The Deer Log is Finished

I finally finished off my deer log. I say that, and I can envision a strange shelf-stable variation of venison meat loaf. No, I mean that I completed a spreadsheet listing all the deer ever taken at our camp, along with accompanying a data. I tried to answer the following questions?

What was it? Doe, buck, antler size, live weight, etc.
Where and when was it taken? Who took it? With what?
What was the weather like? Moon phase?

It ended up being quite a list and quite an undertaking. I started doing this about 1992 as I realized I was getting to the point where all the details of each hunt were starting to slip away from me. Somewhere in my divorce from wife 1.0 I mislaid that log. Some time after that I started logging my hunts and eventually weblogging them. However, these were qualitative journals. I never went and really compiled the statistics

Methodology

I used my weblog as a starting place. Last year I began making notes on the basic facts. This time out, I filled in the holes.

First, I firmly established the date and time of each kill. For the most part, that came from memory. Sometimes it was hard to pinpoint things exactly. I knew, for instance, that I had been hunting on Opening Day in 1989 and that about 10 AM I’d moved away from my spot to pay the rent on my coffee. When was KY’s Rifle Opener in 1989? Was I hunting under EST or EDT? From 2004 on, I had a weblog entry for most times I went out, and in all but a couple of cases I could nail it down pretty close.

Since we moved to the farm, Kentucky’s seasons have been like clockwork. Early Yute is the second weekend in October, Muzzleloader is the third. The Rifle Opener is the second Saturday of November. I was able to determine date and moonphase from here: http://stardate.org/nightsky/moon

With date and time nailed down, I consulted WeatherUnderground.com for the meterological data: http://www.wunderground.com/history/

In most cases what was in that database jived with my memory and what was in my weblog. Even my guessing at temps and such from my preliminary notes seemed to be close. However, I did notice some discrepancies. In a few instances it was raining at Lunken Airport, the closest reporting station when the sun shining at camp. The temperature might have varied 5 degrees from what I remember, but overall I had a pretty good reference.

The Results

When I was done compiling all the raw data into Microsoft Excel, I moved over to Microsoft Access to do the number crunching. I was wondering what patterns, if any, would pop out. The results were telling, but they were more telling about the hunter than the hunted.

In our camp, 30-06 does most of the heavy lifting. However, my Rem 7600 in 35 Whelen has taken the most deer with 8. My favorite Savage 99 has taken much fewer deer, but it is the one I start with each season. I rotate my rifles throughout season, depending on mood, weather, and such. After I take a deer with one rifle, I usually put it away and switch to something else. I use the Whelenizer when it is raining, or for when I am just trying to top off the freezer. That means at least 1 deer each season now falls to the 200 grain Remington SPCL. In truth, the Savage 99 in 308 WIN could have nailed them all. The least productive rifle was my Marlin 336 in 30-30. I just have a bias against the 30-30– long story. However, it shows.

Similarly, we shoot more deer between 8 and 10 in the morning. I do not think mornings are more inherently successful. However, if I bag a nice one in the morning, I usually do not go out that afternoon. We also tend to leave camp on Sunday afternoon. I have shot a few deer on Sunday afternoon, but generally, it is a lot of hassle when you have to work on Monday morning. As a result, we hunt afternoons about 50 percent less than mornings.

A preponderance of the deer taken are antlerless. However 1/3 of those are button bucks. This was a bit discouraging. However, when you figure in the number of youth hunters and first-timers, it is not so bad. Overall, the average number of points is 4. If you take out the antlerless the average goes up to just under 8.

As to what it says about the deer? About the only thing for sure I have seen is that in the past decade, we have taken more deer on a rising or stable barometer than a falling one. That is probably true, but it also means we hunt less when it is going to rain. In 30 years, all of us have only taken two deer in the rain.

We take more deer during a waxing to full moon than a waning moon. That is interesting, but deer were taken in all moon phases.

We take more deer when the wind is blowing from the SSW and SW and the NE. We never have taken any deer with winds blowing from the SE. That is true, but we hardly ever get a wind blowing from the SE.

We shoot more deer when it is partly cloudy to clear. However, the weather in the Trans-Bluegrass is usually quite favorable for the weeks preceding Thanksgiving. So much so, that when it rains, we usually stay in and wait it out. That is not to say we are wimpy hunters. I’ve hunted horizontal rain, winds to 45 MPH, and thunderstorms. The point is that if we want to stay in, there is a good chance that we will have good weather in a short while.

We have yet to shoot a deer in the teens or twenties. Most of our deer have been shot in temps between 35F and 52F. However, if you look at the normal temps for the Trans-Bluegrass in the fall, it make sense. We have not shot deer in snow, but I can only remember a couple of times there was ever a hint of snow in the air, let alone the ground. The coldest temp at which a deer was shot was 32F. That is surprising; considering the number of mornings I have frozen my butt off in the stand. The hottest temperature recorded at time of kill was 69F, when Angus got his first deer. The high that day was in the mid-80’s and there was a hot wind blowing us around. It must have cooled off dramatically in the hour before his shot.

Averages

Our average deer really lives only in the world of statistics. He is a 3 point buck taken at 1202 EST from a blind 4 feet off the ground with a rifle somewhere between a 300 Savage and a 30-06. In truth, that scenario has never happened. It takes a little work to come up with the true average scenario.

The average deer taken at our camp is a buck. He has a nice 7-point rack with a nub of an 8th. He is taken with a 30-06 rifle inside 60 yards under a waxing gibbous moon with an ambient temperature of 44F. The barometer is stable-to-rising and the wind is out of the SSW at 6 mph. He is taken at 0845 EST, about an two hours into legal hunting time from a raised stand 15 feet off the ground. There is light cloud cover. It is Opening Weekend of rifle season. He wanders in from either the east or southwest into an area that is oak hickory savannah bordering a narrow pasture. He falls within sight of the hunter, age 41. His young son, age 9.5 is watching.

In truth, that hunt truly exists, or close to it. It was 2001. I had had a chance at this little 8-pointer all season. It was now the Saturday of the second weekend of rifle season. Mooseboy came out with me for his first deer hunt.

Spike the WonderBuck

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