I pulled up to the top of one of the tallest and most open canyons about 2:30 on Friday afternoon. It overlooks a small alfalfa field I had planted a few months earlier.

I could see quite a few deer and one was obviously worth a closer look.

I grabbed my rifle and headed down the canyon.

Stalked him for about 1/2 mile before closing the gap by crawling ever so slowly through the cactus to 100 yards. When I got there he was bedded down, eyes closed laying in the middle of the field.

I waited about 15 minutes for him to get up to give me a good shot. He was in my alfalfa field with 13 other deer, a mix of Mulies and Whitetails. I think there were 4 or 5 other bucks, but I didn't really count because he was obviously the biggest.

I did not have a scale but I am sure he field dressed about 165, maybe more. It is not uncommon for these Panhandle Deer to be 200 lbs +

I hung him up in the door of a shipping crate to skin him and his back hoof was above the 8.5' door and his nose almost touched the ground. Big Deer!

Unfortunately there was no one there to take my picture.

Other than that, it was a great day.



[ 12-11-2002, 05:03: Message edited by: Buffalobwana ]

Congrats Wendell, thats a super nice deer.

[ 12-11-2002, 05:31: Message edited by: Nutoy ]

Wendell,

What a great buck and a great hunt! You need to get a camera with a timer on it.

Good Hunting,

Bob

Nice looking deer...about 140 gross?

Wendell:

Great whitetail. A lot of guys never get one that big.

Will

Bill,

Yep, pretty much right on the nose, 140.

I have hunted this area for about 10 years and have a 156 and a 147 and a basket full of 120's The only reason I pulled the trigger on this guy was because of his long eyeguards. Had they been short, he would probably still be alive.

Tough to see in the picture, but they are both the same length.

But, more than anything, the whole hunt was great. The stalk, the waiting (trying to talk myself out of shooting him) and finally the shot.

That ended my Whitetail hunting in Texas for 2002, but it was a very happy day.

[ 12-11-2002, 07:29: Message edited by: Buffalobwana ]

Excellent buck, Wendell. You're a lucky hunter! Yep, set the timer on your camera.

Nice buck, Wendell. Congratulations!

Russ

That's definitely a great buck.

You mentioned seeing both w'tails & mulies. Are you running into any hybrids, or are the more aggressive whitetails forcing the mulies out?

Anne, I would rather be lucky than good any day!

I realized, after a few days, that this was the first deer I have shot in Texas in 5 years. Even though I had hunted hard every year.

Food plots make a difference! I got a 14' tandem and planted sorghum and maize in the spring winter peas, and alfalfa this fall.

The pigs ate all my sorghum and maize as soon as it headed out, and they rooted my winter peas out of the ground right after I sowed them!

But, piggies do not like electric fences! This alfalfa patch has an electric fence around it, and still the deer pour into it.

A beautiful Buck

I'll bet you consider that an afternoon very well spent! I sure would.

Congratulations!!!

Nice buck!

Bobby,

I have seen two hybrids this year. The first time I could ever say "That is a hybrid for sure"

One was a doe and just looked like a mulie until she showed me her whitetail tail.

The other was a buck with a typical 6 pt rack that could be a Whitetail or Mule Deer rack. He had a Whitetails tail, no doubt, but it was short and narrow and black on the end. When he saw me he ran a few steps then did the Mule Deer "bounce".

I have not seen any aggression from the Whitetails toward the Mule Deer. I see them together often and have seen a young Mulie Buck sniff a Whitetail doe, but no follow through.

Mule Deer season ended on Sunday. I am already counting the days till next year.

very nice buck---chris

Quality buck and congrats to ya!!

Well done Wendell! Congratulations on a fine deer.

Good job Wendell! I've been envious of your long hunting season in TX for years. When does your season end.........mid Jan?

Wendell,
I couldn't pull it up but it must be a nice deer judging from the response...but I gotta tell you, that you been liveing in Big D to long, that ain't West Texas, that is North Texas, just ask anybody from Del Rio to El Paso but you know that!!

Wendell,

Congratulations. What part of the Panhandle do you hunt? I was born and raised on the Llano Estacado.

Regards,

Terry

[ 12-11-2002, 20:09: Message edited by: T.Carr ]

First off, thanks to everyone for the kind words.

Keith, We are blessed with a bit different system in Texas than any of the other Western States. Since Texas is 99% private land, I believe the season is long to allow the individual landowners to control their own game.

But I could be wrong.

Landowners here have the option of enroling in the MLD program which would make the deer season on their ranch about 4 months long! They must abide by a strict harvest schedule however.

Normal season is November and December, roughly, South Texas gets another week (I think). We have a few counties with Doe Muzzleloader and doe only days in January, but I do not hunt in these counties so I do not know anything about them.

Ray,

Dallas aint West Texas that's for sure! This area is about 4 hours West of Dallas. Actually, you are right, I should call it Panhandle or Northwest Texas as my ranch lies at the base of the Panhandle on the Pease River.

Wendell,
So there, your almost a yankee carpetbagger, well not quite.. Your still a native son of the planet Texas...

T.Carr,
The Llano Estacado? Cripes that area is bigger than 99% of the states in the USA, we still don't know within 5000 miles where you hung your hat!

Even the Texas Rangers and the Commanche hated that part of the country, and Uncle Sam refused to let their army venture into it...

We had a ranch leased their one year, it ran a cow-calf pair to 250 acres on a good year!! None on a bad year...and you couldn't drink the water, for one thing there was none and the other is what was their had sulfur in it...I don't have to worry about hell, I ranched there. Funny thing is the devil never did get used to me.

He's a shooter, sure 'nuff, Wendell.

And don't let Ray tell you that Childress is not West Texas. Those guys from the other side of the Pecos don't realize that West Texas starts at the city limits of Fort Worth and quits at the banks of the Pecos. Everything after that is "Trans-Pecos", sorta like out of another world.

Your buck looks a lot like some of our better whitetails down in Kent County where I hunt (also have some muleys on the fringes). This same strain of whitetail seems to be pretty consistent from Scurry and Fisher north through the Rolling Plains. Dickens, Stonewall, some of Haskell and Knox, Foard, Cottle, Motley, King, and maybe some of Briscoe and Collingsworth all have some pockets with some pretty respectable bucks.

By the way, I didn't catch it if you said, but what kind of a gun were you using?

Oh, and those hogs you mentioned -- they're getting bad everywhere in that country. They offer a little sport, alright, but they're really a nuisance. One of the biggest problems in trying to control them by hunting is that everybody always wants to shoot the biggest one, naturally. When you shoot the old grandaddy boar, you can create a population explosion because he's typically the worst predator out there on the young piglets. The old sow can fight off a coyote or bobcat, but when the boar finds her litter, she just has to stand there and squeal while he chows down.

Did you know that you can get a permit to shoot wild hogs out of an airplane?

I'm going to get Pecos to outfit me for one of those airplane hunts.

I want to use an AC130

Stonecreek,
Where the hell is Ft. Worth? Must be on the other side of Devils River or the Pecos!!