How was your opener?

[c&amagn]

Great post STFCATFISH--- Our group of 4 hunters near Pine River did ok. My father got a decent 8-pointer and my Nephew shot his first deer a good sized spike. We were very happy for him, he was just thrilled. I passed up 3 smaller does and we saw a few more out and a about. Headed back up the next two weekends. It was great to be out. The three small does guessing last years fawns not this years I let pass went onto the neighbors property and I didn't year them crack at them either. Good to see!!!

[vister]

i'd have to say we did pretty dang good! I guess by looking at the 3 hanging up caped out. grandpa got an 18 inch spread 9 pointer, good mass, length and height. my brothers girlfriend took a 16 inch inside spread 10 pointer with incredible mass and length. her first by the way. and last but not least, my youngest brother wit the biggest rack i have ever seen taken in a 20 mile radius. 22 inch inside spread 13 pointer. 6 and a half inch circumfrence at the base of both, both brows split, incredible mass, beam lengths of 24 inches on one and 25 and a half inches on the other, and good heavy tines, with decent length. i'll try to get some pics if i can figure it out. we figure the big one may go 170-180 b and c. all of which taken with in a half mile of each other, in full out rut.

[Guest Kyle]

stcatfish-

I hear ya about the units issue. I dont want there to be more units, but from talking to various people at work, and at the butcher, that hunt in various parts of the state, there all saying the same things I am. I simply just think that the numbers the DNR are putting out dont reflect the actual numbers in alot of places in MN. On the topic of my hunting land. It is a 300 acre piece of property in 3 different sections all meeting at corners. Surrounding my land is a very heafty amount of state land. I dont have an exact number, but Im etimating around 10,000 acres but definatly no less than 8500. My great grandfather bought the land, and since its been in our family we have covered alot of that area. Most of our stands arnt even on our land. for example my stand this year was exactly 4 miles from the farthest person in my family(GPS calc.) I have heard countless stories on poor management and why deer numbers plummet. As meat hunters, and the occasional trophy that any of us might take ever couple years, it would be easy to see how a team of guys could fill every tag they are allowed to have. However, that just isnt the case with us. for 12 people, we have never taken more than 15 deer. We just dont need that much, and that hasnt happend in 10yrs. I heard, and I dont know how credible it is, but I heard the DNR put out info. saying there are 37 deer per square mile on average. Im sorry, but if there is that many deer and Im 4 miles away from my relatives, someone should have seen something. Like I said, Im happy because I was lucky enough to get one, and deer hunting is not just about harvesting deer, but that kind of hunting really brings down the moral.

[Steve Foss]

No prob, hunter. Just seemed a little strong to me, fully blaming the DNR like that. Now that I hear more of your facts, I sympathize with you more.

But still not TOTALLY.

I don't know over what range that 37 deer/sq mile figure is supposed to cover, but the deer herd is estimated at about 1.2 million, and Minnesota has a bit more than 86,000 square miles. That math gets you about 14 deer per square mile throughout the state. And that's a meaningless figure for our purposes, since what we're really talking about are far smaller units of measure.

[catmaster1557]

Hunt east of Backus. Shot a 1 1/2 year old 4 point about 9:30 saturday morning. Not as many deer around as in past years. Time to get ready for Iowa now in 3 weeks, can't wait!

[Guest Kyle]

another thing I would like to see is a different buck rule. Im not sure which states have it, but I personally think hunters should have to put into a lottery for a buck. It is impossible for even one team of hunters to try to manage a deer herd if everyone else around you is shooting little bucks. Im sure there are other methods for keeping a healthier deer herd and more bucks. maybe a different method would be better. I know some parts of the state experience inbreeding in the herd because there arnt enough bucks to go around. That doesnt happen in texas where they manage the buck to doe ratios better. I just gotta believe there are methods out there that would be much much more beneficial than ones MN DNR is using now.

[vermilionwally]

In my group up near cook we usually get 1 deer a year between 7 or 8 of us. Last weekend between all of us we saw like 5 deer. And were all spread over a big area with our stands too. I didnt hear nearly as many shots as normal either.

[surewood]

Saw a six Sat morning and passed on it. The tenth hour in the stand I shot a 8pt. Still have some tags in the hunting party and they said it will be alright for me to shoot a buck for them. No luck sunday. Today saw a six chasing a doe twenty yards from the stand in the morning and saw a doe this evening ten yards from my stand. Did'nt here it with all the wind and there it was but passed for an oppurtunity at one of the bucks I found sheds to they are probably between 150" and 160" now so there is plenty of motivation to hold out for a mature buck.

[Steve Foss]

For those interested, there is a thread going over on the archery board about how Minnesota is managing the deer herd.

[grizzald]

I hunt 424 about 12 miles north of Appleton, which is a lottery zone, and it really showed this weekend. Hardly any deer were seen, or shots herd. Between bow hunting (been out about 15 times so far) and slug hunting I've seen a total of 9 deer and only one buck. And we own river bottoms and some great hills for hunting. All I can say is it's a good deal the DNR put us in a lottery zone this year...

[chris3]

" On the topic of my hunting land. It is a 300 acre piece of property in 3 different sections all meeting at corners. Surrounding my land is a very heafty amount of state land. I dont have an exact number, but Im etimating around 10,000 acres but definatly no less than 8500."

Trust me, if you are in an area with deer habitat and 8500 acres of state land in Minnesota their are plenty of deer. Even if the DNR opened it up to "shoot as many deer as you want" during the hunting season, it would not decimate the population. There is a reason there ARE so many deer, "while we are at our computer bithching about the lack of deer" the deer are out there getting aquainted with the land(maybe nocturnally)so they know where every branch and tree is, no less a big orange blob with a gun.

[Wanderer]

Maybe the DNR has accomplished their goal in some areas??

I remember hunting Pine River as a kid. We never did better than 3 for 5. I usually only saw the one I got over the course of the season. We weren't very good hunters then either but there just wasn't alot to go around.

For the past 5 years I've been saying "These are the Good ol' Days" for deer numbers with all of our exploded herd sizes. It has made me an impatient hunter. JMO.

[livintofish]

Shot a nice big doe about 2:30 on opening day after seeing nothing all morning on the stand. A beautiful day to be out in the woods. Saw several turkeys, about 2411 squirrels (gray and red) and had a downy woodpecker land on my gun barrel. Our party of 12 took 9 deer opening day and saw nothing on sunday or monday. Many of this years deer were running around and a few were shot. One member of our party took a real nice 10 point that dressed at about 200, which was good to see, always nice when somebody shoots a big boy. This big guy had a huge swollen neck on him too, which I have never seen in person to that effect, ruttin hard . It was a good season and I can't wait for some tasty doe sausage .

[Gofishleech]

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i'd have to say we did pretty dang good! I guess by looking at the 3 hanging up caped out. grandpa got an 18 inch spread 9 pointer, good mass, length and height. my brothers girlfriend took a 16 inch inside spread 10 pointer with incredible mass and length. her first by the way. and last but not least, my youngest brother wit the biggest rack i have ever seen taken in a 20 mile radius. 22 inch inside spread 13 pointer. 6 and a half inch circumfrence at the base of both, both brows split, incredible mass, beam lengths of 24 inches on one and 25 and a half inches on the other, and good heavy tines, with decent length. i'll try to get some pics if i can figure it out. we figure the big one may go 170-180 b and c. all of which taken with in a half mile of each other, in full out rut.

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Got'a see those picks, souinds like a monster buck!!!!

[SkeeterMark]

As usual, the kids got the deer. 15 year old shot two bucks that came by about 8 am. One hit right where you'd draw a (Contact Us Please) if you could, the other a little far back. He had some tracking to do for that one, and he did a great job. Trailed it for about 1/2 mile, sees it "dead" in some guys back yard and starts walking up to it. Up it jumps and takes off again. Naturally he can't shoot, and avoids the temptation to do so, since he's in some guy's yard. Waits a while and follows the deer another 1/4 mile where he finds it swimming across a small (20 acre) lake and sees where it makes land. He comes to get me and we go to the lady's house which is nearby, though where he thought it went was a ways down and all cattail swamp. She is nice enough to let us use her duckboat and off we go. My son was dead on, as we found it a few yards deep in the cattails precisely where he thought it went in. Had to "dispatch" it with a shot to the head, but were able to load it up in the boat and make the retreive. I can't believe the thing was still strong enough to swim at that point. They must really get an adrenaline hit when they are wounded. This was certainly the first time I ever came back in a boat with a 6 pointer - now that's some good fishin'.

