By Larry Weishuhn
For the past three years I have been a member of a hunting lease in western Texas, Sterling County to be exact, an hour west of San Angelo. The property is in excess of 8,000 acres and it is under Texas’ Managed Land Deer Permit, which allows deer hunting from the first of October until the last day of February. The MLD Permit allows the harvest of a set number of both antlerless and buck deer, based on current populations, buck to doe ratios, fawn survival rates, as well as short and long term goals and objectives as well as habitat improvements. Half of the property is mesas and canyons, and the other half is flat, vegetated by mesquite, some juniper, cactus, and a low growing cool season forb, filaree, which becomes an important deer forage.
I am not certain of the chemical makeup of filaree, but I do know this. Deer that consumer any appreciable amount of filaree during the late fall and winter produce some of the finest tasting venison I have ever had the opportunity to consume.
Having hunted and taken numerous whitetails in that specific area, albeit mostly does and older bucks classified as “management bucks”; older bucks with “smaller” antlers relative to age, I have opened the rumens of numerous of these deer to determine what they were eating. All I have checked had a substantial amount of filaree in their stomachs. Too, I noticed especially into January and February, a goodly part of their daily diet consists of filaree.
During my most recent mid-January hunt on the property I concentrated my hunting efforts on the property’s lowlands. That’s where most of the forage or food exists.
Once into January and February the deer on that lower part of the ranch act a lot more like “plains animals” than deer on the other part of the property. They tend to “herd up” rather than living in more or less small family groups. Numerous times I have seen herds ranging from 20 to 30 or more deer numerous times. The most I have seen in one herd was 74. I watched as they fed as a herd, reminding me of caribou herds up north, or antelope herds on the plains of Africa.
Stalking such herds is tough to say the least. I have tried it a few times and failed miserably. I have also tried determining what direction the herd was moving and then setting up in ambush. That resulted in the individual bucks I was interested in being on the back side of the herd and being detected long before they came close to where I waited.
Knowing I would be hunting the lease when the local whitetails seemed to “herd up”; what to do? One definite option was to finely tune my Mossberg Patriot Predator rifles topped with Stealth Vision 3-18×44 SVT scopes with Hornady Precision Hunters ammo, so I could comfortably reach out to 400 to 600-yards. And that’s what I did.
Having recently returned from a Coues whitetail deer hunt in Durango, Mexico with Travis Wright with Heart of Texas Outfitters, I knew my 6.5 PRC Mossberg was capable of such long-range accuracy. Before heading to my lease, I switched the custom turret I had Stealth Vision (www.stealthvision.com) build for me for hunting at 8,500-feet elevation while in Mexico, back to the 1,000-feet elevation turret I originally had on my SVT scope. Once at the ranch I shot three times just to be sure all was set. I was sighted-in dead-on at 200-yards. With that turret setting I knew I could hold essentially dead on out to at least 250-yards before making a turret adjustment.
For the hunt, I had invited Luke Clayton and Jeff Rice, with whom I co-host our weekly digital television show, “A Sportsman’s Life” on Carbontv.com and our YouTube channel of the same name. I wanted them to help me take the deer I still had on my ranch quota.
Once on the ranch we put out sacks of Vineyard Max (www.vineyardmax.net) in strategic places where Luke, Jeff and I would be hunting. In Texas, baiting is legal. This helps greatly in providing time to evaluate deer as to size and particularly age.
I spent the first couple of days looking over several bucks and watching them arrive en mass where I had placed Vineyard Max, which is high in energy and therefore truly important to deer. And one of the reasons they crave it, beyond how it tastes. All bucks I saw were young and showed great potential to produce bigger antlers as they matured.
I could see a substantial “chunk of country” and saw several herds of deer varying from ten to as many as 32 in one relatively small group. Within those groups were some nice bucks, including two that were tempting. Thanks to my Stealth Vision range-finding binocular, I knew they were nearly 1000-yards away, and beyond my “comfort zone.” They were where there was no way to get closer without spooking a lot of deer.
It was getting late in the hunt, last afternoon. I was sitting on a small hillock in the relatively flat part of the ranch watching a nice looking buck far to the south of me. I happened to turn to look toward the north. I had put Vineyard Max to the South and North. Smaller, younger bucks were feeding on it. Then to my far right I saw a buck running toward where the younger bucks fed. I immediately got my Stealth Visions scope on him and cranked up the magnification. He was a 10-point, nice typical antlers. His hocks, tarsal glands were a tarry-black, nearly all the way to his ankles. He was at least 4-years of age. I could see he had a sizable neck and was a pot-bellied…surely an older deer.
I followed the buck in my scope as he ran, crosshairs just in front of his chest. When I had first picked him up he was 300 or so yards away. He angled toward me. At 200-yards he started veering slight away. By then I had made up my mind to shoot. He was running at a smooth even gate. I kept the crosshairs immediately in front of his chest, then pushed the safety to fire and prepared to take a shot.
Now before someone says, “You should NOT be shooting a running deer!” I will tell you, I have sent considerable time in years past shooting running game as a guide shooting running away game that had been wounded, but also many years before learning how to shoot running game shooting a fast running jackrabbits on the property I managed as a wildlife biologist.
At the shot the buck hit through the vitals turned to run directly away. Bolting in a fresh round, I followed the buck in the scope. He turned to his left at about 300 yards. I shot him again. At the shot the buck stopped. I put a third shot through his vitals. He went down.
My shots will not be a segment on “A Sportsman’s Life” show. I self-film my hunts and there was no time to move the camera. However, while photographing my buck the following morning, having set him up for photos in the ranch’s walk-in cooler, I told the story the next day.
After giving Thanks, and showing respect for the animal I had taken, I ran my index finger over his lower jaw’s teeth. They were worn all the way to his gum. He was indeed old, 9 or 10. Later, after removing his cape while taking care of his venison, I confirmed he indeed was that old.
I am truly proud of my late season buck. He no doubt had lived a long and likely most interesting life, passed on his genes to succeeding generations, and now would provide venison for my family, as well as a handsome set of antlers on my wall. Every time I look at them he will be fondly remembered, as well as being regaled around hopefully, the Good Lord willing, many campfires to come.
