Season Update 2007 with Buck Country Outfitters!

Well another season is coming to a close here at BCO. We would like to say it was another great year. However, that just was

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not the case. In our 10 years of business this was one of our most difficult seasons. The year began with a bizarre spring freeze that resulted in a near total loss of fruit crop including Persimmon which is a whitetail favorite here. It also wiped out the White Oak Acorn crop here which is the main food source and protein builder here. If that were not enough, we then faced one of the worst droughts on record which obliterated our food plots. We planted our green plots 4 different times with little to show for it. Our corn and bean crops were very low yields and were eaten up in mid October. Along with the drought came E.H.D., which killed around 10% of our deer population. Although we found no mature bucks dead, we did find several mature doe. This impacted the rut by having fewer doe coming in heat during the peak rut. Our chasing was light, but the competition was heavy, seeing numerous broken antlered bucks. Many of our guests heard or witnessed fighting and saw big mature bucks with broken antlers. Bucks harvested during the peak rut were also broken and many bucks that would have made the 130 minimum had to be passed due to broken antlers. This was something we have not seen in the past. We are very happy to see E.H.D. leave us and hope it never returns.
This was also our first year with a 130 inch minimum. We loved seeing those 2 year old bucks surviving to be 3 year olds. This

added to our record low shot opportunity. The young bucks we passed this year would have been shooters last year. This lowered our shot opportunity as well. Our shot op this year for bow hunters was a record low 36%. Normally we would have been between 40%-50%, but we still took some great bucks and saw many more bruisers. Although we took less bucks than usual, our hunters still had a great time and we had a good re-bookings which speaks volumes about our guides and cook as well as the quality of our guests that visited us this year. We want to say thank you so much to the folks who came up this year and we look forward to seeing you again in the future.
Despite a poor harvest we have been getting some great trail cam pics. To see more of those click here.

HUNTER STATS 2007
Our Mature doe to buck ratio was 2 to 1.
Early Bow-Our Early bow hunters faced drought stricken food plots and 90 degree temps. Still 8 hunters managed to see 87 deer in 3 days. That is an average of 8.3 deer per hunter. 20 bucks were sighted with 6 of those being 130 or better for an average of 33% of bucks sighted being shooters. We had 2 shot opportunities but no bucks were harvested.
Rut Bow-Our rut bow hunters faced a most difficult season. Our sightings were down and are as follows. 30 Bow Hunters saw 626 deer. That is an average of 20.8 deer per hunter on a 5 day hunt. 138 bucks were sighted for an average of 4.6 bucks per hunter. Of those bucks 37 shooter bucks (130 Class or Better) were sighted for an average of 1.2 shooters per hunter. 26% of our bucks sighted were shooter bucks. Our Shot opportunity was lower this year being around 36%.

This buck was taken by one of our neighbors. He has 2 broken points and is a prime example what happens when you have a great buck to doe ratio. He was taken near our number 8 tree stand. This is a nice 3 year old buck. We are very fortunate to have good neighbors who practice quality deer management.