks under 18" rather than the 16" we have used the last 10+ years. We decided to not shoot any does until after rut on the whole farm rather than the 1,000 acres where this is the normal practice. Opening day we had 18 members & 5 college age students/children hunting. Almost everyone saw deer. 2 shootable bucks were shot but the 1 shot by a student was not recovered. I saw: opening morning 1 spike & 1 fork, that afternoon.. same fork & a doe, Sunday morning 6 does, a different fork & a button buck. I'll be in my favorite stand about 3:00 Friday. | |||
|
| One of Us |
Sounds to me like some of you guys in Ga. need to start hunting coyotes. Those mature bucks will travel 6 or 7 miles out of their core area during the rut. Just like us when we were younger. velocity is like a new car, always losing value. BC is like diamonds, holding value forever. | |||
|
| One of Us |
Annually, on the stuff I work on approx. 20K acres, we have really great bucks show up on the game cams and physically seen by hunters, before and after season. During the season they disappear, even off the game cams or if they do show up it is usually an hour or so after dark until about 4 a.m.. Then they go back to that hole their hiding in. Even the rocks don't last forever. | |||
|
| One of Us |
I think a big part of it is just hunting pressure... Sure - Rifle season just opened up... but Archery and Muzzle loader/primitive hunting season was already open most of October... From what I saw this weekend... The land can easily support a deer population 10x-20x what it currently holds... (Just look at what happens in the Suburbs in GA where there is no hunting allowed... GIANT deer running around like rats....) The issue becomes how many deer can HIDE completely undetected during hunting hours through a fairly long season... I looked at a LOT of food plots, acorn trees, and persimmons... and hardly saw any deer sign... much less any sort of evidence that would support the assertion we often hear of a massive deer population "Vaccuming" up all the natural resources... If that were the case - the forest would look like a goat pen.... Not a spec of green to be seen under 6' tall... What we are seeing is that most deer being seen/hunted are 1 or 2 year olds... You hardly even see a Doe older than that.. where 15 years ago on that same property... lots of folks were hitting lots of big bucks... Thanks | |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
The Accurate Reloading Forums THE ACCURATE RELOADING.COM FORUMS Hunting American Big Game Hunting Hunting doesn't look good in Georgia this year.
Visit our on-line store for AR Memorabilia