Jake's Outdoors

Two Great Bucks…

I got a couple of pictures from my dad last night, so I thought I’d share them.  First, here is a picture of my uncle Ray, and the big 8 point he killed in Pennsylvania this year:

Here is another picture of my brother and the skull of the deer he killed.  You can see the rack much better in this picture:

Ray’s buck is evidence of the success of the new laws (instituted 5 or 6 years ago) in Pennsylvania.  By putting antler restrictions on the deer, the state has steadily grown the average size of the bucks.  This makes me want to go back to Pennsylvania to hunt more!

Shawn’s buck is a really nice buck for the area of WV that we hunt.  I am hoping that we are going to be seeing some more bucks like this around camp.  We have been seeing a lot more bucks, and we are hoping that we will start seeing some of them grow up.  The biggest problem is that the hunting pressure in our neck of the woods is tremendous.  If you pass up a buck, chances are he will go over the hill and get shot by someone else.  It would certainly be nice to have a few hundred acres (or thousand) to manage for larger bucks.  Just seeing the improvement around us makes me believe that management could be very successful given enough land to provide safety to some of the bucks.