Sure hope not. And I'll never know if I have them because the TWRA only released black ones so they won't show up on trail-cam. ;)Hope none of your local panthers kill him before next November!
His body is 3.5...Mega, do you think that buck is only 3 1/2? hard for me to say because we're so far post-rut in my area. Maybe he's mature, but I'm leaning hard towards 3 1/2.
For sure.Hopefully he'll survive the next 60 days, some of the hardest on them.
I agree with being cool sheds to find. Nice deer. Maybe he'll hang around for next year.Those would be some nice sheds and they could very easily end up on your property or next to it
I'm HOPING these changes are permanent and not just the product of a great acorn crop. And I'm hoping it's due to the massive habitat changes. I don't think the changes occurred soon enough last year to alter deer home ranges last summer, but it will be very interesting to see if our summer population changes this year. We had a grand total of 4 bucks using our property last summer (two yearlings, one 2 1/2 and one 3 1/2). I doubt that big buck was a summer resident as he would have eventually walked through a food plot or come to eat some soybeans and I had black-flash video cameras running on all my plots last summer just to see how much use they were getting.Very cool looking buck! I suspect he's 4.5+. If you got that video back in oct-nov, I'd definitely say 3.5, but I wouldn't say that this late in the season.
As far as habitat changes correlating with buck appearances in late season, the more habitat changes we do, the more appearances we see. Over late summer last year, we created 11 new acres of food plots and roughly another 30 acres of select cut. We are seeing the same this late season as well. I suspect you'll see more and more of that especially because you'll have good thermal cover once those pine seedlings grow up and the added food plots you have. The trend your seeing is likely to continue.
A lot of our summer resident bucks left in October and came back within the last 3 weeks. Now, most of the folks in our camp say "that sucks" and "hate that they leave". I always look at the positives - in essence, they made it and I have until late October to kill one in the 2022 season ;). I know you don't bow hunt, but there is still satisfaction in seeing a buck survive and show back up that you haven't seen in 3 months. In your opinion, do you think this buck in particular probably was a summer resident and you likely would have gotten pics of him if you still ran salt licks? But now that you don't and just have cameras over food plots, you may have just not picked him up?
Honestly, I'll shoot the first 3 1/2+ year-old buck I see each year. Luckily for me, over the last decade or so, the first 3 1/2+ year-old buck I've gotten in range each season has been a whopper.Let me guess, he's on your hit list for next season. Nice buck!
The tan ones dont either unless your cams are somewhere they actually exist.Sure hope not. And I'll never know if I have them because the TWRA only released black ones so they won't show up on trail-cam. ;)