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2020/2021 Hunting Thread

Both Tacos

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Both Tacos
Both Tacos

She got it done.

HollidayHorn
HollidayHorn

Harvested this 10 point in Archer county yesterday morning. Grossed 161 and netted 155. I'm including a couple of trail cam pics from last week. Good luck to yall the rest of the year. 

noharleyyet
noharleyyet

5 this afternoon....  

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deadshank

deadshank 24653

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Posted
28 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

That’s nice.  We are lucky that ours is under cover, but it’s right up in the entrance at the camp, which sucks. Y’all can hang cattle off that bad boy. 

 

5 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

You sure that thing is sturdy enough?  You might not be able to winch up an elephant.

We like repurposing leftover material from our jobs.  The cross beam is a big chunk of cedar that went unused on a house we built up in the Navasota area.  It weighed a berjillion pounds.  Getting it up there and set with the all threads was a rodeo but it turned up nice. 

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Johnny Sack

Johnny Sack 8397

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Ours is pipe.  And we built rails where you can take it off the scale/skinning rack, winch it up on a hook with rollers, and roll it right into the walk in cooler (which has rails inside and a little door at the top where the rails are to open when you are moving in and out).  I will have to take a pic.  One of our ranch hands built it.

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Spaulding Smails

Spaulding Smails 1553

Posted
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2 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

Ours is pipe.  And we built rails where you can take it off the scale/skinning rack, winch it up on a hook with rollers, and roll it right into the walk in cooler (which has rails inside and a little door at the top where the rails are to open when you are moving in and out).  I will have to take a pic.  One of our ranch hands built it.

That's a dream setup.  Sounds like Granzin's in New Braunfels.  We have a decent setup.  I welded up an A-frame with two gambrels each on cable winches.  And, I snagged an 8x8 walk-in cooler off one of our restaurant jobs that is ugly, but runs like a champ with a smaller A-frame inside of it.  The only pain in the ass is getting a skinned deer from big A-frame to the cooler without dragging it on the ground.  Not too bad with a whitetail doe, but it's really tough with an axis buck.  Before next season, I think I'm going to break down and buy a big poly cart to just wheel them in there.

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Both Tacos

Both Tacos 1806

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That's a dream setup.  Sounds like Granzin's in New Braunfels.  We have a decent setup.  I welded up an A-frame with two gambrels each on cable winches.  And, I snagged an 8x8 walk-in cooler off one of our restaurant jobs that is ugly, but runs like a champ with a smaller A-frame inside of it.  The only pain in the ass is getting a skinned deer from big A-frame to the cooler without dragging it on the ground.  Not too bad with a whitetail doe, but it's really tough with an axis buck.  Before next season, I think I'm going to break down and buy a big poly cart to just wheel them in there.
I got a couple of these reciever hitch hoists that you can skin the deer from and then transport it to a cooler. 90d86442f585e1bfd88abe2154e81033.jpgfe7496bb0164ea7272128f0cefe0723d.jpg
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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, noharleyyet said:

My son's 2019 buck finally finished and hung last Friday....

50915133657_f9c2c5c044_b.jpg

 

162ish B&C? I have a European mounted that scores about 148, that looks almost identical, but has shorter G3s, a shorter G4 on the right side, and not quite that much mass.

CHIEF

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noharleyyet

noharleyyet 2838

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4 minutes ago, CHIEF said:

162ish B&C? I have a European mounted that scores about 148, that looks almost identical, but has shorter G3s, a shorter G4 on the right side, and not quite that much mass.

CHIEF

Good eye CHIEF....you're right there. Helluva buck...mass all the way out and all the way up. Here's a fisherman's pose;

Ken Jr.

 

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BabaYaga

BabaYaga 15301

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On 2/7/2021 at 1:31 PM, Johnny Sack said:

Ours is pipe.  And we built rails where you can take it off the scale/skinning rack, winch it up on a hook with rollers, and roll it right into the walk in cooler (which has rails inside and a little door at the top where the rails are to open when you are moving in and out).  I will have to take a pic.  One of our ranch hands built it.

