We have a lot of deer in our neighborhood. My immediate neighbors have often told me they would allow me to bowhunt in their yards. I smile and decline; there's just too much risk. And I have some great land I hunt only 30 miles away. Then my neighbor sends me this photo taken from his deck. Sigh......

From the picture, it looks like he is still pretty young.

What risks do you see bow hunting? I’d say that specific area seems perfectly safe?

It is big.

Who put the antlers on that horse? j/k

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Originally posted by hrcjon:
What risks do you see bow hunting? I’d say that specific area seems perfectly safe?

Putting an arrow in or through it and having it run off and end up somewhere that would be a bad area for it to expire, i.e. another neighbor's yard, the school playgound that borders the neighborhood, the street, etc. We do have a few neighbors that are against hunting. I've put an arrow through a deer, nicked the heart, and had it run 75 yards before it piled up.

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Originally posted by chbibc:

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
What risks do you see bow hunting? I’d say that specific area seems perfectly safe?

Putting an arrow in or through it and having it run off and end up somewhere that would be a bad area for it to expire, i.e. another neighbor's yard, the school playgound that borders the neighborhood, the street, etc. We do have a few neighbors that are against hunting. I've put an arrow through a deer, nicked the heart, and had it run 75 yards before it piled up.

Yep. My brother arrowed a rabbit in our back yard when he was a youngster and it ran off and ended up on the neighbors front porch spinning circles and leaving a bunch of blood.

It’s hard to tell without looking at the body but it does look kinda young. It will be fun watching it get older and turn into a real brute if it hangs around.

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Originally posted by 1s1k:
It’s hard to tell without looking at the body but it does look kinda young. It will be fun watching it get older and turn into a real brute if it hangs around.

The biggest threat to it will be vehicles.

Maybe its just age setting in, but I'd recommend you just enjoy the pic and the fact you have nature that close to you 24/7. As you noted, there are plenty of areas to hunt. Your neighborhood shouldn't be one of them (IMO).

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Originally posted by 1s1k:

quote:

Originally posted by chbibc:

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
What risks do you see bow hunting? I’d say that specific area seems perfectly safe?

Putting an arrow in or through it and having it run off and end up somewhere that would be a bad area for it to expire, i.e. another neighbor's yard, the school playgound that borders the neighborhood, the street, etc. We do have a few neighbors that are against hunting. I've put an arrow through a deer, nicked the heart, and had it run 75 yards before it piled up.

Yep. My brother arrowed a rabbit in our back yard when he was a youngster and it ran off and ended up on the neighbors front porch spinning circles and leaving a bunch of blood.

It’s hard to tell without looking at the body but it does look kinda young. It will be fun watching it get older and turn into a real brute if it hangs around.

I used to live in Anchorage, AK. During the summer there were about 300 moose living in the city but when the snow began to fall the moose came down out of the Chugach and there were 3000 living in the city. Fall, winter, and spring it was a weekly occurrence to see a moose within' a 100 yards of my front door (sometimes 1 or 2 yards as they'd be eating my landscaping by the front porch).

Before I lived there, there was a moose hunting season that will go down in infamy. The city decided to allow moose hunting with a bow in the city limits. By Alaska code, you have to harvest the meat from any animal you shoot or there are stiff penalties (loss of license and big fines) if you don't. In other words, a bowhunter would shoot a moose on their own lawn and after being shot it'd wander off into a neighbor's lawn, school yard, etc. where they had to field dress the 800 to 1800 pound moose where it fell. My friends who are avid moose hunters call it absolute carnage and a mistake the city is unlikely to repeat.

^ While my friends were going to UAA, they had one that would stick it's head through the window and into their kitchen.

I said "one day she's going to decide to come in and just walk through that wall".

I'm with you. I had big deer in my backyard at my last house. I had 1.6 acres in suburban Cobb County outside Atlanta. A few of my neighbors hunted in the neighborhood and killed big deer. I love to hunt and kill big deer but it just doesn't seem all that interesting to me to sit in my backyard to kill a deer. Not to mention having to chase one into a neighbors yard.

Funny story, my neighbor killed a deer and it died in my yard last January. No problem. But it happened to be the first day of us showing our house to sell. 3 couples came through and were treated to a puddle of blood and hair down by my fire pit. I was not very happy but it ended up not hurting us as two of them made offers the next day.

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Originally posted by sasquatch28:
From the picture, it looks like he is still pretty young.

Absolutely no way to age a deer from a single grainy pic laying down. Could be 3.5 or 6.5, no way to know without seeing it on it standing.

We call those kind of deer suburbanites around here. They wander the tracts of woods between houses and neighborhoods. They become so used to people they become almost domesticated. You will never see a buck that size lying out in the open like that in the daytime in the wild.

People feed them all the time around here and even buy large size dog beds for them to encourage them to bed down in their yards.