Whitetail POI...... What’s your intended Target?

[StumpGrinder]

I love big racks but meat is the primary reason I hunt. Therefore I usually shoot for lungs when possible where there's the biggest margin for error. Besides I love some fried heart and onions.

I Don't care about horns. You can't eat them and the meat on a big buck is not half as good as a yearlings or a doe. You all can have the horns, I go for quality of meat! Growing up in cattle country taught me that you DON'T shoot the herd bull, you butcher the yearlings.

 

[nicholasjohn]

I Don't care about horns. You can't eat them and the meat on a big buck is not half as good as a yearlings or a doe. You all can have the horns, I go for quality of meat! Growing up in cattle country taught me that you DON'T shoot the herd bull, you butcher the yearlings.

If you hang them for a week or so, even those big heavy bucks are sweet and tasty. Get the guts out muy pronto, keep the hide on to keep the meat from drying out and/or getting hair & dirt all over it. If you have to pack them out in pieces, all bets are off. But in easy flat-to-rolling country where you can get them out whole, hanging makes all the difference. Temperatures in the high 30's are best, and this is often the reason why a guy can't let them hang long enough. Much of the time it's just too warm. But when you can, or if you have access to a walk-in cooler, it's the way to go. There's a reason why they hang prime beef for as long as they do, and venison benefits from it just as much.

 

[Peddler 76]

Hi Peddler
What area is the "boiler room" ?

Lungs!

 

[StumpGrinder]

If you hang them for a week or so, even those big heavy bucks are sweet and tasty. Get the guts out muy pronto, keep the hide on to keep the meat from drying out and/or getting hair & dirt all over it. If you have to pack them out in pieces, all bets are off. But in easy flat-to-rolling country where you can get them out whole, hanging makes all the difference. Temperatures in the high 30's are best, and this is often the reason why a guy can't let them hang long enough. Much of the time it's just too warm. But when you can, or if you have access to a walk-in cooler, it's the way to go. There's a reason why they hang prime beef for as long as they do, and venison benefits from it just as much.

I agree that ageing definitely helps. Here in NC it is rarely cold enough to just let them hang. I learned years ago about water ageing and it works great however if you do an older buck along with a younger buck or a doe, which I have done, the quality of the meat in the latter is 10 times better. So much so that if I saw a 10 point standing beside a spike, I would shoot the spike. I don't have the room or the money to have a deer or 2 mounted every year, and if I'm not shooting it for a trophy then the meat becomes of primary importance. In my opinion trophy hunting is ruining hunting. I never used to hear abou pay to hunt. Now that's all you hear!!! So far I have never had to pay and often I'm asked to come in the off season on depradation permits to reduce the doe population on a bean field. These are areas being hunted during the regular season but the hunters just want to shoot bucks! The farmer wants to thin the herd! If you have permission to hunt over an agricultural field, you owe it to the land owner to take does! Other wise he will be calling someone like me in the off season to shoot the same deer you PAID to hunt! By the way, the permit is for ANTLERLESS deer. A buck that has lost its horns is fair game!

 

[nicholasjohn]

I agree that ageing definitely helps. Here in NC it is rarely cold enough to just let them hang. I learned years ago about water ageing and it works great however if you do an older buck along with a younger buck or a doe, which I have done, the quality of the meat in the latter is 10 times better. So much so that if I saw a 10 point standing beside a spike, I would shoot the spike. I don't have the room or the money to have a deer or 2 mounted every year, and if I'm not shooting it for a trophy then the meat becomes of primary importance. In my opinion trophy hunting is ruining hunting. I never used to hear abou pay to hunt. Now that's all you hear!!! So far I have never had to pay and often I'm asked to come in the off season on depradation permits to reduce the doe population on a bean field. These are areas being hunted during the regular season but the hunters just want to shoot bucks! The farmer wants to thin the herd! If you have permission to hunt over an agricultural field, you owe it to the land owner to take does! Other wise he will be calling someone like me in the off season to shoot the same deer you PAID to hunt! By the way, the permit is for ANTLERLESS deer. A buck that has lost its horns is fair game!