Same.  Sort of.  Looks like a giant swing set with meat hooks on it to hang.  It's old as dirt, but still does the job.

 

Deer rack.PNG

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ROFL BOX

ROFL BOX 6649

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1 hour ago, Herbie Hancock said:

Bought my wife the Denali last December and I had to take her out Wednesday morning so I could 1) see how it did on the ice, and 2) show her how to put it in 4wd. I found the most city-fied country girl in the damn state and decided to marry her. Smh

We're waiting for your posts in the "Wives & the Stupid Shit" thread.

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Reagan1k

Reagan1k 3024

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41 minutes ago, texashorne said:

Well, my group of 4 is still searching for a place this year.. No luck so far, plenty of frustration.. If you guys know anything about a place freezing up, please let me know.. 

 

Plenty of these in the coming days- not so much on what you actually typed.  Sorry.

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

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55 minutes ago, texashorne said:

Well, my group of 4 is still searching for a place this year.. No luck so far, plenty of frustration.. If you guys know anything about a place freeing up, please let me know.. 

 

Same with me, my son, two uncles, and their sons. Budgeting about $3k per gun, since I have to pay for two spots.

CHIEF

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

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2 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

Look up around Abilene, Snyder or Childress area.  Still deals to be had around those areas.  South Texas and Hill Country have no deals.  

Yeah, that's generally the area we hunt, My buddy that has about 500,000 acres of leases said everyone is holding pretty tight this year. We went to Cisco Wednesday and looked at a 415 acre place for four guns at $2250 a pop, but it has no water or electricity, and we are tired of fooling with generators. The good thing, is I get first dibs on anything that comes open out of that 500k acres. I imagine something will come open if the stock market starts to tank a bit, which I think could happen with the drop in consumer spending slowing the velocity of money.

CHIEF

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texashorne

texashorne 1178

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2 hours ago, CHIEF said:

Yeah, that's generally the area we hunt, My buddy that has about 500,000 acres of leases said everyone is holding pretty tight this year. We went to Cisco Wednesday and looked at a 415 acre place for four guns at $2250 a pop, but it has no water or electricity, and we are tired of fooling with generators. The good thing, is I get first dibs on anything that comes open out of that 500k acres. I imagine something will come open if the stock market starts to tank a bit, which I think could happen with the drop in consumer spending slowing the velocity of money.

CHIEF

How is your buddy compensated if he finds you a place? 

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

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5 minutes ago, texashorne said:

How is your buddy compensated if he finds you a place? 

He marks up the rate he gets it for by a dollar an acre or so. My Dad and him were very close. So I get to move to the front of the line on leases. Also, he knows I am paying for two spots, he gives it to me at his cost. He is an all North and Northwest Texas guy. He may have something coming up in Clay County right on the Red River coming up for me to look at. He had to trim down his leasing acreage a bit. He had some landowners running day hunts on leased land when they knew the regular hunters were not going to be there. He also changed a policy where you had to call them and let them know you were coming. Landowners can be real shitty.

CHIEF

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Johnny Sack

Johnny Sack 8397

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4 hours ago, CHIEF said:

He marks up the rate he gets it for by a dollar an acre or so. My Dad and him were very close. So I get to move to the front of the line on leases. Also, he knows I am paying for two spots, he gives it to me at his cost. He is an all North and Northwest Texas guy. He may have something coming up in Clay County right on the Red River coming up for me to look at. He had to trim down his leasing acreage a bit. He had some landowners running day hunts on leased land when they knew the regular hunters were not going to be there. He also changed a policy where you had to call them and let them know you were coming. Landowners can be real shitty.

CHIEF

Yeah I would make sure I had in writing that I was paying for exclusive hunting rights.

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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

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6 hours ago, CHIEF said:

He had some landowners running day hunts on leased land when they knew the regular hunters were not going to be there.

Holy shit, oof. 
 

