I've had that happen...was a good excuse to risk one more year.

I am not going to say one way or the other what I woulda done because I don't honestly know what I would do in that situation. However, if you are second guessing yourself then you may have made the wrong decision.

When will people learn you can't manage deer on a small LF property?

Good intentions will only make nice memories, and you will have a very excited and happy neighbor who will shoot that nice buck.

I guess it boils down to what trips your trigger on any given day

Your a better man than me for sure. I'd drop a 160 double drop if he was a yearling......sorry there is just no way that he would live in my area. Oh yeah........

he's still showing up on camera. don't know if he's gonna post the pics tho. i have some of him in velvet but i'll need his permission to post.

There are different degrees of low fence.

I made a statement you can't manage LF property, but that's not totally true, because it depends on several factors, and one being that of the size of the property, and if it's a small property whether or not the adjoining ranches have hunters that are on the same page as you are regarding management.

If those factors aren't in place then passing up a potential book deer hoping he gets bigger is probably going to be about the same as buying a scratch off ticket and hoping to be a winner.

Hey Doubledrop14!! Any updates/luck on this deer??

I'm doubledrop14's best friend. As said before, he's still showing up at the feeders and is on camera.

Here's an early velvet teaser. He was putting on up to 10 inches a week in velvet.

and if your wondering about this guy's obsession with the double drops and his screen name on here...

You horn hunters crack me up. No matter how big them horns are, they still taste awful!

If you boil the head to get all the flesh off of it for a Euro mount, add some veggies and it makes a great soup for those cold evenings after a long day of hunting.

When it comes to bucks, I'm a trophy hunter. I will take one or two does during bow season for the freezer and then it's on. Maybe one day I'll get to a point where a 160" deer, droptine/s or not, gets a free pass but not yet. I would let a 120"-130" 2 or 3 year old walk but if he was sportin' 150"+ at the same age, he wouldn't have another cold winter to worry about. When people ask me if a deer is big enough or not, I've always said "you'll just know".

Hard to kill a monster if you always kill the biggest one no matter how old.

you meat hunters crack me up.... no matter how much meat you get, it still looks like crap on the wall.

But it looks good next to the mashed taters and gravy!!! LOL

yes..... yes it does.

but those horns look good 20 years after you shot the deer. try that with fried backstrap!

Beauty is in the eye or the belly of the beholder. Either was is good.

thanks for all the advice and i will try to upload some pics as soon as i can. Yes they say a double drop is once in a lifetime but ive already killed two on low fence properties. One in Mexico and one at one of my favorite west texas hunting areas. we fed protien for the first time this year and will year round from here on out. A deer can grow up to 25 inches a year with enough protien. No possible way I can shoot a 160 3 year old that has potential to make the record books.

You do know that droptines sometimes appear one year and never again? Deer can grow a lot on a great rainfall year and protien and much more than 25" also. Hope he makes it for you and he has his drops also.

Easy to let em walk when they are in a high fence and you'll see em next year. I got nothing bad to say about a high fence but thats not the way that most of us hunt. Heck let a 150 walk if you have 170s and up on a high fence. For that matter if you breed deer and have folks come out and pay 1000s to shoot em let em all walk and walk to the bank.

Or if you hunt 1000s of acres and no pressure from the guy next door, yup let em walk. But if you hunt 350 and the guys next door shoot em up, 130-140 is a rare giant. It's a whole diffrent way of hunting from a pen to a low fence small place.

yep.

Well said!

We went from too many hunters and having to shoot the first buck we saw, to three hunters and seven years of letting almost all the 8s and 9s walk on a LF property. We now have some 10 points for the first time and some of these are the same bucks that were 8s and 9s. A few 10s got shot by the neighbors and we don't know what happened to the others. One 10 pt. last year is a 9 pt. this year, which is probably due to the dry spring and summer we had.

The 5.5 yr. old 10 point that I shot this year was much, much bigger in antler size than two years ago. Neighbors shot at him and missed during bow season, so I am fortunate to have been able to get him during gun season. I would have liked to let him go another year, but didn't take the chance like I did for the past two seasons.

I am still looking for that monster - -one of those 7.5 to 9.5 yr.old deer - one of those we let go by for many years and is still out there somewhere in the thicket. We are going to have to hunt the woods, so some new deer stands will be going up in 2011.