TheDrunkenTigah

Few years back I put a savage 12FV 22-250 in a heavier Boyd’s stock and bedded/pillared it. It is a heavy setup but the bullet holes touch at 100 yards. It would be too much for squirrels but everyone loves shooting it.

I’m all for buying a new gun but your 270 with a 140-150 gr quality bonded or monolithic bullet is more than capable of killing a nilgai out to 600 yards. There are relatively few people on earth who should be attempting to shoot an animal past that, and no offense intended but if you were one you probably wouldn’t be here asking.

If you’re serious about stretching it out on a live animal, a ruger American predator isn’t the gun. I own it in 6.5cm and it’s built to be a light weight whitetail or coyote daily driver, exactly what the name suggests, not a dial-a-turret tack driver. The recoil in something like 7prc or 300 win mag would be offensive.

I would look hard at something from Bergara or a Weatherby 307 that’s gonna be closer to 10 lbs decked out in a rem700 footprint, meaning you can easily upgrade any part of the rifle down the line if you want. I would pick 300 win mag if you don’t handload just for the ammo availability.

quote:

---

Can you elaborate?

---

In 2022 MS established a special velvet archery season with the stipulation that reporting and CWD testing was mandatory for any buck harvested. Simultaneously, the deer permit required on top of an already expensive all-game license increased from $5 to $100, with the increase supporting the cost of CWD testing. In 2023 with data gathered from that testing, MSWFP secured federal USDA funding for CWD surveillance and continues to apply for more. There’s some $70MM up for grabs at the federal level.

Louisiana is proposing a special archery season within CWD control zones. The testing is expensive. I speculate you will pay for Louisiana’s petition for their piece of the federal pie through a quiet license fee increase of some kind.

quote:

---

Can someone explain to me why yall can’t get off this topic?

---

It makes people feel better to blame some characteristic or label on food for why they feel like shite, when they consume 4500 calories a day and haven’t seen the inside of a gym in 15 years. Switching from canola to bacon grease is easy, weights and lean protein are hard.

Crawdude will be along shortly to give you the resources available, there’s plenty available to help.

As someone who is the defacto manager of several ponds from an acre to four, best advice I can give you is don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can ever achieve balance in a small pond, especially if you want trophy bass. It is not a natural system and you will never be able to set it and forget it, they have more in common with an aquarium than a large lake. It’s not backbreaking work but you do need to keep up with liming and fertilizing and especially removing fish if you want to see it thrive.

It’s 100% due to lower numbers. The thinking being that toms get more desperate later in the season and relatively easier (not easy) to kill.

Based on my experience with I&E maintenance, if hitting it with a pipe wrench doesn’t fix it, the next step is to buy a new one.

Hope this helps.

quote:

---

Never understood why someone that kills a huge deer, and people already question it...... make no sense to me

---

It wouldn’t be that hard to understand if you had familiarity with the area. I don’t have a dog in this hunt but live about 30 mins away and if someone told me they have a 184” deer on camera I would laugh in their face and assume they have no idea what they’re talking about. A good mature buck in the piney woods that people are proud of is 130”. Killing that deer in south MS is akin to being struck by lightning while holding the winning powerball ticket. Add in that he stands to parley this into a career via YouTube and people are going to be rightfully skeptical.

I thought sure they would announce extending the season through the rest of the weekend, but the fact that they haven’t already doesn’t bode well.

Last year they announced it immediately after their monthly commission meeting, presumably because they voted on it while in session. That meeting for this month happened ten days ago.

quote:

---

You glass a deer at night (which he admitted to) and have a loaded rifle with thermal within reach, and have a lookout/driver (which is how most all night road hunters operate)…

---

I live in the country and usually have a rifle in a case in my back seat. I would (and do) think nothing of pulling over to look at deer standing in a field, day or night.

I wouldn’t be able to resist having a mulcher come in and clear one large plot in the middle of the property 3 to 4 acres in size, mostly because that’s not feasible where I’m at. Regardless, sunlight hitting the ground is what feeds deer, and they can’t climb trees. I would look at hinge cutting to encourage natural browse, thinning around hardwoods to reduce some competition, but not change much else. Burning is an excellent way to get forbs established if you can manage it. Short of that, drag your box blade and break dirt anywhere you can get to.

On 160 acres you aren’t in charge of enough property to truly manage the herd, but it’s more than enough room to encourage regular use and for plenty of deer to take up residence there. Goal should be to provide food, water, cover, and keep human presence to a minimum. Sounds like you’re about 85% there.

The standard plot mix is winter wheat, cereal rye, and oats planted when rain is coming in late September or early October. Most folks will add clover and brassicas to this but those three do the heavy lifting. You can do a soil test to find what’s really needed but lime at 2 tons/acre is almost an automatic result along with 100 lbs/acre of 13-13-13 at planting.