I agree with you about thinning out the does. I used to hunt with a couple of sugar beet farmers in northwestern Minnesota. We shot a ton of deer, mostly does. We shot big bucks, too, but the vast majority of the deer hanging from the loader bucket were does. Their thoughts were that the mama does, each with a fawn or two, mowed down just as many of their precious sugar beet tops as the biggest buck, so stack 'em up, boys. ( They each had a shirt-pocket full of depredation tags, and party hunting is legal there. )

We shot a lot of monster bucks ( some of which dressed out well over 200 pounds ) and we always hunted the first week of November - when they are rutting. When we first started doing this hunt, we were all young men, and nobody could take much time off work. A few of us flew in from distant parts to hunt with these guys, and we didn't want to leave them with a dozen carcasses hanging. So, we skinned & butchered every evening, from the very first day on. We had a four-day season, but we usually filled our tags in the first couple of days, then cut meat for two days and then everybody went home. We ate a lot of venison while doing this, and it was nothing special - kinda chewy; sometimes a little strong tasting. The big bucks sometimes tasted pretty rough. So did some of the does.

My old friend Buster, who I used to hunt with when we were growing up back in western Pennsylvania, asked me why we don't do it like we did there. We would shoot them in the two-week season that started right after Thanksgiving, and if the weather was cold enough tolet them hang, we wouldn't butcher until the week before Christmas. This was perfect, and the meat was much better than what we had been eating on our Minnesota hunt. "These guys don't want to it that way." I told him.

Well, after a while, we all got pretty senior on our jobs and could take more time off work and do it right. No more hurrying; just hunt for two or three days and spend the rest of the week cleaning up the animals. This left us more time to sleep on the nights when we were going to tramping around in the field the next day, and we also could play a little euchre in the evening after we put the knives away on skinning & butchering days. So, we started letting them hang for a few days. It started with a big old warrior buck that Mikie shot on opening morning. I suggested that we just wash out the body cavity and forget about it until we were done stacking up does, and he said OK. We cut that one up last, after it had hung around five days. Everyone agreed that it was the best tasting animal in the bunch, including some puppy-size fawns that somebody's young son had let the air out of. ( Fawns in that far-northern area weight around 100 pounds.)

That was when they all agreed that these two yokels from back east had a good idea about hanging deer to age them. Even just a few days helps, but longer is definitely better. If conditions are right ( or you have a meat locker in your barn ) two to three weeks would be PERFECT. ( Leave the hides on so the meat doesn't dry out and harden off.) When they hang that long, you can take out the backstraps with just your hands, rather than fillet them off with a blade. You do sometimes need to cut the tiny tendrils about every two inches that come of the spine, then the whole backstrap just falls right off the carcass into your hands. It's a beautiful thing, and the dark color of the meat is entirely different than what you're used to seeing. They will be so tender that you can cut it with the edge of your fork, without any strong flavor whatsoever - even the big bucks with the thick necks. Try it and see.

Where I live now, we shoot blacktail deer in 50 degree weather. There's no hanging in that kind of weather. I'm going to get ( or build ) a cooler to age my deer carcasses in. Somebody makes one that I saw on the internet, but I may be able to put something together myself that will do the trick. It wouldn't need to be much bigger than a telephone booth - maybe twice that size for two deer to hang in. It could be taken apart and stored in the off-season. The best temperature is around 38 or 39 degrees. Hopefully somebody will see this post and chime in about portable deer cooling lockers. There's bound to be a few guys out there who has experience with this.