First company I worked for out of college, we had a 10k acre lease in Laredo. Long term lease, O&G when money was flowing.  They built all kinds of little casitas and a big lodge even though it was a leased place. They had a ranch manager that we paid north of 150k/yr. His son worked for us too for some ridiculous amount of money.  Anyhow, it was a gravy job. Identify a few 150-ish deer a year for the clients, make sure the CEOs kid gets a nice buck, and make sure the chef had plenty of steaks; everyone was happy.  Over the years we weren’t seeing the kind of deer you’d expect out of a managed place of that size.   They caught him selling trophy hunts during the week. I guess a few hundred grand wasn’t enough. 

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

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1 hour ago, fattyflattie said:

Holy shit, oof. 
 

First company I worked for out of college, we had a 10k acre lease in Laredo. Long term lease, O&G when money was flowing.  They built all kinds of little casitas and a big lodge even though it was a leased place. They had a ranch manager that we paid north of 150k/yr. His son worked for us too for some ridiculous amount of money.  Anyhow, it was a gravy job. Identify a few 150-ish deer a year for the clients, make sure the CEOs kid gets a nice buck, and make sure the chef had plenty of steaks; everyone was happy.  Over the years we weren’t seeing the kind of deer you’d expect out of a managed place of that size.   They caught him selling trophy hunts during the week. I guess a few hundred grand wasn’t enough. 

Yep, it is pretty rampant from what I hear. A lot of these ranches want the regulars to keep a "harvest log". Fuck that. You shoot something nice, and even if you have a contracted price locked in for ten years, they go up on the price. If you sue, the only recourse is to let you out of your lease as a lessee. Property rights are definitely rigged towards the landowner, as they should be. But it sucks none the less. Most require you to move your shit off in 72 hours, which requires everyone on the lease to drop what they are doing, take off work, and rush to the ranch with four flatbed trailers, a tractor, and several 4-wheel drives. My old man had to leave several $2k+ blinds that had been sat in maybe six times. It's why he started his mobile deer blind business.

CHIEF

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

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4 hours ago, Johnny Sack said:

Yeah I would make sure I had in writing that I was paying for exclusive hunting rights.

The landowners are from there, you aren't going to get damages from the motherfuckers, you just get to breach the contract. Which is what the landowner wants. Try to sue the Swenson Ranch in Haskell, or Stonewall County, the ranch has had an office on the courthouse square for a hundred years.

CHIEF

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BayouBill

BayouBill 835

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On 2/12/2021 at 4:02 PM, texashorne said:

Well, my group of 4 is still searching for a place this year.. No luck so far, plenty of frustration.. If you guys know anything about a place freeing up, please let me know.. 

 

Also maybe worth checking in East Tx. Anderson, Smith, Cherokee counties.... usually see things around lake Livingston as well.

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Spaulding Smails

Spaulding Smails 1553

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10 hours ago, fattyflattie said:

Holy shit, oof. 
 

First company I worked for out of college, we had a 10k acre lease in Laredo. Long term lease, O&G when money was flowing.  They built all kinds of little casitas and a big lodge even though it was a leased place. They had a ranch manager that we paid north of 150k/yr. His son worked for us too for some ridiculous amount of money.  Anyhow, it was a gravy job. Identify a few 150-ish deer a year for the clients, make sure the CEOs kid gets a nice buck, and make sure the chef had plenty of steaks; everyone was happy.  Over the years we weren’t seeing the kind of deer you’d expect out of a managed place of that size.   They caught him selling trophy hunts during the week. I guess a few hundred grand wasn’t enough. 

Wow.  That's about as bad as it gets.  Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I was on the same lease in Live Oak County from 10+ years on my own.  15+ in total.  I inherited my dad's spot when I was in my early 20s.  5 guns.  1100 acres.  Low fence.  We didn't feed protein, but we tried out best to manage the herd.  And we did a TON to improve the property.  We were constantly working on the old cabin that we stayed in.  Fixed a ton of fences.  Mowed senderos.  Hell, I rented a dozer one year and cleared a bunch of brush and mesquite for him.  We were allotted one trophy buck each.  But, we never shot more than two total in a year.  We started to see better deer and shot a few in the low 160 range.  We'd see the same deer and started to do a good job of targeting / managing the right ones.  We had seen this one really nice mainframe 10 with distinctive split brow tines.  We aged him at 6.5.  He was a regular at one particular location.  Then, he vanished.  And this was pre-rut by a wide margin.  It was around 2005, so I went and bought my first game camera.  Set it up near the feeder of that blind to see if I could catch him on camera.  Instead, I caught two hunters dragging a bullshit 3-yo 8-pt to their truck.

