I want to apologize to readers of this column for not having the publication, “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation” mailed out yet. We are very, very close, so please be patient. If your name is not on the list to get that free publication, you need to call my office and being line to receive one. They have to be mailed out this month because postage increases after December, and we don’t want the additional expense. At this time the cost of 5000 publications is nearly six thousand dollars.
This is an excerpt from that publication which really fits this week…
There are some things the Missouri Department of Conservation may never figure out, but they know this… not much of anything will hurt the whitetail deer population in Missouri right now. No amount of highway traffic, legal hunters, illegal hunters, blue-tongue, or CWD is affecting their numbers at least for now.
They may never figure this out either, but holding a doe season and expecting thousands of hunters to go out and shoot only a doe when they see some nice buck walk past them is like giving a kid a dollar to go past the candy counter and buy a can of spinach at the grocery store.
Picture this… Joe Smith has hunted several days and hasn’t seen a doe and finally a buck walks past him. Joe wants venison. He shoots the buck, gets the meat to his freezer and throws the head, hide and legs away. He calls in as a doe kill. Naw, that wouldn’t happen! So picture this next scenario. Joe Smith is in his tree stand and a doe comes running up and there is a huge antlered buck with 10 points or so chasing her. Joe ignores the buck and shoots the doe. And he watches the biggest buck he has ever seen run away. Not hard to believe that, is it?
Well, let me tell you a true story about what I saw a few years back when I stopped for gas at a Lebanon gas station. It was toward the end of doe season, and a fellow had a nice 8-point buck in his pickup and a doe beside it. He told me he took his 30-30 rifle and his crossbow to his tree stand with him and killed the buck with a regular target-arrow and the doe with his rifle. It is legal to do so, but I didn’t believe him. He killed the buck with a rifle too and anyone who saw them would know it. But you could never prove it.
Why did he kill the buck with a target arrow? Because the entry and exit wounds are the same size as the 30-30 bullet and the arrow or bullet either one would go right through the deer. And I will say this. Why not? Any way that deer are killed illegally and used will NOT affect the whitetail deer population in the slightest. It beats what the trophy hunters are doing, taking the cape and head and loins and leaving the rest of the deer in the woods for the coyotes.
The doe season has always accounted for dead bucks left in the woods with the antlers cut off. If you go out and spend hours in the woods on public hunting land after the season, you’ll find those bucks. I have found dozens over the years. But if you take a bow or crossbow out to your tree stand along with your rifle during the doe season, there is nothing illegal about it. It is permitted because nothing in the regulations forbids it. And you can bring in a bow-killed buck and a rifle killed doe on the same day! It beats killing a buck and leaving it in the woods only to come back later and bring in just the antlers. And there is no way to prove, if you know what you are doing, just what you used to kill a deer this week, whether it is a doe or buck!
Contact me by email at lightninridge47@gmail or at P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613. My office phone number is 417-777-5227. If you want to order a subscription to my outdoor magazine, or want to get one of my books as a Christmas gifts (there are eleven now) just go to my website, www.larrydablemont.com, and then call me to get a better price.
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