The Bucks of Tecomate 2009 Season Hunts
The Bucks of Tecomate 2009 Season Hunts
Well, it has been a long hunting (and TV) season with plenty of ups and downs. In the end, we "got 'er done" but it wasn’t easy. Lots of no-kill hunts, which is to be expected when you’re hunting big mature bucks like we do on The Bucks of Tecomate. Far too much happened to tell you all the details. Truthfully, I could write a book on this season. When you see the shows this fall, you will see that it was a great season, but it wasn’t easy. We hunted long and hard. Tecomate Team went on over 20 hunts, from Montana to Maryland to Iowa to Texas, before completing our 10 show quota. When the smoke cleared, we had a bunch of giant bucks on the ground, but we went home with our tails between our legs more than ever before this year. The Midwest, in particular, kicked our butts. Thank God for our Texas ranches managed under the Tecomate Management Strategy! Over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to give a thumbnail season recap. Hang on. It’s quite a ride!
An Auspicious Beginning
Our early season bow and muzzleloader hunts, all in the Midwest, foreshadowed the difficulty we would have the rest of the season in that region of the country. Mali Vajanic took his BowTech to Ohio in hopes of arrowing one of the giants there. He loved the country, saw its incredible potential but returned empty-handed. In the meantime, Rans Thomas was having the same luck in Nebraska with his BowTech. A drought had burned up the food plots he was depending on to concentrate the deer. As he said, "it just didn’t happen! Saw a couple of big ones too far and too late." About that same time, Blaine Burley was hoping to hear his Knight Muzzleloader bellow, but the only targets he saw during legal shooting hours were young bucks, not something we shoot on The Bucks of Tecomate. Blaine did see a handful of mature bucks, including one monster ... after video light!
This would become a familiar reframe for the rest of the season. You see, cameras and big mature bucks just don’t go together well. Old wise whitetails are low-light animals; video cameras don’t capture broadcast quality images in low light, the kind big bucks like! Therein lies the rub. The fact is that when you hunt with a camera you lose more than half of the prime big buck movement time, i.e., the first and last 30 minutes of shooting light! That’s a real problem for us at Tecomate because we ONLY shoot big old bucks. This low-light problem has haunted us from the beginning of our series, and it really got us this season. And, that problem is on top of having a second guy following you around in the whitetail woods with a 40-pound camera and an octopus-like tripod grapping everything it gets near! The wonder is not that we came home empty-handed so often; it’s that we scored as often as we did! Cameras and cameramen ... God love 'em!
After our early Midwest run, Blaine and Mali went to Maryland and New Jersey – Maryland for whitetails and New Jersey for free-ranging sikka deer! Yea, I didn’t know what they were either. Interesting and challenging critters. The whitetails were nocturnal, but Blaine did brave the swamps and bring home a sikka. This will be an interesting hunt! Something you’ve never seen before.
More to come on The Bucks of Tecomate 2009 Season Hunts ...
Well, it has been a long hunting (and TV) season with plenty of ups and downs. In the end, we "got 'er done" but it wasn’t easy. Lots of no-kill hunts, which is to be expected when you’re hunting big mature bucks like we do on The Bucks of Tecomate. Far too much happened to tell you all the details. Truthfully, I could write a book on this season. When you see the shows this fall, you will see that it was a great season, but it wasn’t easy. We hunted long and hard. Tecomate Team went on over 20 hunts, from Montana to Maryland to Iowa to Texas, before completing our 10 show quota. When the smoke cleared, we had a bunch of giant bucks on the ground, but we went home with our tails between our legs more than ever before this year. The Midwest, in particular, kicked our butts. Thank God for our Texas ranches managed under the Tecomate Management Strategy! Over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to give a thumbnail season recap. Hang on. It’s quite a ride!
An Auspicious Beginning
Our early season bow and muzzleloader hunts, all in the Midwest, foreshadowed the difficulty we would have the rest of the season in that region of the country. Mali Vajanic took his BowTech to Ohio in hopes of arrowing one of the giants there. He loved the country, saw its incredible potential but returned empty-handed. In the meantime, Rans Thomas was having the same luck in Nebraska with his BowTech. A drought had burned up the food plots he was depending on to concentrate the deer. As he said, "it just didn’t happen! Saw a couple of big ones too far and too late." About that same time, Blaine Burley was hoping to hear his Knight Muzzleloader bellow, but the only targets he saw during legal shooting hours were young bucks, not something we shoot on The Bucks of Tecomate. Blaine did see a handful of mature bucks, including one monster ... after video light!
This would become a familiar reframe for the rest of the season. You see, cameras and big mature bucks just don’t go together well. Old wise whitetails are low-light animals; video cameras don’t capture broadcast quality images in low light, the kind big bucks like! Therein lies the rub. The fact is that when you hunt with a camera you lose more than half of the prime big buck movement time, i.e., the first and last 30 minutes of shooting light! That’s a real problem for us at Tecomate because we ONLY shoot big old bucks. This low-light problem has haunted us from the beginning of our series, and it really got us this season. And, that problem is on top of having a second guy following you around in the whitetail woods with a 40-pound camera and an octopus-like tripod grapping everything it gets near! The wonder is not that we came home empty-handed so often; it’s that we scored as often as we did! Cameras and cameramen ... God love 'em!
After our early Midwest run, Blaine and Mali went to Maryland and New Jersey – Maryland for whitetails and New Jersey for free-ranging sikka deer! Yea, I didn’t know what they were either. Interesting and challenging critters. The whitetails were nocturnal, but Blaine did brave the swamps and bring home a sikka. This will be an interesting hunt! Something you’ve never seen before.
More to come on The Bucks of Tecomate 2009 Season Hunts ...
Posted by David Morris
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