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What's Your Favorite Month?

Team Haastyle

Team Haastyle

Host of Haastyle Hunting
Every year we all go through the same ordeal with waiting for our first shooter buck to make his way on our computer screen.

What is the typical time each year that you get your first shooter buck on camera?

For me it is right around the beginning to middle of August. Leaves me on the edge of my seat every year.
 
Late July to early August it seems. By then you really know what your dealing with for overall size and being able to recognize deer from a previous year. At least for me. Once late August rolls on they seem to be less consistent with their patterns on the properties that I monitor. However, on one tract that I hunt, I struggle to get many different bucks on camera until Sept after they have stripped velvet.
 
For me it is usually early august. But this year this guy has my attention early.
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I'm up in Michigan so we are a bit behind you guys on the calendar, and in antler size and development, but here are my timeframes:

July 4th: I use this as my "break away" date. Prior to this date we seee some bucks get off to a good start and slow, or maybe they start slow and come on later. It can be hard to say what's what. That changes by late June/early July and you can really start to see which bucks are pulling away from the others. We always go up to the cabin for the holiday so I always do a card pull right around the 4th and it is usually the first really exciting pull of the year. Scouting/glassing this time of year is fun too.

Early August: By this point the bucks are pretty much showing what they will be. There's still some growth to come but you can pretty much tell what you're going to get (wide 8, tall 10, lopsided 9, etc) and you can tell which bucks you will be chasing. We have an party at the cabin the first weekend in August every year and that weekends card pull is almost always an exciting one. This is usually where a buck "officially" gets deemed a shooter.

I then do a quick card pull around September 15th, 20th etc and see which bucks have stayed around and who has been showing patternable daylight habits after the shedding was done. Hopefully a shooter or two is patternable and that information becomes the base of my plan for the first few days of the season.

We do more pulls than that over the course of the summer but those are the dates that I really use as my information points if that makes sense.
 
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My shooters usually start showing up on cam in September or October, sometimes not until November! But I suppose those late ones may be coming in from somewhere else.
 
I know my target buck from last year is the one I have been getting growth pics of, but right now trail camera pics just aren't the same. I prefer anytime from full velvet growth to right before they shed!

 
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