 

[Deleted member 115360]

I agree with you about thinning out the does. I used to hunt with a couple of sugar beet farmers in northwestern Minnesota. We shot a ton of deer, mostly does. We shot big bucks, too, but the vast majority of the deer hanging from the loader bucket were does. Their thoughts were that the mama does, each with a fawn or two, mowed down just as many of their precious sugar beet tops as the biggest buck, so stack 'em up, boys. ( They each had a shirt-pocket full of depredation tags, and party hunting is legal there. )

We shot a lot of monster bucks ( some of which dressed out well over 200 pounds ) and we always hunted the first week of November - when they are rutting. When we first started doing this hunt, we were all young men, and nobody could take much time off work. A few of us flew in from distant parts to hunt with these guys, and we didn't want to leave them with a dozen carcasses hanging. So, we skinned & butchered every evening, from the very first day on. We had a four-day season, but we usually filled our tags in the first couple of days, then cut meat for two days and then everybody went home. We ate a lot of venison while doing this, and it was nothing special - kinda chewy; sometimes a little strong tasting. The big bucks sometimes tasted pretty rough. So did some of the does.

My old friend Buster, who I used to hunt with when we were growing up back in western Pennsylvania, asked me why we don't do it like we did there. We would shoot them in the two-week season that started right after Thanksgiving, and if the weather was cold enough tolet them hang, we wouldn't butcher until the week before Christmas. This was perfect, and the meat was much better than what we had been eating on our Minnesota hunt. "These guys don't want to it that way." I told him.

Well, after a while, we all got pretty senior on our jobs and could take more time off work and do it right. No more hurrying; just hunt for two or three days and spend the rest of the week cleaning up the animals. This left us more time to sleep on the nights when we were going to tramping around in the field the next day, and we also could play a little euchre in the evening after we put the knives away on skinning & butchering days. So, we started letting them hang for a few days. It started with a big old warrior buck that Mikie shot on opening morning. I suggested that we just wash out the body cavity and forget about it until we were done stacking up does, and he said OK. We cut that one up last, after it had hung around five days. Everyone agreed that it was the best tasting animal in the bunch, including some puppy-size fawns that somebody's young son had let the air out of. ( Fawns in that far-northern area weight around 100 pounds.)

That was when they all agreed that these two yokels from back east had a good idea about hanging deer to age them. Even just a few days helps, but longer is definitely better. If conditions are right ( or you have a meat locker in your barn ) two to three weeks would be PERFECT. ( Leave the hides on so the meat doesn't dry out and harden off.) When they hang that long, you can take out the backstraps with just your hands, rather than fillet them off with a blade. You do sometimes need to cut the tiny tendrils about every two inches that come of the spine, then the whole backstrap just falls right off the carcass into your hands. It's a beautiful thing, and the dark color of the meat is entirely different than what you're used to seeing. They will be so tender that you can cut it with the edge of your fork, without any strong flavor whatsoever - even the big bucks with the thick necks. Try it and see.

Where I live now, we shoot blacktail deer in 50 degree weather. There's no hanging in that kind of weather. I'm going to get ( or build ) a cooler to age my deer carcasses in. Somebody makes one that I saw on the internet, but I may be able to put something together myself that will do the trick. It wouldn't need to be much bigger than a telephone booth - maybe twice that size for two deer to hang in. It could be taken apart and stored in the off-season. The best temperature is around 38 or 39 degrees. Hopefully somebody will see this post and chime in about portable deer cooling lockers. There's bound to be a few guys out there who has experience with this.

You can hang them for days at 50° and nothing will happen..I'm assuming that at night it drops into the 30's? Keep em out of the sun and hang away. I've done lots of it, however, you guys either have different deer or different taste buds, because I've killed dozens of old rank rut bucks that you'd never eat, I don't care if you hung them for a year. I turn them straight into sausage. I've processed bucks that were so rank that you have to burn your hands off with fire afterwards to get rid of the smell of funky buck rut musk off. And I don't want to hear about tarsal glands or improper handling, that isn't the case. You kill enough deer and you'll find out that what I am saying is true. I've had them so bad that even in summer sausage they are inedible.

