The Bois Blanc Island Site

[Rob]

Show off your prize in the new photo album category, The Buck Pole. I started it out with a couple of shots of the fellas that hang out in our hay field.
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Come spend some time at our place...

http://www.bridge-view.net

[Squeaky]

All of these shots-pictures are just beautiful! You are so lucky to be able to watch these guys...

[mikewhite]

I got a buck, but after looking at the pictures you put on, I'm ashamed to post a DEAD deer.
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mwhite@wildblue.net
"The more nature you keep, the more nature you'll enjoy." and "It's not who is right, but what is right."

[Rob]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... If it looks good in your freezer and mounted above the fireplace then so be it. No foul. As much as I like to take pictures of them, they have grazed the end of the hayfield down to the nubbin's. They are beautiful and a nucience (sp?) at the same time. As Conis has mentioned, the deer around here in Mecosta county run rampant and do a lot of damage to crops/cars/etc. They need to be culled. I'm just not the one to do it.

I'll take care of culling the trout from the creek. (Not really, I throw them back in.)
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Come spend some time at our place...

http://www.bridge-view.net

[theeislandgirl]

Mike that is what deer season is all about ..killing deer to put in your freezer to eat ..they are very tasty and helps with the food bill ...
so do not be ashamed .. you do not just kill them for a sport and leave them but you eat them ..
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The girl that would swim daylight to dark every day down at the old dock ...

[BBIBABS]

If some one will walk me through step by step on how to put a picture in here I got a nice 12 point.

[blue72]

Howz those points taste? I guess twelve of those beats a bail of hay for dinner any day

[Rob]

[Ron Petersen]

Hey Tony - Ron Petersen here from Spray's camp - If you can't get the picture on the site - send it to me and i will put it on for you - along with the story of how you crawled through the swamps to get it
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47 years in a row driving 600 miles to get here!!!

[BBIBABS]

Ron what is your e-mail, I will send you a couple of pictures.[/url]

[Ron Petersen]

Tony - You can click on the little box that says email on my post - and it should give you this
randpete@iowatelecom.net
C Ya........Ron

BTW - Ted told me you got a good one!!
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47 years in a row driving 600 miles to get here!!!

[Troy]

Hey Tony! Do you know if my uncle Randy (Winters) or Ray got anything?

[mikewhite]

OK, here is my buck. Remember I try to hunt where no one else baits in the area, and that is hard to do. This buck was caught checking in on a scrape.

http://www.bois-blanc.com/phpBB2/album_page.php?pic_id=2379
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mwhite@wildblue.net
"The more nature you keep, the more nature you'll enjoy." and "It's not who is right, but what is right."

[theeislandgirl]

Mike ..Do you cut the deer up or take it to town ?

How many lbs. do you think is here to eat after its all dressed out ??

If you have any deer meat in your freezer when I am back on the island how about cooking me up some ?

It would be a real treat for me ..
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The girl that would swim daylight to dark every day down at the old dock ...

[mikewhite]

You should have asked this summer and we could have had a venison stew together.

I sent this buck to town to be butchered for $55. It will come back in a box and weigh maybe 50 lbs.

The meat is OK, but the reason I hunt is for the challenge of maybe being in the right place(1) at the right time(2). To be able to see a buck that has no idea that I'm there. The third step is the right shot. I have considered hanging up the gun and using the camera instead.
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mwhite@wildblue.net
"The more nature you keep, the more nature you'll enjoy." and "It's not who is right, but what is right."

[theeislandgirl]

Mike ..
I would have enjoyed the deer stew and more time with you ..I did not think about it ..


Maybe you are a little bored and need something new ???
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The girl that would swim daylight to dark every day down at the old dock ...

[Conis]

True story and TOO funny!

Actual letter from someone who farms, writes well and tried this!

Deer hunting (lower peninsula style)

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall,
feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.

The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that,
since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have
much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come
right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the
truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and
toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and
transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope.
The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back.
They were not having any of it.

After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I picked
out....a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder,
and threw..my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me. I
wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a
good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could
tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a
step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on the
rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand
there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to
action when you start pulling on that rope.

That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT
stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I
could fight down with a rope and with some dignity.

A deer -- no chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no
controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me
off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to
me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I
had originally imagined.

The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many
other animals. A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly
as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get
up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly
blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that
point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get
that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck,
it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there
was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated
the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had
cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against
various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still
think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I
shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were
in, so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I
managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a
little trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute.

I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my
rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would
have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised
when...

I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my
wrist. Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse
where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes
its head -- almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and
draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was
ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several
minutes, but it was likely only several seconds.

I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim
by now), tricked it.

While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I
reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when
I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day.

Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on
their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and
their hooves are surprisingly sharp. I learned a long time ago that,
when an animal --like a horse --strikes at you with their hooves and
you can't get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud
noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal. This will
usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery
would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different
strategy.

I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a
horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit
you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses
after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because
the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head
and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not
immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has
passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on
you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering
your head. I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer
went away.

So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with
a scope to sort of even the odds.

All these events are true so help me God...

Sincerely,

NAME WITHHELD
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Remember, half the people you know are below average.

[mikewhite]

Here is a better picture of Tony Babcock and his 2008 buck. He has gotten big ones in the past. I wonder how this compares to the previous ones that he has gotten?

http://www.bois-blanc.com/phpBB2/album_page.php?pic_id=2383
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mwhite@wildblue.net
"The more nature you keep, the more nature you'll enjoy." and "It's not who is right, but what is right."

[BBIBABS]

By the green score, it is the 3rd largest I have. I need to take it to a Michigan Big Buck scorer in January and get it scored by them to tell.
I got a 12 about 5 years ago that scored 127 5/8 and a 10 that scored 127.
The gut that scored the one this year didn't know how to score the pal mated point on the deer's left side.

[theeislandgirl]

Tony,
I think its great your Dad can still hit the woods with you after all his health problems .

Mom..Peggy..Sara..Hananh..Annie..Shaya.. Davey and nor and I went to see your Mom and Dad this summer and while there I looked at all the years of deer hunting pictures they have displayed on thier living room walls ..
They were great ! ...You picked up his love for hunting ..also have a good shot too like him .. you 2 have it down to a sicence how to find and run those deer out and a good shot ..!

Heres to many more years of hunting !!
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The girl that would swim daylight to dark every day down at the old dock ...

[blue72]

Let's not get carried away with that " good shot " business. I've seen the lad hunt. Eventually, something will run through that hail of gunfire and sacrifice his life to go on the wall. Actually, hail doesn't do it justice. It's more like a barrage
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There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.

[BBIBABS]

If you through enough led in the air that buck is bound to run into one.

[Troy]

Any updates for 2010? Who got what?

[BBIBABS]

I hit a big 8 point oppening day and found what was let Friday........coyote got the meat Tony got the horns.....
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'The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.' G. K. Chesterton

You are one person to the world, but you may be the world to one person.

[blue72]

those horns have probably been laying there forever. Instead of cleaning the velvet off them, Babbs had to clean off the moss.
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There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool.