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2024 Meat Pole

My buddy who picked up my mount said he toured the shop and Rocky was using a bunch of beetles/bugs of some sort to clean the skulls.
A local guy uses African Beatles. I've boiled a couple and it's a long process especially carefully cleaning the nasal cavity. Now I go the lazy route and just drop it off and let the Beatles eat and pick it up a few months later. He puts some mixture on and it's very white or he started doing camo dipping on them but I prefer white.
 
A local guy uses African Beatles. I've boiled a couple and it's a long process especially carefully cleaning the nasal cavity. Now I go the lazy route and just drop it off and let the Beatles eat and pick it up a few months later. He puts some mixture on and it's very white or he started doing camo dipping on them but I prefer white.

Add some baking soda (about a cup) or Arm & Hammer laundry detergent (about a 1/2 cup) to your boil water to dissolve the connective tissue faster. Then use a power-washer with a wide-angle tip to get all the gunk out of the brain and nose cavities. Doing it this way shouldn't take more than 2 hours.
Bleach as described in my post above and you will end up with a good looking skull. I usually give mine a coat or three of clear matte spray paint to make it easier to dust later as well.
 
We had 65 degrees here in South Dakota on Saturday. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get out on the prairie with the doge. There was enough wind to allow us to get close to a lot of birds without them spooking and flushing wild. It was a great day with lots of birds. I shot a double on roosters at the first field we hunted and finished up the limit with another at the second spot. We saw about 30 grouse as well as a single Prairie Chicken. No shot on the Chicken as I flushed it on the opposite side of a tree row and thought it was a hen pheasant until it was too far out.
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Been a great season for me. I've killed these 3 solid low fence Texas whitetail across a few different ranches but have also helped out one of the landowners with some herd management on some nasty cull bucks. And hogs of course, those are a given in Texas. All 3 shot with a 6.5 PRC and 156 Berger.
 

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It's been a fairly epic year here in ol south dakota. I have taken a few goats with a compound bow and several with a a rifle but this year I sold all my compound related gear and dived into traditional archery. From mothers day through hunting season I shot my bow every single day, getting into the nuances of building and tuning arrows, getting broadheads so sharp they'll cut you just looking at them, and building confidence out to 40 yards. I also built a bunch of antelope decoys out of old archery targets and skull caps from a couple smaller bucks I had killed in years passed. Long story short, 2 days into our rut hunt, I slipped an arrow over the back of one of my decoys and through the heart of a beautiful buck that was trying to steal my foam does. I cannot ever remember being more jacked up after a kill like I was that day. My motor skills were gone, I couldn't get the zipper on my ground blind to open so I flipped the entire thing off the ground and sent it blowing across the prairie. You'll notice my blue chair and decoys in the background but a noticeable lack of a ground blind. The only rifle tag I drew this year was a west river any deer tag and my dad also had drawn the same unit. We camped out on a friend of ours place for a week and we both managed to put down our biggest deer to date. Mine green scored at 172" and the old man's was in the mid 180"s. The cherry on top was a late November trip out west in which I punched another archery tag with the recurve with a beautiful heavy horned whitetail buck. I still have two archery tags left and the weather is getting warmer here in Eastern SD so fingers crossed that I'll get some more time in the tree stand but if not, I can't complain. It's been a fantastic year and I already can't wait for next year.
 

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It's been a fairly epic year here in ol south dakota. I have taken a few goats with a compound bow and several with a a rifle but this year I sold all my compound related gear and dived into traditional archery. From mothers day through hunting season I shot my bow every single day, getting into the nuances of building and tuning arrows, getting broadheads so sharp they'll cut you just looking at them, and building confidence out to 40 yards. I also built a bunch of antelope decoys out of old archery targets and skull caps from a couple smaller bucks I had killed in years passed. Long story short, 2 days into our rut hunt, I slipped an arrow over the back of one of my decoys and through the heart of a beautiful buck that was trying to steal my foam does. I cannot ever remember being more jacked up after a kill like I was that day. My motor skills were gone, I couldn't get the zipper on my ground blind to open so I flipped the entire thing off the ground and sent it blowing across the prairie. You'll notice my blue chair and decoys in the background but a noticeable lack of a ground blind. The only rifle tag I drew this year was a west river any deer tag and my dad also had drawn the same unit. We camped out on a friend of ours place for a week and we both managed to put down our biggest deer to date. Mine green scored at 172" and the old man's was in the mid 180"s. The cherry on top was a late November trip out west in which I punched another archery tag with the recurve with a beautiful heavy horned whitetail buck. I still have two archery tags left and the weather is getting warmer here in Eastern SD so fingers crossed that I'll get some more time in the tree stand but if not, I can't complain. It's been a fantastic year and I already can't wait for next year.
Great deer but not sure what I like better the deer or that kick *** suburban 🤣🤔
 
Great deer but not sure what I like better the deer or that kick *** suburban 🤣🤔
That be the mighty Prairie Shark. She has carried many a critter off the prairie. If that truck could talk, you could fill multiple books with all the hunting stories, the prairie dog shootouts, and all the beer runs into the nearest town after a successfull hunt.
 

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