Last Years harvest

The number of hunters was low this year, I will blame the concern over the economy . There's not much good news out there, but it does seem to be getting a little better, or the people have decided to get on with their life. Either way the phone is ringing now.

We only had 15 hunters on the property this year, I will try and give you a breakdown on the final results. We will start off with me, I have never fired a shot this year. I have sort of been holding out for two bucks, one was a big 8 pointer, a "sled runner" rack with huge brow tines, I missed him in '06, got a couple pictures of him in '07,and on Thursday of gun season (08) Craig a good friend and client, shot him out of the same stand that I missed him from in '06, 23" spread, a great buck ( check out the picture). I might mention that Craig missed a 10 pointer before he got the big 8, and then let 6 more bucks walk past that stand before I got to him.

Now back to me, the other buck I wanted to tag is a Huge 6 pointer, I haven't seen a rack like that for decades, and I will mention that as a professional taxidermist I have handled thousands of Whitetails, as a professional deer breeder I have produced thousands of whitetails, one 6 pointer I produced was the largest 6 point main frame in Buckmasters full credit scoring system so needless to say I have seen a lot of deer and I really want that 6 point buck. I have had a lot of fun this year but I have not filled my tag yet.

I had three archery hunters for an early season hunt, they did not tag any bucks. They hunted mid October, it was unusually warm and very dry, although they passed some small bucks, the bigger bucks were not to be found that week, the few that showed up on camera was only moving at night. It is this type activity that has prompted me to discontinue the early season hunting. The last week of October things start to happen, no matter what the weather is doing, so we are only going to archery hunt during rut this year, starting with the last week of October and then the first two weeks of November, we will give it a rest then hunt gun season for 5 days.

We certainly understand that our clients take off a week from work, travel here, buy licenses and of course pay for the guided hunt, and even though Ohio has a 3 and a half month deer season, only a few weeks of that is really "prime time", with the higher success opportunities so we are cutting our season back and keep our quality and opportunities high. We want to keep the valve high for our clients budget.

My son, Adam has become a very good deer hunter and guide, he helped his mother out this year, she tagged a buck they hunted for two years, a 14 pointer, it scored 165", with her cross bow. Adam helped another lady, they got a pretty 8 pointer, her first buck with a crossbow. Adam helped another lady, his new bride Jenny, with a nice 10 pointer, and another young lady harvest a good 8 pointer with great brow times. Adam was with another hunter on a crossbow hunt, they put a buck on the ground with 20 points and a score of 212 inches. In gun season Adam took a heavy 9 pointer with his muzzleloader. Adam was responsible for about 850 inches of antlers in about 6 weeks.

Some of my clients did well, Don missed 2 Bucks, passed one and then tagged a big 8. Rick missed one buck then got a real pretty 8 pointer .5 hour later. Dallas missed a buck, another client passed 4 smaller bucks and missed two shooters, one a nice wide 8 point, buck fever might have been a factor.

We harvested two mature does that did not have any fawns with them.

If you don't count me in the final tally we had:
14 hunters
9 bucks harvested
7 bucks missed
Dozen of bucks passed
Over 250 does passed
2 Does harvested
2 Does missed

Two of my neighbors harvested nice 10 pointers in the 130 class on their property, a few other neighbors took 9 does on their property. My nephew George got a nice 9 pointer on one of my leases and another lease accounted for a couple bucks and does. So I would have to say we had a good year and we have a lot to look forward to next year.

We have a lot of projects planned for the upcoming summer, there will be several small ponds built and many seeding (food plot) improvements made. We certainly have a lot of deer that call our land home, and we have to produce more food to hold them through out the year, especially winter. Although we are not hunting most of deer season some of the neighbors are, the deer know this, and with our winter pasture they have no reason to leave. The sheds that we pick up during spring calving show a lot of bucks made it through season.

We have built some large insulated shooting houses with heater and carpet, it is so nice to hunt from these when it's cold and raining or snowing. We used more pop up ground blinds this year and even built one out of square bales of hay, they all produced shots, Even though some of them really seem to standout it didn't matter.

The dozer and bushog will continue to improve the habitat and access and shooting lanes, plus clear some junk timberland for new food plots.

Ohio Whitetail Outfitters
58488 Nighthawk Rd.
Salesville, Ohio 43778
Phone: 740-685-6063