 

[StumpGrinder]

I agree with you about thinning out the does. I used to hunt with a couple of sugar beet farmers in northwestern Minnesota. We shot a ton of deer, mostly does. We shot big bucks, too, but the vast majority of the deer hanging from the loader bucket were does. Their thoughts were that the mama does, each with a fawn or two, mowed down just as many of their precious sugar beet tops as the biggest buck, so stack 'em up, boys. ( They each had a shirt-pocket full of depredation tags, and party hunting is legal there. )

We shot a lot of monster bucks ( some of which dressed out well over 200 pounds ) and we always hunted the first week of November - when they are rutting. When we first started doing this hunt, we were all young men, and nobody could take much time off work. A few of us flew in from distant parts to hunt with these guys, and we didn't want to leave them with a dozen carcasses hanging. So, we skinned & butchered every evening, from the very first day on. We had a four-day season, but we usually filled our tags in the first couple of days, then cut meat for two days and then everybody went home. We ate a lot of venison while doing this, and it was nothing special - kinda chewy; sometimes a little strong tasting. The big bucks sometimes tasted pretty rough. So did some of the does.

My old friend Buster, who I used to hunt with when we were growing up back in western Pennsylvania, asked me why we don't do it like we did there. We would shoot them in the two-week season that started right after Thanksgiving, and if the weather was cold enough tolet them hang, we wouldn't butcher until the week before Christmas. This was perfect, and the meat was much better than what we had been eating on our Minnesota hunt. "These guys don't want to it that way." I told him.

Well, after a while, we all got pretty senior on our jobs and could take more time off work and do it right. No more hurrying; just hunt for two or three days and spend the rest of the week cleaning up the animals. This left us more time to sleep on the nights when we were going to tramping around in the field the next day, and we also could play a little euchre in the evening after we put the knives away on skinning & butchering days. So, we started letting them hang for a few days. It started with a big old warrior buck that Mikie shot on opening morning. I suggested that we just wash out the body cavity and forget about it until we were done stacking up does, and he said OK. We cut that one up last, after it had hung around five days. Everyone agreed that it was the best tasting animal in the bunch, including some puppy-size fawns that somebody's young son had let the air out of. ( Fawns in that far-northern area weight around 100 pounds.)

That was when they all agreed that these two yokels from back east had a good idea about hanging deer to age them. Even just a few days helps, but longer is definitely better. If conditions are right ( or you have a meat locker in your barn ) two to three weeks would be PERFECT. ( Leave the hides on so the meat doesn't dry out and harden off.) When they hang that long, you can take out the backstraps with just your hands, rather than fillet them off with a blade. You do sometimes need to cut the tiny tendrils about every two inches that come of the spine, then the whole backstrap just falls right off the carcass into your hands. It's a beautiful thing, and the dark color of the meat is entirely different than what you're used to seeing. They will be so tender that you can cut it with the edge of your fork, without any strong flavor whatsoever - even the big bucks with the thick necks. Try it and see.

Where I live now, we shoot blacktail deer in 50 degree weather. There's no hanging in that kind of weather. I'm going to get ( or build ) a cooler to age my deer carcasses in. Somebody makes one that I saw on the internet, but I may be able to put something together myself that will do the trick. It wouldn't need to be much bigger than a telephone booth - maybe twice that size for two deer to hang in. It could be taken apart and stored in the off-season. The best temperature is around 38 or 39 degrees. Hopefully somebody will see this post and chime in about portable deer cooling lockers. There's bound to be a few guys out there who has experience with this.

I use one of those big ice chests from Wal-Mart. Our deer here are the Virginia strain so not as big as the Kansas and Northern strains. I can get 2 good does or 3 yearlings in it. I skin, gut and quarter them, cover with ice water and let soak for 1 week. I freez 2 litter bottles and gallon jugs for the ice and rotate as necessary. When the water looks more like blood that water I drain and refill. An old rutty buck would have to soak 2 weeks. What I have discovered is the wild or gamey taste is in the blood. The more of it you get out the better the meat. Soaking just seems to do this better than hanging, plus I don't have to worry about bugs or warm snaps ruining my venison.

