Passing deer like that is the definition of hunter discipline. Impressive.

Passing deer like that is the definition of attempting to achieve the near impossible, but a worthy goal indeed.

tlk
Hats off to your groups strict game management and your kind acceptance of knowing you will lose some to neighbors (beautiful buck for sure and congrats to the hunter) or other unforeseen demise but y'all continue to hold the line

Lots of things can and will happen. This practice is just as likely to result in mortality from natural causes as it is from the hunter on a neighboring place.

Well said

I never seen a dead deer add one more inch of horn -

a 200 inch deer was once a 160 or 170 somewhere along the way

That’s part of letting them grow, some simply die and some get shot but you have an outstanding management practice going on and I commend you for that.

THIS xALOT! Never waiver from the course you set for the possibility of actions taken by others


jrg

Shooting a deer because a neighbor might shoot it ensures it won’t get any bigger, period. Great buck and hopefully he bred one more season.

I have a lease 600 acres..with about 30 hunters hunting our fence line within 200 yards of our fence. We couldn't harvest does for years due to the large number of does taken by our neighbors. Our doe numbers continued to drop year after year until our doe numbers got down to the mid 20's . ..which is very low as our target number was 45. So, in slaying this, if you have a nice buck and if you don't take it, your neighbors most likely will. Saving deer to let them get mature, the odds are, it won't happen. I go years not taking a buck waiting on the mature bucks. This is ok for me as it makes for a challenge...which I like as I am successful just not every year. Makes the hunt success the more sweeter. On your smaller size leases waiting for a big old buck to breed is ok just don't expect it to survive through hunting season. However, on larger leases of 1000 acres or more I would buy into letting them walk to get older or to breed. There is not a chance to manage deer relying on your neighbors, not that it can't happen, but generally doesn't work. Hunting large leases must not always work either as hunters hunting on a very large lease hunts our fence lines within 100 yards also. I buy into letting hunters hunt where they want as they pay for that, but don't expect them to manage their side the way you decide to manage..heck, I think on any lease hunters will not agree how to manage deer the same way...lol.
So, hunt for the fun of it and deal with all that creates your problems. Letting a deer walk is your decision at the time...But, I also live by a bird in the hand thing.

That's the breaks. I know the feeling, I've been feeding this guy for three years and was going to give him another year, but a neighbor shot him during bow season this year. Outstanding deer with a bow, I congratulated him, and hope his gene's are still running around in a bunch of my 2-3 years olds.

You need to cut way back on that coffee. LOL

Pretty impressive to let a potential world record buck walk.

No doubt about it fishbait. It is frustrating as heck but if your neighbors are not practicing the same management methods as you, even 2,000 acres is pretty hard to manage consistently.

I think it basically all comes down to your neighbors whenever you are talking about less than 5-6 square miles of land.

This.

That kind of management is mighty impressive.

Here's my question.

How on earth can you be that sure about ages on a property that size? Are you just doing tons of work with cameras?

We've got a couple properties about 1/3 that size, and I can't even begin to monitor the herd that close nor do I believe I can tell a 5 YO buck from a 6 YO buck or 7 YO buck with the kind of consistency needed to be confident I'm executing that kind of program. I can tell young from mature from post mature, but beyond that I think it's damn difficult.

So how do you feel confident they're getting to 6? or 7?

They probably have enough trail cam pics of them through the years.

Fair question. Yes we run around 20 cameras from July to the start of the season. We can have 10-20,000 pictures to go through every 3-4 weeks. It is a job. We pull all cameras at the start of the season. Why? Because we want totally fair chase while hunting during the season.

We have around 25 protein/cottonseed feeders in pens so we rotate the cameras in order to cover all the different areas of the ranch. We then keep track of any 2-4 year old bucks that have potential by cataloging them and I print 8x10 color pictures of those deer. It is not uncommon for us to have pictures of bucks from their age 2 to age 6.

We have a small camp house where we meet and have multiple bulletin boards on the wall - one board will be our DoNotKill board while other boards have past deer we have taken and another will have our kill deer for that season. So it tons of work but is the most foolproof way to age deer. Our rancher also checks the tooth wear on any trophy we take plus we then send off their teeth to the lab for aging (tooth wear and lab are helpful but far from totally accurate - in my experience the accuracy of tooth wear and lab combined is probably 60% range - for that reason we feel having good history on a deer is the overall best method for aging).

We will have deer that we may think are 6 or older but will not take until we get good video of it that year - others that we are certain are 6 or older and we can take on sight.

Here is a shot of one of our boards in camp - we had around over 40 DoNotKill bucks on our board this season. Last thing I will say is that we have to hunt our butts off to find and see some of these deer during the season.

tlk I run 11-13 cameras on my 600 acres and I can say it is a lot work and the cost isn't cheap. The time I spend on a typical survey is many hours a week just to post results. I hope you have lots of help. lol However, cameras, if done correctly, is extremely accurate and I recommend it for heard management.

Well he won’t net that yet but he will net over 200” now. One of the most beautiful deer I have ever see

Man that’s a ton of work

And you’ve got the goods to show for it

Quite impressive

"..we had around over 40 DoNotKill bucks on our board this season."

Obviously a well managed premier place, but there's no way I could keep track of 40 animals on a DNK list. If I had to evaluate the deer and check 40 pics to see if I could shoot....no way. It would take the thrill out of the hunt for me. I love watching deer, and it's especially enjoyable when you can watch mature bucks, but it would be too much like being on a fully guided hunt a the guide having to give the OK.

TLK, it's a great place for sure, but personally I wouldn't enjoy it.

Hey Tim,
Did you get any pics of the deer from the neighbors after they killed him?

I know a little about tlks operation and I was very surprised when he said 40 on DoNotKill. That would truly be hard to identify that many and then just as hard for the members to keep track of which deer was which. Not judging at all, just pointing it out.
On one of my two places we have 25 setups and all with cameras. The same couple guys manage all those cameras and post all the pics on our in house website(tremendous amount of work). Then we all try to chime in on age estimates and which should be on our "NoShoot" list. We have about a HANDFULL on the list. I always want to put more on there but the guys say the ones that are small enough and/or young enough dont really need to be on the list assuming our guys are half way decent. The thinking is, anything more than a handful is just too hard to expect the guys to remember(so many look alot alike) that it clutters the list of NoShoots. We have a bigger place and more hunters than tlk so that makes it harder to hold that many guys accountable and then tlk feeds so much that they must have a whole lot more bucks than we do. Im just offering this as a little aside and I certainly commend tlk for all he and his lease mates and landowner are able to do.

Actually it is not that hard to keep up with - guys keep pics of deer on their phone so they can access at any time in the blind. There is a ton of communication between our members even when in the blind - we all share pics and ask each other about certain deer.

Also out of 40 DNK bucks a number of them are clearly young deer so our hunters are all very experienced at aging and would never just haul off and shoot a 3-4 year old buck. The reason we put our younger bucks on the DNK board is so all our guys get familiar and know the various bucks as they mature. also keep in mind we most likely have a lot more 5 year old deer that need to be on DNK board than most ranches.

I get that it is not for everybody - that is why we are super careful on who we allow to join our lease - these guys pass on beautiful 160-170 inch deer regularly to be patient and hold out for a 180-200 inch deer. I am going into my 14th season on this lease and I have shot a total of 4 trophy bucks. Not the place for someone who needs to pull the trigger every year for sure