TOPIC: Pre-season workout - picking black berries

Whitjr,
340 yards???? Man that's sniper material there.lol What are you hunting with?

Latt: This gun is a recent addition, just last year. A Remington 700 VLS, w/ Jaeger Riflescope in 8x24x50, chambered in .243. The hardest thing about shooting something with this set-up is my 57-year-old eyes. I put this one together as my long distance gun; my woods guns are either 8mm Mauser or .303 Enfield.

the deer around my home [there's 600 acres I can hunt just out my back door] are pressured once the season starts. there's about 6 to 8 guys that can hunt this area, me being only one of them. It's about 1/2 cropland, and 1/2 decidious forest... so pleanty of choices of where to hunt.

I love it!

Oh boy! Ginseng and Guns -- No wonder I like this forum.

Whitjr,

Long shots on deer - I have done quite a bit of that.

I have a browning 300 mag, with (6.5 x 20) 50mm leupold scope, and the large tract of land that I own has a TVA power line running thru it.

We put 2x6's to make a platform up in the TVA electric towers and use sandbags and I have one place where you can see 700 yards one direction and 350 the other.

I have killed several over 400, up to around 440.

I zero my 300 in at 200 yds, and find that a deer at 400 yards you have to hold about 10\" over their back.

Drop em every time.

TNhunter

Tn Hunter- Yeah, I have to rest the gun as well to shoot at distance. My farmer buddy bales hay in the big rounds... and these make excellent rests for the tripod for the Rem. That 6.5 mm round of yours is just a bit bigger than my .243 and I bet it shoots fairly straight as well.

accidental double post, opps!

Never have long shots like that up here in Vt. All deer at less than 150 and most at less than 20(bow). The most deer we can take up here is 3 per year, but they are pretty big! 2 or 3 years ago we had 3 deer taken in town that were 213, 213 and 215lbs......dressed weight!

Last years muzzle loader hunt with a few of the boys!

Wow! I'm counting 10 deer in the picture! You guys got all those on one day?

Your deer are bigger up there in the great white northland, bigger than here in the southland. A deer as big as you describe is a real rarity here in the south. The biggest deer I've taken here in NC was a buck that weighed [dressed out] 185 lbs. He had a nice rack [9 point, 22\" spread] however, was not as big in the body as you describe. I've taken several big does as well over the years, however none the size that you describe.

There's lots of pressure on the NC deer, however. A lot of hunters here in the south seem to be wanting the horns only... leaving the does alone and the population has exploded here. We do not have any of the deer wasting dz, tho. I think that more folks need to hunt down here, or they need to extend the season some. We can hunt from 1 Sept thru 1 Jan, with bow/muzzleloader/and gun seasons within that period. It's a long season, however perhaps not long enough... for the growing population of deer.

Again, great photo, thanks for sharing it!

Maya - now that is stacking em up like cord wood - - you must have been protecting your apple crop

I used to be nuts about deer hunting but actually don't even hunt em any more. I still turkey hunt and fish and seng, but no more deer hunting.

I think I may have killed too many of them and sort of got burnt out on it.

Back when I was shooting serious competition archery, I could kill em with bow/arrow out to 45-50 yards fairly easy.

I killed 3 deer in one morning bow hunt (4 different times) and took em 2 at a time on more mornings that I can count.

In competition (NFAA tournaments) our longest shot was 80 yards (5\" dot). In practice I shot at 100 yards, and one day with my dad spotting for me I put 5 arrows in a 5\" dot from 100 yards.

I indoor competitions, we shot a target that had 5 dots on it. The dot was 3\" in diameter, and had a 1.5\" center (x ring). That target face was shot from a distance of 60 ft, 20 yds.

A tournament included 120 shots, and in the class I shot in if you missed the 3\" dot 1 time out of 120, you might as well not have even come to the tournament. You had to get almost all of those 120 shots in the 1.5\" x-ring to have a chance of winning.

Best I ever shot on a half tournament round (60 shots) was 60 x - all in the x ring.

Best I ever shot on a 120 shot round was 117 x.

We used real sophisticated equip though (not what you bow hunt with) - long stabilizers, 6 x scope sight, easton A/C arrows, etc.

That was a long time ago now... back before I got married and had kids.

Once you do that, lots of things become much less important than they were before.

TNhunter

Here is a old pic from back in that day...

Think this was around 1990 and the trophy's in that pic are from that one years winnings.

I shot a LOT, and all over the place. IBO, TBO, lots of local tournaments. HighCountry would take a bunch of us shooters anywhere there was a big tournament and that happened just about every weekend somewhere.

The bow in that pic was my hunting bow, not a indoor target bow. I hunted with a HighCountry Safari back then, 90 lbs, overdraw, 25\" arrows, anderson mag broadheads - deadly stuff.

We even shot in the winter time, indoors. The state indoor would happen in Feb and we started practicing for it around Christmas time and shot 200 arrows a night 5-6 nights a week.

Each year the NFAA has 3 state tournaments, the indoor, international and field (different targets, different settings).

Then on the 3D competition (animal targets at un-marked distances) the TBO here had a State competition for that.

In 1987 I won all 4 state titles, and killed 17 deer and a wild turkey with bow/arrow.

Ahhh... that was the good old days

TNhunter