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Old October 6, 2012, 12:53 AM   #11
jimbob86
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Join Date: October 4, 2007
Location: All the way to NEBRASKA
Posts: 8,722
The place where I hunt is neither East or West or maybe it's both.... it is not treeless, not flat (dissected Loess Plains is the term, IIRC) ..... a mix of irrigated row crops, hayfields and pastures. Right about 100 degrees west longitude ... that is supposed to be the line between tallrgass prairies of the wetter east, and the shortgrass of the drier high plains..... shots can be short in the woodlots ond on the creeks, or across a 600 acre hayfield.....

The deer hunting has changed since I was a kid. In the 70's you had to drive up to the Republican river to see a whitetail, and mulies were everywhere. In 1986 I shot a buck with a grey coat, a whitetail rack (one main beam with tines goin' up instead of the mulie's fork and fork again arrangement) outsized ears and a short black tipped tail..... Last fall I did not even see a mule deer in 8 days of hunting. The way we hunt has changed, too. When I was a kid, I hunted with my grandpa, who worked for the county road department. He knew every landowner and every tenant, and they all liked him. He said he had the best job in the world, so long as they did not get a blizzard during the 2nd week of November .... he got to scout 356 days a year, carried his deer rifle in his road grader ( and used it to kill every coyote he saw) .... deer hunting consisted of driving to this or that draw in a pasture where a buck was known to be hanging out and looking for him ..... doing that, I've jumped them out of plum thickets and washouts right uner my feet, and killed them far enough you had to look at a contour map to figure the distance.....

Grampa has passed on, and much of the ground I hunted on as a kid is leased (there are a couple of large "outfitters" that cater to the suburban pay-to-hunt crowd.... I see many more deer hunters than I did as kid (though far fewer pheasant hunters), most of them from out of the area (I'm not a local either, for that matter- and there are darn few locals anymore.... mechanization and falling birthrates have made ghosttowns of most of the small towns down there) ...... The farms have gotten bigger, with fewer people running them. They are far more productive, with center pivot irrigation making 180-220 bushel corn grow where prairie dogs used to compete with cattle for grass.....

I have access to 2 or 3 square miles of ground now ..... all scattered in a dozen or so tracts...... There is a spot an a dry (dry since '93, anyway) creek where I have killed a dozen+ whitetail, at ranges between 15 feet and 460 yards..... you have to be ready for whatever shot presents itself, so specialized equipement will limit you.....

One other thing, which I did not note until I saw deer in other parts of the country: The deer I hunt are bigger than what I have seen back east.... being surrounded by conveneint food sources probably has a lot to do with that.
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