Mass Gun Season Opener Tomorrow

40? Wow! I'm more than twice that and put my gear away due to the friggin arthritis in my back and shoulders. However, the sons and Little Jack supply me with venison. Oldest son Mark in AK comes to visit at least twice a year and brings us salmon, halibut and moose. So, we eat good. Jack.

I already have arthritis in my lower back! ;)
 
I spent 3.5 hours on stand on Monday as a last ditch attempt to get a deer....Saw nothing!
Tag soup for me! :(
No tags filled for me either this season. Been a long time since the family struck out. But....I have a bit in the freezer my buds gave me some.
 
Whacko, that’s too bad. You can still hunt Jan in R.I.!
I sat last 3 hrs yesterday and Mr. Big must of had a party to go to. Never saw a thing.
Ended season with two decent does, and saw couple nice bucks. Also secured some private land in z10 so looking forward to opening day. On to Coyotes!
Happy New Year to all the hunters.
Thanks for the tip but I'm done with deer for the season. Yesterday as a consolation prize I took my boy out for some squirrel hunting. We bagged 2 each.....grey squirrel closes on Jan 2. Have enough for a nice stew and will make that up this weekend. Ice fishing will be next (although that's not looking like the season will start anytime soon locally) and I have the snowshoe hare trip planned for February with my bro in law and son. I'm happy as long as I have outdoor shit to do.
 
I'm done hunting deer for the season.
Got work to do for next year though.
Trees to pick,travel routes to scope out etc.
Will be out after it snows.
Maybe help them a bit by taking out a coyote or two.
 
No tags filled for me either this season. Been a long time since the family struck out. But....I have a bit in the freezer my buds gave me some.

My season was a tale of states......go out of state, and I do fine. In state, its a suckfest.

Hunted a total of 8 hours of Archery in CT in Sept and took home two does for meat....saw many more. My buddy took a 180# smasher in rut. Don't hunt rut there anymore, but I may go back to it, cause MA sucks.

Hunted 20 hours in Archery on 100 acres in Kentucky and saw about 30 deer, passed on 120 inch buck, saw much bigger buck with no shot. Multiple doe and dink buck kill opportunities. 100 freaking acres....Amazing.

Hunted 34 hours in MA bow and gun, saw one lone doe in archery, and one dink buck, passed them both because I'm particular in MA and there aren't enough deer around. Hunted another 37 hours of Shotgun, saw one skipper in Wachusett and nothing around the house. Its kinda been this way quite a few years in a row now..... 71 hours total in MA - 3 sightings. Around me...just not good. Deer pop is thin. I don't have or want to spend gobs of time hunting.....I spend way more in MA than I should.

Didn't hunt rifle in VT or NH because I went to KY, so spending on KY lisc was same as I would have normally spent on NH and VT.

I'm not totally done, I may get a CT lisc and bowhunt January if the weather holds.
 
Local police just cost me a deer this morning! Hunting oxbow (with my permit that I paid for) and was on a hill looking over a river with my son and 4 deer were down in the valley and in range......10 minutes till legal light a loudspeaker starts up way back toward the parking spot yelling about the owner of the truck needs to come out or the vehicles getting towed. Son of a bitch....I stood up and came out.......deer were busted a that point they all bolted when he yelled over the loud speaker.....he told me I was on a fed wildlife refuge.....I said I know.....and pointed to the permit clearly propped up on the dash and he said oh......didn't see it.....then he let us go back in. Unbelievable

Sorry to hear that. Reminds me of legal parking and hunting near Ft. Devens. I'm seeing a trend.


My season was a tale of states......go out of state, and I do fine. In state, its a suckfest.

Hunted a total of 8 hours of Archery in CT in Sept and took home two does for meat....saw many more. My buddy took a 180# smasher in rut. Don't hunt rut there anymore, but I may go back to it, cause MA sucks.

Hunted 20 hours in Archery on 100 acres in Kentucky and saw about 30 deer, passed on 120 inch buck, saw much bigger buck with no shot. Multiple doe and dink buck kill opportunities. 100 freaking acres....Amazing.

Hunted 34 hours in MA bow and gun, saw one lone doe in archery, and one dink buck, passed them both because I'm particular in MA and there aren't enough deer around. Hunted another 37 hours of Shotgun, saw one skipper in Wachusett and nothing around the house. Its kinda been this way quite a few years in a row now..... 71 hours total in MA - 3 sightings. Around me...just not good. Deer pop is thin. I don't have or want to spend gobs of time hunting.....I spend way more in MA than I should.

