Well, my summer has drastically changed over the course of the last 24 hours.  I was planning on simply sitting in front of the PC and completing my data analysis in preparation of writing my thesis.  That’s still happening, except now…I think I’ve got ~ 30 hours a week to devote to a job that I interviewed at this morning…found out about it yesterday, called, and interview this morning!  Hopefully, I will be surveying a company’s property within a wildlife habitat designated area and compiling a plant/animal species inventory in an effort to register the property in a non-profit-organization’s program to protect wildlife habitat in an increasingly developed landscape.  I guess the end product will be a wildlife management plan for the company to implement over the long run.  I’m looking forward to hearing back from the employer, interview went great I thought, and hopefully starting on this new opportunity.  My summer just got flipped on its head, but that’s fine with me…gotta pay the bills and have a little left over to go in the hunting ‘kitty’!!!  The Lord’s been good!

I figured since I mentioned Blaze (the amelanistic buck) from Bez’s darting story, I would post his picture.  Billy Paugh worked as my technician last summer and had his heart set on darting Blaze for quite a while before he got the opportunity.  Fortunately, when he got the opportunity…he didn’t waste it.  Blaze certainly was an interesting deer!  Double white blaze on his forehead and hundreds of warts from dime size to quarter immediately under his skin.  We believe they disappeared sometime during the fall though, because when he was found dead in January (from who knows what?) all his warts were gone!?!  You’ll notice in the picture that his tongue is pulled way out of his mouth, this is to keep his airways clear while he is under anesthesia.  Billy got another buck just a couple of days later while I was back in North Carolina vacationing at the beach.  That buck was a 2.5 year old 8 point that we nicknamed Billy the Kid.  Billy (the person) was a great help to my master’s project 2007 summer and a pretty good shot with the dart gun if I say so myself.

The next buck from my darting adventures in Maryland we nicknamed ‘Bez’ for very obvious reasons.  The first time I saw this stud buck he was feeding about 400 yards from my parked vehicle.  As soon as I saw him, I knew we had to try and ambush this giant buck.  All I could when he raised his head out of the soybeans were long spears on top of his head…even from that far away, I knew this was the best 6 point I had ever laid eyes on.  A couple nights later, the wind was right for the stand and we set up our ambushes.  I was laying about 4 rows deep in a cornfield that bordered the soybeans, hoping to ambush a big buck if he made it past James in the woods edge where he was watching a trail to snaked its way out along a swamp.  As the evening passed, several does and small bucks came down James’ trail and made it out to my hiding place in the fields.

On cue, the bachelor group showed up with an hour of daylight remaining.  The first buck was a 2.5 year old 8 point (a legal buck to dart, but not the monster 6), next was ‘Blaze’ an interesting melanistic buck that we actually darted this past summer…Blaze was about to get it, when the big 6 showed up.  James made a good shot and the rest was routine.

When we approached the buck though, he was bigger that I had even first thought.  The ‘bez’/’shovel’ NT projection had 5 scoreable points and totaled 16 inches.  Most impressive though was his 6 point typical frame.  Granted he was in velvet, but he taped his typical 6 point frame at 140″ even.  AMAZING!!!!  I would like to know how many 6 points gross a frame as impressive as that.  Sweeping main beams, Roman spears for G2’s, mass to die for, and that character caribou antler equaled a truly spectacular buck.  It was kind of difficult to focus on the mechanics of performing the necessary health monitoring protocol and collar work that we had to do with such a big buck lying there.  Unfortunately, this buck too died of brain abscess and was found during the rut submerged in a flooded ditch.

What a buck!

My third darted buck was dubbed ‘Jethro’, thanks to a tip from Jeff K. who was darting female white-tailed deer during summer 2006 also at the farm.  He had something like 10 bucks invade the clover field he was sitting on and recommended we try it out as soon as the wind allowed.  That very next night, only buck made his way out to the clover field, but we had the right trails covered.  ‘Jethro’ spotted James swinging his dart gun into position for the shot and sauntered in my direction where after a long stare-down (which apparently I won) a short 8 yard shot did the job.  At this point in our summer, we were really hitting our stride, getting a pattern on a number of bachelor groups, and downing bucks on a regular basis.  ‘Jethro’ was probably a 2.5 year old, he sported a wide 17″ 6 point frame and was spotted several more times during the summer toting his GPS collar handsomely.  Unfortunately, the mortality signal came in from the GPS collar during late winter.  We took his carcass to the local animal health laboratory where it was determined he had chronic pneumonia, a debilitating brain abscess, and nasal bots to add insult to injury.  Thankfully, he made it through the critical shotgun season and post-season data collection time period, so his data is appreciated in my master’s study.

Well, I haven’t been out bowfishing (or anything else outdoors for about 2 weeks now) since Andrew completed the NC Grand Slam, but I’ve got Friday night to look forward to now. The North Carolina Bowhunters Association is putting on a bowfishing tourney at Lake Jordan.  Awards will be given for Big 5 Common Carp and biggest fish (grass carp, common carp, bowfin, and gar each).  I’m really looking forward to getting out since I’ve been going through pretty severe withdrawals dealing with the end of semester stuff and just not having the time to get out.  I also got my Sully’s Bowfishing order in the mail the other day - some new arrows and extra fish points, also going to try out the uni-nock adapter for fishing arrows…no more busted nocks and useless arrows hopefully.  If you live handy to the Piedmont of NC and want more information for the tournament, just check out the provided link, hope to see you there!