Who knows how long that landowner had been running day hunts.  We had a handshake contract with him, so there was no recourse.  But, what a shitty thing to do.  Out of our blinds and under our feeders.  Needless to say, that was the last year we hunted there.  

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fattyflattie

fattyflattie 4639

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35 minutes ago, ousuxndallas said:

We are fortunate, our lease landowner is remote. He just owns a bunch of land as long term investments.

We built this fire pit this year. It's about 8 feet in diameter. You can put very large trees in there, lol. Slowly making our camp nicer each year. cf97ec99512c86ac500b2d89d66b034c.jpg

That beats the shit out of our old tractor rim. I need something in between what we got, and what you got.  We also have a long distance owner, which can be good.  He comes down once or twice a year in the spring. 

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CHIEF

CHIEF 5093

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3 hours ago, Spaulding Smails said:

Wow.  That's about as bad as it gets.  Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I was on the same lease in Live Oak County from 10+ years on my own.  15+ in total.  I inherited my dad's spot when I was in my early 20s.  5 guns.  1100 acres.  Low fence.  We didn't feed protein, but we tried out best to manage the herd.  And we did a TON to improve the property.  We were constantly working on the old cabin that we stayed in.  Fixed a ton of fences.  Mowed senderos.  Hell, I rented a dozer one year and cleared a bunch of brush and mesquite for him.  We were allotted one trophy buck each.  But, we never shot more than two total in a year.  We started to see better deer and shot a few in the low 160 range.  We'd see the same deer and started to do a good job of targeting / managing the right ones.  We had seen this one really nice mainframe 10 with distinctive split brow tines.  We aged him at 6.5.  He was a regular at one particular location.  Then, he vanished.  And this was pre-rut by a wide margin.  It was around 2005, so I went and bought my first game camera.  Set it up near the feeder of that blind to see if I could catch him on camera.  Instead, I caught two hunters dragging a bullshit 3-yo 8-pt to their truck.

Who knows how long that landowner had been running day hunts.  We had a handshake contract with him, so there was no recourse.  But, what a shitty thing to do.  Out of our blinds and under our feeders.  Needless to say, that was the last year we hunted there.  

And that's what sucks. You have YEARS invested in passing up bucks to let them mature. We are very selective. There have been multiple years on our leases where a trigger was never pulled, not even culls or does. And to what end? Only to get fucked over by a greedy landowner. When we owned our land that we hunted on in Bosque county, we tried to let bucks mature. The 917 acre ranch that bordered us on the East was bought and cut up into VA tracts. There were blinds within 300 yards of each other. I passed up a mainframe 10 point that might have been as old as 3 1/2. Watched him jump the fence and promptly get shot. That year, Dad sold the ranch and we started hunting big ranches out west. It feels like we are playing "whack a mole", you sell out to get rid of a problem, only to have another problem rear its ugly head while leasing.

It's going to get to the point that only mid six figure guys will be able to afford the sport. I am a low fence guy, and am staunchly against "canned" hunts, for myself personally. Hunting is less about the hunting and more about the camarderie and time spent with family and friends. But the idea of a three day, low fence, trophy hunt is becoming more appealing. I just can't fathom the idea of a guide putting me on a big buck. That's my job, and my ego tells me I would be better at his job than he is. That is my dilemma. All of my family that I hunt with are the same way. We are fantastic hunters and consistently shoot the biggest and most mature bucks on our leases. But not one of us will probably pull the trigger unless a buck goes 160+. Day hunts and being in proximity with hunters that don't have the same mentality ruin it for everyone.

I understand hunting for meat. But let's be honest, unless you own the land, filet mignons are cheaper per pound than deer meat. But there is a mindset that you have to have something to show for your money. That's what culls and does are for.

CHIEF

 

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