Tonight there will be a Buck Expo at Marion Baptist Church starting at 7pm and hunters should be sure to register at Hodge's for the annual Big Buck Contest, which has a $1,000 cash prize.
Below are some excerpts from stories published in this week's newspaper. For the whole story, pick up a paper at local grocers and convince stores.
Be Safe and Be Sure of Your Target!
War vet's season ends early
For most hunters, deer season begins Saturday morning and runs 16 straight days until Sunday, Nov. 26.
For Joey Rich of Marion, the season is already over.
Rich bagged what’s commonly referred to in hunter lingo as a “Booner” on Wednesday, Oct. 25 with his bow.
It produced a green score of 1766⁄8 and the deer weighed about 240 pounds.
“I’m not sure of his age, but I think he is 51⁄2 or 61⁄2 years old,” said Rich, whose taken other good bucks in his hunting career, but none larger than this one.
The local coal miner is a former U.S. Marine who served in combat in Iraq.
Rich has methodically reconnoitered his hunting area with high-quality trail cameras. He has many images of the deer, almost exclusively at night. Some were from last winter. He knows it’s the same deer because of a cut or tear on an ear that is evident in all of the photos.
“The main beams are kind of the same shape and G2s look the same as last year,” Rich said.
The buck carried a 10-point mainframe rack with two additional kicker points on the left base. The spread was nearly 22 inches at the tips of each main beam.
Rich was hunting a narrow funnel field between .... See this week's printed edition for more.
Local experts weigh in on deer season
A couple of the area’s wildlife experts say the deer hunting opportunities should be just about right by the weekend.
Rifle season opens Saturday and runs for 16 days through Nov. 26.
Sharp anticipates a very successful rifle hunt coming up.
“Good, maybe a great season,” he said. “Acorns are non-existent forcing deer to search for food, moving a lot more,” he said.
Sharp knows of several recordbook bucks that have already been checked in the area. He said hunters are a bit more secretive these days about their success because of competition for good hunting spots.
“More and more the two and half year old and younger deer are getting free passes, allowing our buck age structure to mature,” the biologist said.
He said hunters can help improve the herd quality by allowing more immature bucks to live through the season and to harvest more does.
Rick Prado is a longtime local hunter who has a keen sense of observation when it comes to the outdoors. He said the full moon last weekend will be just far enough in the past that daytime deer movement should peak just ahead of the weekend.
“If the weather prediction holds, it looks like a great opening weekend,” he said pointing to the first few days of rifle season. “However, opening day it doesn’t matter because... See this week's printed edition for more.