Well, I sent almost $340 towards the Midwest yesterday to apply for my Kansas early season muzzleloader unit 11 deer permit.  I’ve got a preference point from last year, so I shouldn’t have any trouble drawing a tag and neither should anybody else from the group we are taking to our lease up in SE Kansas.  This weekend, Kara and I are heading home to spend some quality time with the mothers, but I may also get out the smokepole and start doing some shooting.  I want 200% confidence with that baby when a 150″ whitetail shows up at 80 yards in September.  If you are planning a Kansas non-res hunt for 2008, your application for permit needs to be in by June 2.

Well, I queued up the Eastman’s Western Antelope Safari DVD on my Netflix subscription and watched that yesterday.  The DVD has been around for several years, but I had never seen an exclusively pronghorn antelope hunting movie.  I would say it was worth the time to watch!  A good bit of the action was filmed on public land, with a few more hunts coming on outfitted land and landowner permit land in New Mexico.  One of the New Mexico bucks is a 15″ MASSIVE lope with 6-7″ cutters, once in a lifetime trophy and the biggest antelope I’ve ever seen harvested on DVD or TV shows alike.  In one segment, they show techniques for calling to rutting pronghorns, something I had heard about but never seen demonstrated.  All the kills were made with a rifle, although they do stalk some pronghorns with archery equipment but decide not to try a shot.  For anyone looking into a DIY antelope hunt, I would recommend getting your hands on this DVD, much of the action is filmed in Wyoming…where I went for my 2007 DIY mulie/pronghorn hunt and found their advice to be spot-on.  Good stalking tips too.  You can link to the Eastman’s shopping website and purchase a copy or Netflix also carries the DVD…enjoy!

My next darting attempt was kind of a fluky chance, but I made good on my opportunity. We had scouted a recent clear-cut and established that a bachelor group of bucks was hitting a soybean field on the other side. After waiting a few days for a good wind, James and I scaled trees within about 60 yards of each other covering as many trails as we could. We weren’t sitting long before I could see a good 8 pt. meandering towards us. Unfortunately, he took the one trail in between us that was beyond our effective ranges (about 20 yards, after that….a crapshoot!) When he hit the soybeans, our scent was carried straight out to the buck, but instead of charging away he wheeled right back into the woods…right under my tree! A quick grunt paused him in mid-stride and the dart hit home. Moments later, I had buck #2 on the ground. He got his name because the usually hasty ‘wake-up’ drug took over 3 hours to rouse him from a deep slumber…hence the name.

I’ll never know what happened to him though. He was an interesting deer that had 2 completely distinct home ranges. His collar was dragged into a local yard by a pet dog and returned to us at the Farm. There was no indication whether the deer had died or the collar had simply fallen off the buck somehow.

James Tomberlin, my predecessor to the graduate project I am now working on, showed me the ropes of darting deer.
#1 Rule - watch out for ‘Murphy’…what can go wrong, probably will! My first darting experience was early July in 2006. In the very first evening in stand, I witnessed ‘Bo Derek’ and was absolutely shocked at the size of some of the bucks roaming around the farm. We guessed him in the 190 class range. Sure enough, I picked up one shed last October and someone had the other. Right under 200″ gross NT. My first opportunity came a couple of nights later, but I centered the hindquarter of a 2.5 year old a little too much and had a dart bounce out (first time I shook hands with ‘Murphy’ during deer darting).

About a week later, after I had helped James process two 2.5 year olds that he had darted, I got my second opportunity. At dawn, deer started pouring into a clover field that I was watching…does and bucks alike. At one point there were 5 or 6 shooter bucks in the field including an old bruiser non-typical. Unfortunately, the field started clearing out around 8:00 a.m. and there was only 2 deer left in the field by 8:30 a.m…both good shooter bucks. Just when it looked like they were going to exit the field 60 yards to my right, I made one last attempt to get a shot by making some deer noises (little fawn ‘mewww’ and a soft grunt) with my mouth. I’m not sure if they heard me or just happened to wander past me, but at 22 yards I let the gas out of the gun and sent a dart on its way.

I darted the buck in the back and as he ran off, I could see the dart lodged securely in his ham. At the edge of the field, he slowed to a walk and then ducked down a trail and out of sight. After radioing the crew, we headed to the trail I saw him enter and turned on the telemetry equipment (the dart has a radio transmitter in the tailpiece that allows us to track the darted deer). BEEP, BEEP, BEEP…man he’s close! Oh crap! There’s the dart….apparently as soon as the deer entered the woods, he reached back and plucked the dart from his rear end (there were some teeth mark on the dart). Blind luck now, we spread and out and started walking trails. About 10 minutes later, I spotted him lying in the woods.

After a some photographs, we got him processed and woke him back up. My first darted buck. Probably just a 2 year old, but real nice buck. 6 on one side and 4 on the other.  Unfortunately, his GPS collar fell off right before we got meaningful data for the study I am conducting during the Maryland firearms season.  But I did title this post, ‘the first go round!’.  We meet again in 2007, but you’ll have to wait for that.

Well, as summer approaches it is dawning on me that this June, July and August aren’t going to be quite as exciting as the last 2 years because I won’t be darting deer at my study site in Maryland.  The bright side to that is my field work is done and I can finish getting my data analyzed and start pumping out my thesis in hopes of being out of grad school in December.  In light of not being able to chase big bucks all summer with my CO2 powered dart rifle, I will do a multi (and I mean alot) part series on my darting experiences over the last 2 summers.  I emailed out updates with pictures to friends during the course of the 2006 and 2007 summer and they enjoyed them…I’m sure you guys will too.  Don’t worry though, I’ll be mixing in plenty of other good stuff over the next couple of weeks if B&C whitetails bore you…:)