Today’s great guest blog from Tony Woodruff:

Mike: Just wanted to send a quick story about a hunt a few weekends ago.

I took my 13 year old daughter bowhunting on the family farm up in north-central Nebraska. We couldn’t get to the primary location that I wanted to hunt Saturday morning because of the wind, so we hunted a field edge and only saw some does and fawns.

I slipped into a draw that afternoon where I hoped there would be evening activity, set up a pop-up blind and brushed it in. We went back to the blind with a little over 2 hours of daylight left. We were in the blind getting our chairs situated when I looked up and spotted a deer at the edge of the trees about 60 yards away. He appeared to be a good buck.

We quickly got situated where I thought he might come by and got ready. We didn’t have to wait long…he soon started down the trail that would take him right by us. Just as he stepped out of the brush he spotted the blind and stopped 25 yards away, looking right at us.  He hesitated just long enough for Kayla to make the lethal shot with her crossbow. This all transpired within about 10 minutes of us getting to the blind.

Since I am cursed with being color blind I have a very hard time seeing blood. We recruited some help to track him. It took about an hour as he didn’t leave a great blood trail, but I finally spotted him in a thicket.

He was by far Kayla’s biggest of the three bucks she has taken. I was deployed last year and we didn’t get the chance to hunt, so my daughter taking such a great buck this season made it even more special.  It’s such a great feeling to be able to pass on the thrill of the hunt to my kids. Kayla’s smile says it all.–Tony

2018 will go down as a tremendous rack year, as some giants are being shot across North America. Will it also be the year the record is broken for the highest-scoring whitetail buck ever killed with a bow?

This picture has been all over social media. Here’s a report from a source I trust:

This buck was killed in Edgar County, Illinois between Paris and Chrisman by a disabled Veteran Luke Brewster of Virginia. His close friend was hunting the buck and he came down and got a shot on him his first day on the hunt. The deer was 100% free range and legal after being investigated by the IDNR.

It has 39 countable points and green scored 311” shattering the non-typical whitetail Illinois state record.

The current archery world record is 294″ taken in Ohio in 2000….Illinois current archery non typical record is 267 1/8″ taken in 2003 by Davy Jones. Time will tell where this Prairie State Giant nets out at.

NEED YOUR HELP: If Luke is indeed from Virginia, my home state, I’d like to talk with him asap about this giant. I have cameramen coming here to Fauquier County November 13-20 to film with me, and we’d love to hook up with Luke and interview him for my TV show, BIG DEER. If anybody knows Luke, tell him to track me down, or send me his contact info. Thanks.

Big shout out to Big Daddy, who has stuck with me on the BIG DEER blog since I launched it 10 years ago:

Mike: Got this guy October 16 from my place in Potter County. This is my 40th archery buck in 40 years from Pennsylvania, which is a 1 buck per year state. Good hunting, Terry Murphy, a.k.a. Big Daddy.

Way to go Big Daddy, one heck of an accomplishment sir!

Some good hunters I know don’t hunt their best stands until around Halloween, and then they hunt them hard for the next 3 weeks. Their strategy is sound: put no pressure on bucks until they start rutting and moving more in daylight hours.

Good in theory, yes, but I don’t believe that approach is practical for most of us. You’re busy…you hunt when you can. If that happens to be in October, great. The woods are beautiful, the weather is nice and there are fewer people in the timber than there will be come November. There are opportunities to get your buck, and here is one thing to keep in mind.

Grant Woods, one of the premier whitetail scientists in America and a seasoned archer who hunts as many days as he can in October, says to key on what the deer are eating  now.

“If you’re not seeing deer in October, you aren’t hunting in the right places,” he says. “Deer change their behavior as they go from summer to fall patterns. Our telemetry studies don’t show any let up in feeding activity during the so-called ‘lull’ in October. You’ve just got to find them.”

According to Grant, the main reason deer seemingly disappear during early October is a change in their diets, and subsequently a change in their movements.  In summer and throughout September they fed often in crop fields, where they were visible. “But now many deer feed on browse and mast inside the woods, and they aren’t as easily seen,” he says. “Mast is a very strong attractant, and bucks will abandon their summer forage patterns when acorns start dropping. Find the mast and you’ll find some bucks.”

Most hunters know to look for acorns. But an overlooked strategy is not to focus enough on thickets in the woods, and the cover and browse they provide for deer. As they mender through the October woods between bedding covers and mast trees and fields, bucks veer here and there to walk through thickets, where they linger and nibble leaves, buds and stems. Look for trails with recent tracks leading to and from thickets; fresh rubs and scrapes nearby make the setup even better. Play the prevailing wind, and hang a stand for an ambush.