The sad tale of a world-class buck’s sorry demise continues. Today, Troy Alan Reinke, 32, of Cannon Falls, MN, pleaded guitly to poaching the largest 8-point whitetail buck ever killed--a 185-inch bohemoth brought down last Halloween. Now, Alan is headed to where many hunters say he belongs—in jail.

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On the last day of the Iowa archery season, I shot a doe at a distance of seven yards. I was kneeling at the time, my back pressed against a broken-down willow tree that hid my silhouette. I can honestly say that the seconds before I released that arrow were every bit as exciting as the ones leading up to the buck I killed three months earlier. And that was the largest whitetail buck I have ever taken.

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Wait a minute. Hold on, now. It’s not me saying so. It’s the winner of the previous “Shoot Me Down”—that is, the person who gave the best argument against my wild assertion that “The .260 Rem. Is The Best All-Around Whitetail Cartridge.” It is our own Walt Smith, who has agreed to accept the coveted prize of doing my job for me, as a guest blogger. Put another way, Walt is my guest. So be nice. Disagree, by all means. Shoot him down, if you must. Nail him to the wall. But be nice about it.

(Seriously, Walt, thanks for playing along.)

With that, here’s Walt:

Food Plots and Baiting Are One And The Same

Whether you till the soil and plant seeds in the ground or you stop by the gas station and buy bags of corn and carrots to spread on the ground, the only reason you go to all that trouble is to attract deer to your stand. Either way, you’re baiting.

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So we have a four-way tie. That’s right, buddyboy25, ikedogg, mwmrtn, and taylor1 each correctly guessed the actual, to-the-inch, gross-score total of all four bucks, which break down like this:

Buck#1: 153
Buck#2: 151
Buck#3: 170
Buck#4: 211

For a grand total of 685 inches.

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It’s rare for a winter to pass without some word of a whitetail stuck on ice, and it’s easy to see how that situation occurs. Many frozen waterways offer deer comparatively easy travel to the deep snows found on shore. Some whitetails surely run onto ice to avoid predators, and of course deer are no different than any critter (or human) in their ability to just make the occasional stupid mistake and walk where they shouldn’t.

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There have been some questions popping up about exactly how we will determine a winner for the Mathews Z7 contest, so let me break it down. In the initial post (and in an early comment on the last post), I explained that your gross-score guesses for each buck should be to the inch--and that is how I will tally the four bucks’ actual scores—to the inch—to get the winning total. “To the inch” means fractionals are simply disregarded. Guessing a buck’s score from a photo is tough enough, so I didn’t want you to have to worry about fractionals. Still, many of you have given fractionals.

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My friend Mitch Hagen (pictured) is a hard core deer hunter. I use this as an all-encompassing term than includes whitetail knowledge, hunting skill, shooting ability and a year-round fascination with deer. Mitch balances this passion with a full-time job as a contractor and a strong commitment to his family. I’ve known some hardcore hunters over the years who let their enthusiasm for hunting compromise their true responsibilities. Not Mitch.

This is all serves as preface to a hunting story that took five years to unfold. That is the history Mitch had with the deer in this picture, a buck that literally lived in his backyard. He first saw the deer as a 2-1/2 year old buck, feeding in a field behind his home. Mitch found the buck’s sheds the following spring. “That next fall I saw him one time, when a combine kicked him out of the standing corn and he ran through my front yard, then past one of my stands,” Mitch recalled, laughing. “I nicknamed him the Big 8; he had a huge body and nice frame, but wasn’t super-impressive. But he was under my skin. I... [ Read Full Post ]

Sorry folks. This was supposed to go up on Friday, but I ran into a slight holdup. Anyway, here’s buck #3. (Click here if you missed buck #1, and here for buck #2.) As you can see, we’re taking the training wheels off. No more clean 8s or 10s. Instead, this week’s buck has just enough junk to make things interesting. (Next week’s will have just enough to make things brutally difficult).

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Oklahoma Poacher To Pay 33K For Killing Pen-Raised Breeder Buck

Minnesota DNR Pushes For 4-Month Feeding Ban

Northern Montana Gets 0ne-Buck Limit For 2010-11
 
Video Report: The Latest On Wisconsin’s Special Deer Hunt For Soldiers

Wisconsin Announces $2 Million Research Initiative

Nebraska Plans Deer Fence To Reduce I-80 Collisions

Maine’s Deer Harvest Down 14 Percent [ Read Full Post ]

So the kids are about that age where my wife and I are thinking about getting a swing set for the backyard. And, truth be known, there isn’t as much venison in the freezer this year as I would like. So you can imagine how excited I was to see this Craigslist post:

Commercial Swing Set and Slide – $850

Commercial Swing Set and Slide: Heavy Duty This is the Type used at Elementary Schools.

An Additional Slide is also available, and can be purchased separate [sic]. Additional Playground equipment is also available[.] Deer is not included.

That is, until I read that last sentence. Deer not included!? C’mon!

Who’s going to pay $850 for a swing set with no deer?

[Actually, I saw this post on a website called You Suck At Craigslist, whose existence says something both hilarious and a little troubling about the state of humanity.] [ Read Full Post ]

The Buck family  -- the name is a lucky coincidence -- has been making knives since 1902. I am a Buck fan because my first hunting knife was a Buck Folding Hunter, the elegant brass-accented 110 model that celebrates its 50th birthday in 2014. I’ve dressed many deer with it, but the deer it makes me remember is one I didn’t kill.

The year I took up bowhunting, 1982, I outfitted myself on a budget with Browning’s bottom-of-the-line Cobra XL compound.  The idea that a whitetail might come close enough that I would actually kill it with my bow seemed so far-fetched it never occurred to me to buy a knife.

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Any hardcore shed-head will know by reading this title that I am not a member of their clan. I know some diehard shed guys, and many of them are already well into double-digit finds for the year. I marked my first antler this weekend, and it will probably be among the relative handful from this year’s collection.

Still, the horn (and yes I call sheds “horns” even though I know they’re actually “antlers”) was a special one. For starters, I’ve been battling some sickness the last few weeks, which has basically kept me out of the woods. We’re also having a serious winter in Minnesota, and the weather has forced me indoors even when I’ve felt perky. So it just felt good to stretch my legs for a short walk on one of the farms I hunt on Saturday. Shed hunting was my excuse to go; mainly I just wanted some cold air in my nostrils on a sunny winter day.

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