Didn't hunt rifle in VT or NH because I went to KY, so spending on KY lisc was same as I would have normally spent on NH and VT.

I'm not totally done, I may get a CT lisc and bowhunt January if the weather holds.

I'm finally ready to put some time and effort (and $) into going out of state next season. I don't know where. I've been out west but would like something within a 12-18 hour drive. Dedicating a solid vacation week to a good destination will probably be WELL worth it vs Mass.

Any suggestions for a DIY whitetail destination? TN? KY? WV?
 
CT has a load of deer. Even better if you bowhunt !! You can get multiple tags and fill your freezer. They are also LOADED with a lot of ticks !! The trick is to have a friend get you on some private property, or may be one of the guys here know a friend whose tired of the deer browsing their decorative bushes during the colder months. State land is tougher, because you get clowns wandering through your area or stealing your tree stand(s). YMMV.
 
Some of you guys that don't consider the western part of the state.....Should.
Saw plenty of deer and know of one bruiser taken. Been waiting for some pictures to surface here of him but mass and drop tines are present.
 
My first year out & my first bowl of tag soup... Not very tasty...

I gotta do a better job at scouting and planning for next year.
 
Tag soup for me this year as well.
Some of you guys that don't consider the western part of the state.....Should.
Saw plenty of deer and know of one bruiser taken. Been waiting for some pictures to surface here of him but mass and drop tines are present.

There are no deer in Western Mass, they all packed their bags and moved east.

Bob
 
Yes, for the last 10 years or so....before that a group of us would sit on our stands for a couple of hours, get together and start to drive deer...That seemed to work pretty good too!

I pretty much only hunt deer with a group of buddies. 7 or 8 of us on a given day during shotgun or blackpowder season. We hit an area of the Cape that we know pretty well and have spent a lot of time in. We do pretty well and the years we get skunked are getting fewer and fewer in between. I hate sitting in a tree is my thing. ;)
 
I pretty much only hunt deer with a group of buddies. 7 or 8 of us on a given day during shotgun or blackpowder season. We hit an area of the Cape that we know pretty well and have spent a lot of time in. We do pretty well and the years we get skunked are getting fewer and fewer in between. I hate sitting in a tree is my thing. ;)

I did an afternoon in one of Barnstable's conservation areas...didn't see anything...and saw very little sign...but hey, I figured I'd have some quality time in the woods just walking my BP rifle around! ;)
 
I did an afternoon in one of Barnstable's conservation areas...didn't see anything...and saw very little sign...but hey, I figured I'd have some quality time in the woods just walking my BP rifle around! ;)

I’ve spent zero time deer hunting in that area. There has to be something in there but it’s just not an area I’ve spent a lot of time scouting out.
 
Shhhh. We just got the hunters convinced that all the deer aren’t in the Berkshires and now the Eastern utters are staying home and some of the Western hunters are traveling East.

Bob

I know I know just hate seeing them.dying of old age and starvation.
 
I know I know just hate seeing them.dying of old age and starvation.

Me too:

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Sorry to hear that. Reminds me of legal parking and hunting near Ft. Devens. I'm seeing a trend.




I'm finally ready to put some time and effort (and $) into going out of state next season. I don't know where. I've been out west but would like something within a 12-18 hour drive. Dedicating a solid vacation week to a good destination will probably be WELL worth it vs Mass.

Any suggestions for a DIY whitetail destination? TN? KY? WV?

If you want to put in some time....CT is good, but it will take gobs of time getting permission on private land if you don't know someone. State land is hit or miss, and can be crowded. Though, I've done well on state land there before, the state is getting hit harder, and I think their liberal deer take is starting to knock the herd down quite a bit.
I hunt in urban backyards which are less affected because most overlook them or wont hunt there. But it's hunted more than it used to be.

KY is probably the cheapest destination state that has some real wallhangers. Obviously some managed private land will be the best. You will see a lot of deer if your just out to kill some meat its a joke and easy. There is likely a lot of overlooked public land as well because the state is very rural, and most hunters have their own land to hunt and there are plenty of deer, and only one buck limit. I went there with all intentions to hunt public land, but stopped at one farm and got permission on 100 acres...ended up being a nice buck there, I hunted for a few days seeing a shxt ton of deer and passed up a decent buck, but not the one I was looking for. IF I was there for meat, I would have easily been able to arrow several does or dink bucks. Rifle......would have been a total joke, as I saw 10 deer a day in rifle range.
 