Anyway, I was pretty proud of the effort he made to trail this son of a gun, as I'm sure a few folks would have given up at the point of seeing it swimming away.

As for me, I haven't gotten a shot at anything worth while in 3 years now. Score for that time period: The two boys - 8, me - 0, which is fine by me. I've shot my share over the years and it's more fun for me to see them get the shooting anyway.

[Big-Al]

I had seen 18 deer by 8:30 Saturday morning when I shot the a doe. Four of the deer that I saw were adult bucks, but nothing real nice. Saw more deer each outing the rest of the weekend but no more shooting. The group was 10 for 11(with two nice bucks) by 9:00 Monday morning. The neat thing is that nobody shot more than one!

[bigbucks]

We went 11 for 16 on opening day. Nobody fired a shot on Sunday, nobody's been out since to my knowledge. Some of us will be hunting from Wednesday night through some time Sunday in various places. We mostly saw only small bucks & most were shot. 7 bucks, 2 does, 2 doe fawns (the only 2 fawns we even saw, which seemed odd) Only saw 1 or possibly 2 other does. Personally I shot a fork that was a runt & then shot a two year-old 8 pointer, because both my brother & I thought he'd hit it, he hadn't.

[brassman]

Our group of 8 got two six's both shot on two pieces of land. the one buck was the only one we saw on the main property. Saturday morning howveer there were some wolves howling about a mile to our west. My gut pile from the weekend before was totally cleaned up in under a week, so maybe the wolves pushed the deer out for the weekend. usually we get about four to five deer on opener. too cold and windy to hunt today. was out this morning but the wind was fierce and plus I accidentally pushed one of those reflective tacks under my fingernail about a 1/4" throbbing right now.

[Guest Kyle]

Chris3

I see you point except that my hunting party of 12 people are probably 1 of 20-30 other hunting parties that hunt that 8500 acres. This land is 60miles from any kind of good agricultural land too. Deer populate to the food sources, and though there is food in the big woods, a great number of deer in MN are concentrated to major cities and other agriculturally friendly site. The iron range is definatly not one of them. I simply stated how my opener was. My hunting party and I have discussed this issue for countless hours, and believe me, if there were any other good reasons for us to not see deer, we have thought of them. However, being that we are experienced hunters, and have hunted the general area for a long time, we feel that the deer numbers are down. plain and simple. The numbers are down in our area. Thats it.

[inthecattails]

Just returned today from zone 105. Saw the most deer I have ever seen on opening weekend (Saturday to Monday). Saw 11 deer of which alot were bucks. Got two bucks and a doe. Also saw an albino deer running through the woods as one of our guys kicked it up on his way in to camp to warm up. It was a rain snow mix Sunday afternoon and all night. Monday morning the ground was white. Snowed all day Monday and when I left Tuesday it was a sleet. Was really windy Sunday into Monday morning. The guys that stayed an extra day headed out Tuesday in hopes of catching the deer on the move after being hunkered down with the weather. Looking to head back up to fill some more bonus tags!!

[vermilionwally]

Well i hunted on private land in cloquet today and didnt get out to the stand until 4:30 and sat for a half hour and saw 4 deer. Only heard one shot though. I havent heard nearly as many shots this year as i normally do.

[Sergeant Slabber]

I hunted area 239 by Hawley. Our party of 9 ended up with 5... 4 bucks and one doe. I got a nice 9 point late in the day on Saturday. We were lucky to get what we got considering we had about 300 acres of standing corn surrounding our land.

