Below are some thumbnail photos of bucks killed in the 2006 Season, from coastal California. It goes to show how large deer can get in the region. Notice the dark antlers they both have. These deer were both taken in a heavily treed, brushy canyon that burned in 2005.
Click on the thumbnails to see the full size photos.
The buck on the left was shot by my friend Matt , a businessman from Petaluma, California. Matt had missed the majority of the 2006 A zone season due to his wife delivering twins that July. It wasn’t until the last weekend of the season that he was able to make it out to the Marin County ranch for a hunt.
“I was getting like 2 hours of sleep a night, cause I’d be up with one baby, and then the other one would wake up…I’d get a little sleep and then I’d get up and go to work all day. I was a zombie.”
He managed to stay awake long enough to spot the buck coming over the ridge toward him. Matt said he saw the buck and knew he was going to shoot. “I saw this buck and I say to myself ‘Hey he’s got good backs’, and I let him have it.”
Matt became overwhelmed after the shot. Immediately he was physically sick to his stomach even after he saw the buck fall. He lost his lunch again when he saw the size of the buck up close. While Matt’s reaction to the big buck might surprise some, he forewarns his hunting partners before they go out hunting.
“You should have seen the guide’s face this one time in Wyoming. I told him ‘Hey , now don’t be alarmed if I puke after I shoot at a buck. It’s just something I do.'” Matt’s hunting partners have gotten used to it. They just don’t stand next to him if a buck shows up…
The buck on the right was shot by my neighbor Frank, a builder from outside of Petaluma. When his son skinned the buck, he suggested to his father that he have a shoulder mount done. Frank dismissed the idea. The antlers hung in the garage until this May when his son surreptisiously took them and a cape from another deer to the taxidermist. He hung the finished shoulder mount on the wall before an evening get together at the deer club and stated “Let’s see how long it takes for him to notice it.”
When Frank arrived he studied the pair of bucks pretty closely, and it wasn’t until one of his friends asked him if the big fork looked familiar that the light went on.
“I think I know that buck.” Frank said cautiously. When the rest of the crowd erupted in laughter, Frank’s son stepped forward and admitted his part in mounting the buck. Frank hadn’t even missed the skull hanging in the shop. He admitted that it was a good taxidermy job, and that the buck did indeed look good.
Both of these bucks go to show that while neither will make the Boone and Crockett book, that a mature blacktail deer is certainly a trophy to be proud of. Both bucks weighed over 150 pounds field dressed. The combination of age and high quality browse regrowth after a fire both contributed to the great size of body and antlers for both of these bucks.