My Stand was close enough for some of my cats to follow me down to see what I was doing.
The last few years I had the farm, I let my neighbor harvest from it. The only shooting I did was with a camera.
It just wasn't a challenge anymore. With the peanut field next to me being split up and sold, gone were the nice LONG shots. Pop never understood my wanting the long shot from a young age.
After my first kill at 11, the next season, I got to build locate a spot and set up my own stand.Pop hated the spot I picked out. Placing my stand SUCKED to get into. One of my Uncles helped me build a platform outta square tubing with his little crackerbox stick welder.........sold it with the third stand installed on it in 2015. Where I placed it and with the height, I could cover a large area and had several nice long sighting avenues.
It always produced for me. Pop and our hunting partner used it a couple of times, but both hated long shots.
The closest shot for me was just over 150yds. He was a very big n stocky buck. The old lady's foreman called him an old fashioned buck. He had hunted in that area all his life, except when he was an artillery man in WWII. .....deaf as hell and talked LOUD! "Joe! We're not the ones that can't hear!" It did seem to be a sub-species of whitetail. Bucks were MUCH more stocky and a darker shade of brown. There were examples hanging on the walls. My understanding is that mine was one of the last taken in the mid/late 70's.
I never could find info on this at the time. No DNA testing back then and I doubt if anyone spent money on studies in that area of whitetail management.
That little chill in the air sure adds to this conversation on deer. Lots of good memories!