Survey: Do You Hunt For Meat or Antlers?
Are you primarily a meat hunter, or a big rack hunter? Reply with a one-word answer, and you'll be entered into a random drawing for a BIG DEER prize pack.
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05, 2015
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04, 2015
QDMA Report: Hunters Shooting More Mature Bucks Across U.S.
The Quality Deer Management’s 2015 Whitetail Report is now available online. Amid all the interesting data, this: Looking at the age structure of the national buck harvest, yearling bucks (1.5-year-olds) are steadily declining as a percentage of the annual harvest, while the kill of bucks 3.5 years or older is steadily climbing. The national buck harvest may soon include a higher percentage of mature bucks than yearlings. That is a good trend that has been a long time coming. The days of seeing a young spike and thinking, If I don’t shoot him the next guy will… might finally be coming to an end. It shows that more whitetail hunters than ever are choosing to let small, immature bucks walk [...]
28
04, 2015
World-Record Hanson Buck: 20 Years Later
I saw this great picture yesterday and it reminded me of the visit I made to Milo’s house in Saskatchewan one day in November 2013. It had always been a goal of mine to see the world-record typical buck in person, and hear the story from Milo himself. Here are excerpts and snippets of what he told me; my entire interview with Milo aired on BIG DEER TV last fall: It was 1993, and the big buck had been seen several times, “he was known around town.” On Monday night it snowed, and the next day a guy saw the buck go into patch of willows. He got Milo and a small group of hunters, and “we devised a plan to push [...]
27
04, 2015
Rut Tactic: Crack Up a Buck
Here’s an off-the-wall tactic to try one day this November, courtesy of my friend Eliot Strommen (Luke’s dad) who hunts strictly w/a longbow out on the Milk River, Montana. It’s similar to rattling, but w/a twist. Eliot glasses for a mature, rut-crazed buck crossing an alfalfa field, swaggering alone or trailing a doe. He then eases into the timber downwind of the deer, glides lightly through the woods and creeps as close as he dares to a spot where the buck can hear him. He sets up behind a tree, picks up a stick and starts cracking trees and whipping brush, making all sorts of racket. For the interesting next step, he picks up his right foot and paws one, two, three….then [...]
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04, 2015
Review: Barnes VOR-TX Ammo & Copper Bullets For Hunting
Copper bullets for hunting came onto the scene more than 30 years ago. But since I have been traveling all over the country and shooting lead bullets with great success during that time, felling my share of bucks and a few elk, I never felt the need to go non-lead. Until last September, when I traveled to the Central Coast of California to hunt for blacktail deer. Doug Roth, my host for this hunt, told me to bring copper bullets, as lead projectiles were prohibited in the area we’d hunt. This was a first for me, but I gladly did so, seeing this as an opportunity to test a different kind of hunting bullet. On the hunt I carried a [...]