 

[YZ-80]

I always try to shoot for the center of the 8" kill zone. Don't like the heart shots because even though I love to see the double back-kick, I like to eat the hearts now. And, if you go for the high shoulder/spine-shock shot to drop then instantly, you will often times bruise or obliterate the nice part of the backstrap, which makes me very angry.

 

[Hound-1]

I agree with you about thinning out the does. I used to hunt with a couple of sugar beet farmers in northwestern Minnesota. We shot a ton of deer, mostly does. We shot big bucks, too, but the vast majority of the deer hanging from the loader bucket were does. Their thoughts were that the mama does, each with a fawn or two, mowed down just as many of their precious sugar beet tops as the biggest buck, so stack 'em up, boys. ( They each had a shirt-pocket full of depredation tags, and party hunting is legal there. )

We shot a lot of monster bucks ( some of which dressed out well over 200 pounds ) and we always hunted the first week of November - when they are rutting. When we first started doing this hunt, we were all young men, and nobody could take much time off work. A few of us flew in from distant parts to hunt with these guys, and we didn't want to leave them with a dozen carcasses hanging. So, we skinned & butchered every evening, from the very first day on. We had a four-day season, but we usually filled our tags in the first couple of days, then cut meat for two days and then everybody went home. We ate a lot of venison while doing this, and it was nothing special - kinda chewy; sometimes a little strong tasting. The big bucks sometimes tasted pretty rough. So did some of the does.

My old friend Buster, who I used to hunt with when we were growing up back in western Pennsylvania, asked me why we don't do it like we did there. We would shoot them in the two-week season that started right after Thanksgiving, and if the weather was cold enough tolet them hang, we wouldn't butcher until the week before Christmas. This was perfect, and the meat was much better than what we had been eating on our Minnesota hunt. "These guys don't want to it that way." I told him.

Well, after a while, we all got pretty senior on our jobs and could take more time off work and do it right. No more hurrying; just hunt for two or three days and spend the rest of the week cleaning up the animals. This left us more time to sleep on the nights when we were going to tramping around in the field the next day, and we also could play a little euchre in the evening after we put the knives away on skinning & butchering days. So, we started letting them hang for a few days. It started with a big old warrior buck that Mikie shot on opening morning. I suggested that we just wash out the body cavity and forget about it until we were done stacking up does, and he said OK. We cut that one up last, after it had hung around five days. Everyone agreed that it was the best tasting animal in the bunch, including some puppy-size fawns that somebody's young son had let the air out of. ( Fawns in that far-northern area weight around 100 pounds.)

That was when they all agreed that these two yokels from back east had a good idea about hanging deer to age them. Even just a few days helps, but longer is definitely better. If conditions are right ( or you have a meat locker in your barn ) two to three weeks would be PERFECT. ( Leave the hides on so the meat doesn't dry out and harden off.) When they hang that long, you can take out the backstraps with just your hands, rather than fillet them off with a blade. You do sometimes need to cut the tiny tendrils about every two inches that come of the spine, then the whole backstrap just falls right off the carcass into your hands. It's a beautiful thing, and the dark color of the meat is entirely different than what you're used to seeing. They will be so tender that you can cut it with the edge of your fork, without any strong flavor whatsoever - even the big bucks with the thick necks. Try it and see.

Where I live now, we shoot blacktail deer in 50 degree weather. There's no hanging in that kind of weather. I'm going to get ( or build ) a cooler to age my deer carcasses in. Somebody makes one that I saw on the internet, but I may be able to put something together myself that will do the trick. It wouldn't need to be much bigger than a telephone booth - maybe twice that size for two deer to hang in. It could be taken apart and stored in the off-season. The best temperature is around 38 or 39 degrees. Hopefully somebody will see this post and chime in about portable deer cooling lockers. There's bound to be a few guys out there who has experience with this.

