Regular Bow 2010.

On Sunday October 24th Dave Z. of SJ Fowl Addictions killed this magnificent main frame 10 pointer during his morning stand. He could hear this buck from a ways off freshening up his scrape line and tangling his rack in his licking branches. Brian grunted this deer in and smoked him at close range. This deer also had 2 sticker points making it a 12 pointer all together. He killed this buck during the heatwave weekend of the 23rd thru 24th when many hunters were seeing very little deer movement.

This buck has a 20 inch inside spread and should make the book. This buck was not weighed in due to some renovations occurring at our local check station, it was estimated to weigh in the 180 lbs. range.

On the evening of of Tuesday October 26th Steve P. killed this 114 lbs. Y buck. The deer came into a mock scrape and Steve shot him at 20 yds. with a bank shot off of a tree. The arrow hit a branch and ricocheted hitting the deer in the vitals and leaving a gaping wound from the Rage mechanical broad heads. This deer ran 50 yds before expiring.

Here is a pick of the rage exit wound

Cousin Petey also was able to fill his buck tag for regular bow season with this 100lbs. spike buck. Petey shot this deer out of his brothers stahd on the evening of October 23rd.

I called this post Regular Bow because today marked the start of traditional bow season statewide in NJ. However, there are a few new policies introduced in 2009 by Fish and Game that make the title "Regular Bow" seem not so regular at all.

First off is the sanctioning of Crossbows. Now in the NJ Fish and Wildlife Digest the crossbow has added to the long bow, recurve bow and compound bow as legal for hunting during all archery seasons. Second is the EAB (earn-a-buck) policy, which is an early hunting season offered for killing a doe before taking a buck.

Many bow hunters in the South Jersey area harvested their EAB antlerless deer to to earn the right for an early season chance at a possible trophy buck in velvet. Some hunters were even were able to fill their buck tag within that early season. Statewide starting today open season was declared in New Jersey in both EAB territories as well as zones that did not offer the earn-a-buck early season.

This symmetrical 8 was taken just minutes before 7:00 am on October 2nd with a crossbow straight through both lungs. He ran only thirty yards before succumbing to his wound and piling up. He dressed out a a formidable 141 pounds.

Wesley was able to place a clean kill shot on target just a few seconds after this buck came moving quickly into his range. The action happened so fast that Wes didn't have much time to make an assessment on the deer. In fact he was a little surprised at just how nice this buck was when he came upon it at the moment of recovery.

With this bucks symmetry there should be very few deductions side to side but it might just fall short of the 125" mark needed to be recorded in the record book.