Good MD Sika Rifle Season

[JPK]

We had a good MD sika rifle season, with a six pointer and a six or seven pointer (depending on how you count - taxidermist says seven pointer) killed, one six pointer missed (by my son, who rarely messes up!) and a couple of blown opportunities on a couple more six pointers. That's the most seen in quite a few years here at my club.

He's a bud's first sika stag, taken with my daughter's 243 since my bud is just getting back to hunting from when he used to go with his uncle when he was 13-14:


And here is my six or seven pointer, taken with a 257 Roberts:


Muzzle loader comes back in Saturday, and we can kill one stag per weapon, rifle or shotgun, muzzle loader and bow or crossbow, so I'm back in the game!

Here's one another bud killed earlier in the year with a bow. Getting an ice bath because it was warm out.


JPK

 

[Ratdog68]

Sika are great eating, does well with Teriyaki. I believe they're holding a pair of ivory teeth, just like elk do. Congrats, fine Sikas there.

 

[Curly Shuffle]

Way to go. Good eats!! BANG BANG!!

 

[FrankT]

Good job, did not even know they were in the wild in MD

 

[RattlesnakeDan]

MD as in Maryland?? Never seen such a critter in the U.S., looks like they like swampy areas.

 

[Ratdog68]

MD as in Maryland?? Never seen such a critter in the U.S., looks like they like swampy areas.

Sika Deer=Japanese Miniature Elk... most likely imported to a private party, some escaped and thrived.

 

[RattlesnakeDan]

I thought it was misspelled from Sitka deer, but clearly a different animal all together. Pretty cool..I should kill one.

 

[Ratdog68]

Nope, completely different critter. All I've seen/shot have the dark coat. They seem to be similar to fallow deer (except for coloring). They taste much like fallow deer too.

 

[JPK]

Yes, there are sika in TX too, but they are a much larger strain.

Maryland's sika come from a Japanese island and are from the smallest strain, as I understand it. I have read of two sources, one source is a fellow who bought a herd in the 1920's or so and ran into financial issues wrt to feeding them. Rather than watching them starve he set them loose. The other reported source was a private reserve on an Island in the Maryland section of the Chesapeake Bay. One winter the bay froze over and some of the herd walked to the mainland. That was supposedly circa 1919.

Either way, they inhabit the very extensive marshes and seasonally wet pine woods of Maryland's lower Eastern Shore (of the Chesapeake Bay.) A large sika stag will go 100lbs, and the rarest huge sika will go 125 or so, the biggest I have heard of went 140lbs, field dressed weights.

A symmetrical six point rack is as big as their antlers typically get, but there are some rare symmetrical eight pointers around. The stags my bud and I shot with rifles are pretty nice, and the photos don't do either of them justice, but the one my other bud killed with a bow is nicer. I'll post a photo of an even nicer one my son killed with a muzzle loader last year.

They bugle like elk and do have ivories like elk. They are dominant over whitetails when the two share habitat. At my club we have almost exclusively sika, in almost a decade I have seen maybe five or six whitetails, and three of them were together, a momma and two button bucks.

Sika are much warier than whitetails, imo. Especially the stags. And though our whitetails are great eating because of their farm crops diet, corn and soybean primarily, winter wheat later in the season, sika are much, much better, and the finest game I have ever eaten.

JPK

 

[JPK]

Here's another photo of my stag from this year, to show how photos of stags can be deceiving, Note how the top fork is shown better, and how the length of the tines is better revealed. My son is the middle of the three youngsters.


And here are a couple of photos of the stag my son shot last year during our early muzzle loader season in October, which is prime time during the rut; the rut is still going on now, but waning. He shot his stag from the same stand I shot my stag from, and when the stags were nearly in the same position. Mine was heading west, his was heading east, mine at about 90yds, his at about 70, mine in the am, his in the pm.






My son's stag is the best of the bunch. The one he missed this rifle season might have been even better. He'll get a second chance during the late muzzle loader season, I hope. Or maybe I will!

JPK

 

[rob072770]

Great job young man

 

[Chopperdrvr]

You guys are doing good on the Sika. I lived in MD for a couple years, but didn't know even know about the Sikas.