[dartsportsteve]

We hunted northwest of Claremont. This was my second season and got my first deer... I'm hooked now for sure. I shot my ave size 6 pointer 20 minutes after the season opened. My hunting buddy got a small doe Saturday at the end of the day. Saw 1 nice 8 point and one 10 plus from a distance as I was field dressing my six. All in all a successful weekend, and I will second the fact that the corn was hiding a lot of deer. We hardly heard any shots on Sunday.

[woody1975]

Here is the 10 pointer I shot north of Brainerd on Saturday morning, not a monster, but a 10 pointer none the less.

Also shot a 6 pointer on Sunday night. Ended up 4 for 13, which sounds "not that great", but we had a few guys pass up deer and a couple of missed opportunities, so a successful hunt none the less. Still have some muzzleloader and bow tags left as a group.

http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/4127/exlaroption116sv0.jpg

[Shack]

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Woody, Very nice deer.

[woody1975]

Thanks Shackbash and thanks for the help

[Fish&Fowl]

Got this guy Sunday afternoon of firearms opener at our shack near Int'l Falls. 230 lbs dressed.

[Eckie]

Can you resize the photo so we can get a better look at that bad boy?

[Tripleplay]

Honestly the worst opener for deer numbers I've experienced in something like 20 years on this same leased property. Friday started with driving into the hay field to open the stands up and finding them vandalized. One had been in the field for 2 weeks only and we have to put them in right before season as the owner doesn't like them in the way during haying. Buddy's had all of the rope he was using to connect as anchoring cut and they took all four of his ratchet straps. Stand was still up so that was the good thing!

I then look over and my stand (4' x 8') PVC enclosed is completely gone. Drove over and luckily it was in the woods. Checked it out and found that they took the turnbuckle off of the anchoring setup and they either pushed it over, the wind blew it over or they were setting up to steal it. (property is currently for sale and nobody seems to honor the no trespassing and no hunting signs!) Anchor was also bent over at a 30 to 40 degree angle. Pick it up and get set up to place it again when I realize that they have stolen all of my gun rests (6 of them) that for the first time ever I left in the stand! Also took an old boat cushion that I use for my son to sit on since he is a bit short for the windows.

All of the messing around and actually placing a new stand in another corner of the field for a neighbor and his grandpa (the boy's father was injured earlier this year when working on his own deer stand and the bottom fell out and he is currently paralyzed from the chest down!)may have just been too much scent and activity for the first weekend. I would have hunted from a bucket if I had to just to give this neighbor boy a chance to participate since he was the one who was present when his dad was injured and he will not ever return to that property!

Well to get back to the hunting, my stand literally didn't see a deer until 5PM on Sunday when my son managed to get one. The neighbor boy and his grandpa never saw a deer (one ran across the field and we saw bits of it when our other stand was shooting but that hardly counts). Other stand saw 7 on Saturday and 6 on Sunday and a 13 year did tag his first deer so some positive did occur. We saw none on Monday morning. Oh well, as I told them all---it can't get much worse than the paralyzing accident to the neighbor, the vandalism and theft and then little to no deer when we normally see large numbers so we are all pretty excited for the upcoming weekend. If it can't get worse then it can only get better--right?

I told my kids that a bad day hunting was still 100 times better than a day of work or school! Hard to impress on a couple of 14 year olds who were pretty frustrated but they will understand when they get older.

We are in zone 245 and the Hubbard County sheriff told us that ours was the 21st report of deer stand vandalism he had reported on Friday alone. Frustrating but apparently that is the reality we all face when you leave something in the woods whether on public or private property. I hope whomever likes my gun rests and the ratchet straps.

[Pikeslayer]

My opener was strange but good!I was in my stand sat. morning waiting for Big Ed!(large buck)1/2 hour into dalight here comes a 3 legged brush wolf,1/2 hour later here comes a 4 legged brush wolf! I think to my self this is not good,I might as well pour myself a cup of coffee and then move to another spot.10 minn. into my cup of coffee I hear something comeing so Im ready for another wolf!I couldnt beleave it when a nice 4 point walks down the very same trail that them wolves were on 10 minn.earlyer Not much of a rack but perfect for the woodstove in the fishhouse this winter