There are exceptions… but by far your best bet for good tender deer meat… is a young deer… at 6-8 months old… born in April May or so… harvested Oct Nov Dec…
At that age male or female works…
Now the next fall… a doe that is 1.5 year old usually still eats pretty good… but I have seen several 1.5 year old bucks that did not… just much tougher meat. I killed a 1.5 year old 4 point buck last fall… and even tenderloin grilled or hind quarter pressure canned… toughfer than I want.
We have plenty of bucks and doe’s here… so being a little selective is not going to seriously affect the population.
I’m just in this for the fruits and vegetables. If the deer would only plant their own crops in the woods and stay out of my yard I wouldn’t be bothering with this!
If I do get any, they’d have a good home in my deep freezer. People occasionally give away meat or serve it at gatherings. It’s good. Not good like homegrown asparagus or blueberries are good, but it’s good. I’ll make use of it.
A lot of hunters I’ve talked to look down on bow hunters because they often injure deer that run away and die a slow painful death. A crossbow has to be more consistently lethal creating less unnecessary cruelty. When you give a prey animal a quick death it is a gift mother nature is not likely to provide for you (or the animal otherwise). There likely will be no mourning relatives either.
I’d use a 30-06 if I had the space but in a neighborhood like mine it’s just not feasible. The crossbow is derided in bowhunting forums as something that “people who just want to extend the rifle season” use. Well, good. Get a good shot so they go down quick, and you harvest the meat!
The last deer I killed was on my property and seemed to think I had opened a petting zoo. She must have come to be petted and to enjoy all the wonderful browse I had clearly planted for her. She was a very big heavy doe with exceptionally tough meat suitable for ground meat use, besides her back straps.
I’m not a hunter of any experience but killed her with my 20 gage shotgun, shooting her in the face as she watched me. In my neighborhood, most prey remains wild and cautious, and that is how I want them to be.
Need to be 500 feet away from a dwelling, I believe. Whatever the specific rule is, any sort of “firearms” are a big no-no here. It’s not even legal for me to discharge a Red Ryder BB gun in my yard.
Sorry Kansas is world’s away from Connecticut I don’t know your rules there. @39thparallel calls this the wild west but I feel cramped here now with so many people moving here. Growing up I had 4 neiboring houses in miles. Once the hunters were on the trail of a deer and it came to my property and laid down and hid out close to me in a good hiding place. It was raised there by its mother. That deer I watched for several years elude the hunters. They got it eventually. They ambushed it from trees overhead. There are just a lot more people here now. I’m glad I won’t live to see it become completely civilized it goes against the grain with me. When I was young large herds of deer 15 or more strong would run through my property. Now their are not 15 deer in a mile. If the large groups of deer return most likely I will eat them again.
There was a time I needed every peice of fruit but Picking up windfalls is not legal for sale anyway. Windfall avocados cannot be picked up and sold . My family members with orchards like me did not pick them up either. We consider those like a donation. If someone said they needed them for hogs or cows or something well they have a use. Just like if I harvested grain I always left some in the fields. Most grain farmers in Kansas do the same. The old timers would plant an acre or two of sweet corn after planting the 100 acres of field corn. That was their gift to the community. There is a reason Noone ever could get rid of that county commissioner who planted that corn we liked him. People don’t give away much anymore but I do because I have plenty. I realize windfalls don’t need to be windfalls at all Frontpage - Fruit Collector . There is plenty of pears to eat and sell here no reason for me to be greedy. The other things I need more of I need to get better at growing.
I “grew” two deer this year, we watched them go from barely walking to fall juveniles spending a good share of the time in our yard. All I need to do now is figure out how I can “harvest” my “crop”. Probably pretty tasty deer meat with all that fruit of mine that they ate.
Bow hunting is the way to do it in suburban areas, but if you have neighbors whose minds are too withdrawn from the “real world” that could cause problems.
I’m lucky that about half my neighbors are immigrants and most of the rest are old. These are two demographics that seem to be the least likely to be infected by this mindset.
Oh, and wish me luck. I’m a bowhunting noob. I’ve been talking about doing it for years but never bothered until some buck decided to rub my young apple trees.
Any deer hunting is illegal where I am so while most of my neighbors would be cheering me on all I can do is wish about getting a harvest unfortunately. If it wasn’t for that I’d be out target practicing right now.
The University of Google says that Maryland regulations state you must get written permission from your neighbors within 150 yards of the site you are hunting from. If there’s any rules against bowhunting then they must be Baltimore’s rules.
I try to pick up the clean stuff that I can use and I sure don’t mind having help cleaning up the remaining fallen fruit… if the “helpers” can avoid doing too much damage to what’s in the trees. There was an old land management approach that said a certain percentage of crops grown (maybe 20% or 50% but I can’t remember???) were basically a “donation” to nature, respecting that we are trying to live in balance with nature and not trying to completely control nature or completely displace it or completely take everything produced for ourselves. With the need to make a profit and keep a roof above heads, that is often lost I guess. I do my best to encourage deer to go elsewhere, and not view me as their food source. I’m mostly growing trees with fruit above deer range both because of deer but also for the need to have hardy tough wind/drought resistant trees.
Unfortunately when hunting is not allowed they can become a car insurance issue when they destroy thousands of dollars of property. When I was a kid there were few people so the people from the cities would dump their dogs here. The dogs would pack up kill cows and try to kill us sometimes. A neighbor girl who lived 2 miles away was with me in the fields one day. A large pack of dogs tried to get us and treed us. We waited them out for hours. In those days children might have firearms but we didn’t as they were heavy to carry. The pack was killed a month later attacking her dad’s live stock and her dad. He used a carbine rifle with 30 bullets he had in a jeep he used to carry mineral blocks , feed and other things with. The last dog dropped at his feet and he was empty. That story would be very different had he not been allowed to discharge firearms. Sometimes you must be allowed legally to harvest food or protect it. You should be able to harvest deer if you choose to. Everyone should be able to protect their cattle. Please don’t misunderstand I believe in following rules just suggesting sometimes rules need changed and we vote on things like that.
It’s a Baltimore rule. Its too bad as everyone hates the deer with a passion now and most people are for allowing hunting, but there are a few very vocal opponents so nothing is going to change.
That was based on religious beliefs originally. Other religions might be similar but for those that were Christian or similar religion it said " farmers should leave the edges of their fields unharvested , should not pick up that which was dropped (gleanings), and should not harvest any over-looked produce that had been forgotten when they harvested the majority of a field." The current laws I believe have nothing to do with that but everything to do with listeria.
