Haven't hunted lately, but preferred to find large bucks with messed up racks...keep the big pretty boys to keep on producing!

The Ugly racks are usually older bucks that can no longer produce a nice racks.

Amazingly those Nice Pretty bucks are usually 3 or 4 years old.

The Ugly racks are usually older bucks that can no longer produce a nice racks.

From a city person; No comment

There was a picture of a local nun who shot a beautiful 10 point buck. That's right, even our nuns hunt around here.

http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/mark-judge/benedictine-nun-prays-rosary-while-hunting-deer

that could be a bad habit

hmmmmmmmmmm - never heard of black camo

The theme around here is universal, people are not seeing a lot of deer for the most part. Abnormally high temperatures, no snow, and lack of people in the woods moving the deer seem to be the cause. I don't think it was a coincidence that we saw more deer the first hour on Saturday than we did the entire week because there were many more hunters moving about. I've got two more days - Friday by myself and Saturday with my son - to try to get a nice buck.

We have 2 more days of Gun Season 12/28 and 12/29. They a week of muzzle loader season the 2nd week of January. And Bow season runs through Feb 7.

So, I will place my blind, reload the feeders and hope they settle back into my back field.

Saturday was our last day of firearms season for the year. I was in the woods all day Friday and then on Saturday with my son, 20+ hours in two days, and didn't see one deer. With temps near 60 both days and virtually no one else in the woods the deer were just not moving - they obviously found a safe place and bedded down.

We have meat in the freezer thanks to my son, but no antlers on the wall. There are 2 weeks of archery and flintlock season after Christmas, but we aren't into either of those at this point. We will be setting the game cameras out to see which of the bucks made it through the season and hopefully we'll be hunting for shed antlers this winter.

Next year we will be taking up archery and I will be constructing some comfortable stands next spring/summer.

cross bow

I'm guessing that the cross bow is the option my son will choose. I have a couple of regular compound bows myself, but I don't know if my son has the patience to practice to get good enough to hunt. We will give it a try this spring and see how it goes. Archery season here is in October which is an awesome time to be in the woods here in PA.

can anyone use cross bow by you? they changed it here so now everyone can, basically, a cross bow is treated the same as a compound bow

I was always intrigued with the crossbow. My brother-in-law got a new one this fall and took it out to begin practice with a view to taking a deer with it. It exploded in his face, came unhinged, something punching a hole in the front of his fore head that looked way worse than the injury was. Think it was a Barnett brand (?). Took it back to the dealer in Lubbock and got his money back. It put him off of crossbows.

You used to have to have a special permit due to disability that caused you to not be able to use a regular bow, but a few years ago they changed it to allow anyone to hunt with one.

Bows of any kind are under such extreme tension that a crack or an error on assembly can cause them to fail in spectacular fashion. I intend to take my bows to the local shop to have the strings and cables checked before I try to shoot them since it's been so long.

Crossbows aren't allowed in my state, with the exception of those eligible with certain disabilities. My son wanted to take up archery so we got him a compound bow for his birthday in October. He hasn't gotten it set up yet for his draw length but will do that over Christmas break so he can start practicing. Close to where we live, there is an elk herd and the archery tag used to be for a true spike only. They opened it up this year for spikes and cows so my son is very interested in filling the freezer with an elk next fall.

My daughter has expressed interest in archery too but that's now her Dad's thing and I have no clue. I would end up putting an arrow through the wall.

Late start with a brand new habitat this season. I'm still getting some deer on camera, but they are strictly nocturnal. Haven't seen anything but a Bobcat all season.