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Shhhh. We just got the hunters convinced that all the deer aren’t in the Berkshires and now the Eastern utters are staying home and some of the Western hunters are traveling East.

Bob

Don't tell them!! JK....I have no idea about the Berkshires haven't hunted there in a long time. I've got some good private land there...maybe I should go back! LOL!

North Central public land....tough hunting........talked to a guy that hunted by Barre Falls Dam for 5 days straight and saw zilch. I hunt private land near there and it's not much better. Sure, some deer are taken, but it's probably the only one you see.
 
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The deer population in the berkshires is borderline terrible, I don't know what you guys are talking about. You must not hunt it. Try getting a doe tag in zone 2 or 4. I don't know the exact numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 10 deer per square mile.
 
The deer population in the berkshires is borderline terrible, I don't know what you guys are talking about. You must not hunt it. Try getting a doe tag in zone 2 or 4. I don't know the exact numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if it was less than 10 deer per square mile.

I hunted it back in the 80's and it was great...saw lots of deer, like 5-10 a day.....continued to decline thru the 90's as they gave out too many doe permits, and coyotes came in heavier. Haven't hunted it since maybe 2010, when we were lucky to see one deer in a week's hunt. That's when we quit....it was probably 5 deer per square back then, in closed towns with very little hunting pressure. I'll admit the lack of hunting pressure also had something to do with it, as there were a lot of laurel ridges the deer get hung up in. But when you go from seeing 30 deer in a field at night to seeing 5 or none....there's an issue, and its not just hunting pressure. Fish and Game was way too slow to react to slowing the doe permits, and at the same time were adding season time.
 
I hunted it back in the 80's and it was great...saw lots of deer, like 5-10 a day.....continued to decline thru the 90's as they gave out too many doe permits, and coyotes came in heavier. Haven't hunted it since maybe 2010, when we were lucky to see one deer in a week's hunt. That's when we quit....it was probably 5 deer per square back then, in closed towns with very little hunting pressure. I'll admit the lack of hunting pressure also had something to do with it, as there were a lot of laurel ridges the deer get hung up in. But when you go from seeing 30 deer in a field at night to seeing 5 or none....there's an issue, and its not just hunting pressure. Fish and Game was way too slow to react to slowing the doe permits, and at the same time were adding season time.

The pressure it is getting is due to the heavily populated areas that surround it and their lack of huntable land. Everyone heads up to 4S, 4N and 2. I am guilty of this.

What ends up happening is all the smaller bucks get shot and the mature bucks go full nocternal. And this is of the very few that their are in total. Result is like you said your lucky if you see one deer per day on average. Full rut during bow season you'll see a bunch on camera but you won't see hardly any come late November.

Every once in awhile I see a good one get killed. You generally always do see big tracks when we have good snow...keeps you coming back. I'd like to see a big rebound in the population but unless they start logging those woods heavily I don't see it happening. There is hardly any browse for them on the public lands, then when theirs no acorns or beechnuts it's a ghost town. The state carries alot of the blame, they do a terrible job at managing the woods they own to support the wildlife. They just buy the lands and forget about them.
 
For biologists data I'm sure. But.....take a male deer with no antlers to the check station with an antlered tag on it and I'd bet there will problems.

Seems like a loophole for a zone 10 hunter with a hacksaw to take bucks...
 
Seems like a loophole for a zone 10 hunter with a hacksaw to take bucks...
As with anything there is a loophole or a way to cheat. Especially as you only need to live check deer during week one of shotgun anyway
 
I’m in Groton and it’s absolutely loaded with deer around here. I grew up around here and the deer population is exponentially bigger than it ever was. If you can get permission to hunt private property in places like Concord it’s bonkers. Huge amounts of deer with zero hunting pressure.
 
I’m in Groton and it’s absolutely loaded with deer around here. I grew up around here and the deer population is exponentially bigger than it ever was. If you can get permission to hunt private property in places like Concord it’s bonkers. Huge amounts of deer with zero hunting pressure.

The hard part is getting permission and if you want to gun hunt making sure the town is open to discharge.

Other than that and maybe dealing with anti neighbors, its a honey hole for the most part. Knocking on doors probably will get you some nasty looks as well.
 
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