745 PA Buck

[Kevin Cram]

Here are a few photo's of my 2008 Pennsylvania buck. 745 yard shot with 7 x 300 Weatherby and 162g A-Max.

 

[JUDD]

cmon now Kevin....Did Kaleb really shoot that deer??? lol

Nice PA buck Kevin!! Was that an MCR gun??

Anything over 1K killed from camp this year?

 

[Buffalobob]

That's very nice.

 

[Len Backus]

How nice to have your son along.

 

[Kevin Cram]

I let Kaleb look at him through the scope but thought this buck was a little to big for his first deer. He did however kill a very nice rock at 800 yards.
No deer killed over 1,000 yards this year, the snow was too deep to see hits in bear season so we never even glassed much of the long hills. We killed 7 very nice bucks and a couple does between 535 and 800 yards. I have 4 deer kills on camera I'll have to work on getting on here sometime soon. Yes it was a MCR 7 x 300 Weatherby.

 

[Joel Russo]

Good buck Kevin.

How about a pic of the rifle.

 

[Len Backus]

Kevin, when hunting those hills are you able to find setups for shooting prone? Or are you often having to shoot from sitting positions because of the down-slope conditions?

 

[Kevin Cram]

Most of our spots we either pack in a portable shooting bench or build a rock table to shoot off of. Here is a photo of me and my good friend John standing at one of our locations with a rock table. We dry stacked these rocks a couple of years ago so we wouldn't have to carry a bench in anymore.

 

[Len Backus]

Kevin, that is really cool! gun)

Someday I'd like to see it done. Is there good hunting of this type on public land. Is there a draw for non-residents? If so , odds?

 

[Kevin Cram]

We've had pretty good success over the years with both bear and deer long range. It's all state owned public land. There is no draw (other than for a doe permit) it's all over the counter. Non-Resident fee is $101 and includes : small game, (1) fall turkey tag, (1) spring gobbler tag, and (1) buck tag. We now have a point restriction since 2002, there must be at least 3 points on one side for a legal buck. Would love to have you up some year Len.

 

[Len Backus]

Kevin, thanks for the offer. I really would like to try it one of these years. I have always been fascinated by the ability to shoot across those wide valleys. And the rang finding is so easy because the deer are up against a hillside...unlike trying to pick a deer out of a flat farm field on the same level.

Again, thank you!

How much fun is the game retrieval process?

 

[Kevin Cram]

That's when the real work begins. Some of our deer drags are a couple miles, some are straight down to the road. Ranging isn't bad but sometimes the weather can play hell on a laser in the valleys. It's not all real easy, you have to stay with the deer while it's moving and changing yardage then wait for it to stop in a opening and be ready to shot at a moments notice. Sometimes it's fast and furious other times you can relax and really prepare for the shot. It's deffinately a team effort.

 

[Len Backus]

How effective has the newer 3 point rule been in growing the bucks?

 

[Kevin Cram]

I really believe in letting the smaller bucks walk and this 3 point rule really seems to be working for seeing bigger more mature whitetails. The game commision did however about the same time really up the doe permits for our area and we deffinately see a decline in deer population compared to 15+ years ago. But we hunt pretty far back in the hills and most bush hunters won't travel 1-2 miles back in and then walk the side hills. We still see good numbers of deer compared to some other hunters I've talked to and the bucks we see are usually of good size. Just in 3 days of bear season before our deer season I filmed off of one hill over 25 different bucks. Come deer season we seen some of those bucks, but have also seen bucks that we didn't see before, along with a pretty fair amount of does. The snow deffinately helps for picking the deer out, without it I don't think I would have seen half the deer we did.