Picture Link

Alek finally got his Axis buck! Free range, spot and stalk, and no bait (not even corn thrown out on the ground!) - so it was worth it!

We started Saturday with a two hour stalk on a herd of Axis bedded up in the deep bowl between two ridges. We came down and managed through some large cliffs and thick cover. We got to within 80 yards, but unfortunately spooked them as we were sizing them up. We saw two really nice Bucks in the herd... darn!!

Saturday evening, all of us went into town to eat. We got back to the cabin at 8:26 PM and I told Alek we were heading South for a quick look before dark. Once we arrived, we walked around glassing for any Axis. We spotted a herd on a ridge, but didn't see any large bucks. We started to leave when we heard an Axis doe barking, but we knew we hadn't spooked anything.

We looked into a field and saw a single Axis Doe and then a single Axis buck. We slowly made our way to within about 200 yards. The Axis buck would never give Alek a clean shot - it kept facing away from him or lying down. Eventually he turned and Alek took a shot. The Axis took the shot low behind the shoulder and was dazed and stumbling. I told Alek to shoot again and he hit his right leg and brisket. He fell down on his front legs, but popped back up and ran off (not full speed) into the brush.

By the time we got to the brush line, it was completely dark. We looked around for a few minutes for blood, but couldn't find any. We decided not to pressure him and went back to get help and some good flashlights.

We were back within 30 minutes and quickly found a heavy blood trail. We tracked him about 200 yards into the brush and found him!

He weighed in at 200 lbs exactly and had a huge neck! A rough measurement showed his left side to be 32-33" with a 14" brown tine, and his right side to be 30-31" with a 12-13" brown tine. The cottle tines were average length with the left being longer. His antlers were also extremely heavy - some parts you could barely get your hand around!!

BTW - That's a Remington Mohawk in .308 Winchester that I restored for my son - new bottom metal, Timney trigger, Weaver 2x7x33 scope, new recoil pad, and completely epoxy bedded front, rear, and bottom.

That is a very nice Axis Deer! Congrats to your son.

Super brow tines!! Axis are great game animals.

Thanks! They are fun to hunt. They change their patterns a lot and move randomly during the day.

I never book my animals with SCI, but I do have the Taxidermist score them. This was a Gold Medal Fair Chase Axis.

We saw three others in the same area that were whoppers! One of them would make top 10 SCI fair chase; the other #1 for even high fence. He's just huge.

Austin, eh?

Like you, I have always considered Austin more "...the Rest of the World"...or more precisely..."36 square miles surrounded by reality"!

All kidding aside, congrats to both of you!! Axis is my favorite venison!!

Bob

Congrats to both of you. It sounds like it was quite an enjoyable hunt -- and one I'm sure both you and your son will remember for a long time.

Here are a few more deer we got during the last 3 weeks. A guest got the new #4 SCI fair chase rifle Axis last weekend - I hope he books it! It was a whopper. The pics do not do it justice. Go here:

hackberryranch.blogspot.com

Great Axis! Their beauty always surprises me..

For some reason the picture link doesn't seem to be working?

Congratulations ,i hunt almost exclusively with my son ,we have had great times together.Juan

Thanks - I fixed the link. I rearranged some photos on Picasa and it messes with any links. It wreaked havoc for a while on my blog until I stopped moving pics around.

Austin Hunter,

That's a lovely buck and I sure the memory of that hunt is soome thing you and your son will always treasure..

I assume the hunt was somewhere in Texas? I noticed you stated this was a free range hunt, so how common are Axis "in the wild" around there?

Regards,

Peter

Pretty common in the western part of the Hill Country and moving eastward- we have about 1 per 4-6 acres in our area. Much denser than the white tails. They are in velvet, anterless, polished throught the year - so there are always some you can hunt year around, but summer has the highest % that are polished.

From my experience, the free range specimens are always bigger than the high fence ones. High fences that are big use lots of protein and have a tell-tell sign - thick antlers with a very drastic narrowing at the very end of the main beams.

Austin Hunter,

Very interesting...We don't have any free range Axis here in the UK I am aware of, but we do have "feral" populations Sika, Muntjac and Chinese Water Deer so of which I believe you can hunt in Texas as well..

Strictly speaking Fallow should be classed as an introduced species here in the UK, but as they have here nearly a 1000 years, they are pretty much considered native now..They are pretty much our equivalent of your Whitetail now..

Again thanks for the pics,

Regards,

Pete

We have fallows as well; spotted (brown), chocolate, and white; but the free range are not as big as as the stuff in Europe, Africa, or NZ. I think they are beautiful.

One deer we have in Texas are Manchurian Sika's. I'm still not sure if this is a crossbreed or a legitimate wild species in Asia. It looks like a cross between an Axis and Sika. It has Axis size antlers, but the point structure of a Sika. It's body looks like an Axis, except the coat is a bit lighter and the white patches splotchier/fuzzier than a normal axis, finally it has a heavy beard/mane like a Sika. They look cool. We don't have any free range, but would love to.

We also have a single black Aoudad on our place we have been hunting 3 years seasons - the only one I have ever heard about - anywhere.

Manchurian Sika are a legitimate sub species of Sika...The ones we have in the UK are mostly Formosan (sp?) Sika which are smaller than the Manchurian sub species...We do have Manchurians in a few deer parks and apparently some have escaped into the wild, but their practical breeding impact has been virtually non existent.

In the Parks, the Manchurian subspecies has a reputation of being very aggressive in the Rut and potentially dangerous to humans if encountered unexpectedly..

Cool - thanks!

We have some folks that cross bred Sika and Elk - called a Silka - about 400 lbs.

Sika meat tastes sweet

A great buck, excellent meat, hunting with your son and a restored rifle.
It doesn't get much better.

Thanks for the post and good hunting.

Great buck. Congratulations.