I'm in ne,PA. In early October archery/ muzzleloader season, it often hits 50+ degrees. We skin/ quarter, wrap in plastic wrap so the meat doesn't dry out , then place in a old refrigerator in the shop. After 4-5 days your good to go. In the off season the fridge does double duty as a beer keeper... ;- )

 

[nicholasjohn]

You can hang them for days at 50° and nothing will happen..I'm assuming that at night it drops into the 30's? Keep em out of the sun and hang away. I've done lots of it, however, you guys either have different deer or different taste buds, because I've killed dozens of old rank rut bucks that you'd never eat, I don't care if you hung them for a year. I turn them straight into sausage. I've processed bucks that were so rank that you have to burn your hands off with fire afterwards to get rid of the smell of funky buck rut musk off. And I don't want to hear about tarsal glands or improper handling, that isn't the case. You kill enough deer and you'll find out that what I am saying is true. I've had them so bad that even in summer sausage they are inedible.

Around here ( southwest Washington) it typically stays in the 40's at night, and we've seen frost on the rooves only twice this winter. There was snow in the air ( but not on the ground ) once so far. It's a rainy region , but we do get plenty of sunny & warm weather even during the winter. You're right about everybody's palate being different. I've never had a "rank rut buck" that tasted bad - just a few that were a bit strong, I think because they didn't hang. Ditto for does sometimes. But if you think they taste rank, I'm sure not going to argue with you. I agree with your implication that the tarsal glands aren't the big deal a lot of guys make it out to be. I think that's just folklore. As for killing enough deer to believe you, I think I've killed enough of them to know what I believe. I killed a huge eastern Washington mule deer last November, way too big for two guys to drag. It didn't hang at all, due to the 65 degree temperatures, and was not strong tasting at all. It was fat as butter, and if anything, was a little light on flavor. A lot of that depends on what they've been eating, and this one had ben munching down in the crop circles along the river, where the main crop is mustard. They chow down on the greens, and then climb up into the brushy draws to bed down. That's where we get them. Maybe they don't all taste that way, because there are other variables in the equation. Each region of the country has its own issues that contribute to flavor.

 

[Win Tom]

I do believe those ares that have high limit numbers like 4-8 deer per year yes they have high numbers of deer but they are also usually 100# deer once gutted and de boned you have 35# of meat. so you need a lot of deer to fill a small freezer.

Not always true. Killed a nice 14 this year in muzzleloader season that tios the scales at 183 dressed. I figure he was 225 on the hoof.
Sometimes you just have more deer than space for them.

 

[nocannons]

Not many people commented on my theory directly but I saw yours that did and one other. Both seem to agree, so that's interesting. I have killed 4 deer, two with lung shots, one with a high shoulder, and one that seems to have hit center mass than traveled up a rib and hit the spine (still not exactly sure what happened). The two lung shots went about 25 yards each and left blood trails a blind man could almost follow (arrow on one and federal fusion on the other). It's a very small sampling, but it seems to support my theory. Oh, I killed an antelope, apparently hitting the jugular vein. Just barely hit her on the very front in the neck, perfectly placed in elevation. I underestimated the wind, and just barely got it. It took me a while to find the impact, haha.

Were you using Rage broadheads ?

 

[ndking1126]

Were you using Rage broadheads ?

No, it was an older fixed 3 blade broadhead. No idea of the make or model, they were my dad's and probably from the 80s. I bet the length of cutting surface was very similar though.

 

[TrialbyFireFormed]

No, it was an older fixed 3 blade broadhead. No idea of the make or model, they were my dad's and probably from the 80s. I bet the length of cutting surface was very similar though.

Length of cutting surface couldn't be the same as an expanded mechanical broadhead. The main benefit of mech BH are the increased cutting area which creates a much much wider wound channel.
Now u said they're from the 80s and even though BH technology wasn't advanced in the 80s, I haven't seen the exact BH your talking about so I can't judge.
SO, going back to the thread topic,
Why TF did you shoot the Antelope in the neck?
U said you misjudged the wind but elevation was perfect?????
Just skimming the neck and hitting the jugular would lead me to believe that the target was standing straight on or straight away.
Please describe how the Antelope was standing/direction it was facing, distance, and your intended POI.
Thx