If you’ve read many of my posts, you know that I’m proud of my Western NY roots. It was there that my passion for the outdoors was developed and where the majority of my time in the woods is spent – even now when I live some 500 miles away.

That said, there remains a different level of anticipation when you’re sitting 18-feet high in a tree in NY as opposed to another tree in Iowa or Kansas. It’s best explained as a mananged anticipation. That’s because the number of bruiser bucks there is much smaller than the classic whitetail belt of the Midwest. And you rarely hear about many bucks killed to reverse that feeling.

My buddy Greg passed along a couple of noteworthy posts from EmpireHunting.com this morning that will go a long way in helping that level of expectation rise when I return to the stand in New York next Fall.

The first was of the Mctarnaghan buck, which was killed in Livingston County on Nov. 6 (coincidentally, that means that I was sitting in a tree just roughly 45 minutes away when he arrowed this deer).

The buck green scored a 186 4/8″ net and sports antlers not seen very often in NY! Congrats to you, Matt Mctarnaghan. My pal Greg owns land just a stone’s throw away from where this deer was taken and I can’t imagine how excited he is to see a deer this large taken in his area.

Not too far from where Mctarnaghan took this deer, and on the opposite side of my family’s land, a diehard hunter found matching sheds for a true monarch typical buck that will clear the 200″ barrier! Imagine that, the deer is still walking.

Congrats go to Corey Wiktor on what is an amazing find. If harvested in 2009, the deer would have likely surpassed the Roosevelt Luckey record buck killed in 1939 (the first deer hunting season in NY) in my home county of Allegany.

Both deer represent what can happen in New York when deer are able to reach their potential. It’s a discussion I annually have with members of my extended family. Changing a half-century long practice of killing whatever buck you see has become a greater challenge than turning the Titanic. You can bet your lucky Buck knife though that both of these pictures will be passed around our camp next fall as a reminder of what could be. To think, our property lies right between where these whoppers have stepped hoof …