Big Jay's 8 Point

I am a little slow in getting these pics on here, but one of the guys in our group got an 8 pointer this past Saturday, the first day of black powder season in our corner of Virginia.
The Deer was about 3 years old, and dressed at about 130 pounds.
The rule for the section of land that Jay was hunting was antlers only outside the ears, and this one just made it into that category. The plan is to allow the deer to mature into larger bucks to be able to harvest larger racks in the coming years

The days of tossing a rope across a branch to skin out have evolved to such creations as this now.

I have to say, it looked a lot easier than the way we used to do it.

At our club, we took 5 deer on opening day between 7 hunters, so that was not bad odds, a few of the guys had taken deer during bow season, so the meat has started getting packed away in the freezers, so it is looking like a good year so far.

Hondo And The 9 Point

At the hunt club last weekend, one of the guys got a nice 9 point buck.
I was on the other side of the swamp picking up dogs, so I did not get a shot of the deer on the ground when he shot it

By the time I made it to the skinnin shed, Hondo and Garnet were almost done with it. My son Jesse wanted to get in there and help

The proud hunter. We are gonna hear about this for the rest of the season

It was a tall rack, and wide, but did not seem as full as it could have been.

Either way, I would have been happy to have it on my tailgate

Sad Sad

Here are the leftovers from our last crab feast of the season.

A sad day.

We have had some frost, and the water temps are dropping, and for the recreational crabber, you can't catch enough in the 2 pots and the short line you are allowed to use to make a good meal now, so it is time to wash it all down and put it up for the winter.

Bow season is in now, and black powder comes in on the 31st, so I will be in my stand Saturday morning.

Later in the week, I will post about my new 50 caliber black powder rifle, so check back in a couple days.

as for now, I did pick some of the leftover crab meat, so It is crab cake time : )