Big Deer Blog

From Springfield News-Ledger: When the huge whitetail buck walked below his tree stand, Paul Gragg wasn't sure he would be able to make the shot. Gragg, 49, was hunting in late October (2015) with a prehistoric atlatl — a wooden throwing device that a skilled user can launch a 7-foot long hunting dart with remarkable speed and power. The buck walked straight under Paul’s stand. When it moved out to about 8 yards and swung its head to the right, Paul extended his left arm and let fly. The broadhead-tipped dart hit home center above the front leg. “My first thought was how easy that dart went in him," Paul said. The 15-point buck jumped and ran about 40 yards before it fell [...]

America’s state wildlife biologists are underpaid and underappreciated, and they have to put up with a lot of politics, bureaucracy and other BS, but they do great work, not only for deer but for all game and non-game animals and birds. Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Facebook: District biologist Pete Acker rescued this bald eagle that had been struck by a vehicle (recently) in Surry County. He says, "Quickly I found the mature bald eagle could not fly but was still very nimble on the ground. I was able to capture it without further injury and transport it to a local rehabilitator, Smithfield Animal Hospital. They stabilized the bird and arranged to transport it to the Wildlife Center of [...]

Field report from a hard-core bowhunter in Ohio: After many days of hunting and 20 days of getting pictures, always at night or in the early morning, I finally took down the "Ghost Buck." November 10, 2015, about 900 am. He rounded a bend of the creek, saw my buck decoy and ran 400 yards in about eight seconds. He slowly circled the decoy, and at 12 yards I took the shot. I have taken 130s deer from this stand, which is 32 feet up in the air, but this 170-class buck really had me shaking up there. I called my buddy and the track job was on. We jumped the buck 25 minutes after I shot him. I knew better than to [...]

Only a handful of cases of "Bullwinkle Disease” have been documented in whitetail deer, and we’ve covered most of them here on BIG DEER Blog. Does and bucks with big, swollen snouts have been documented from Florida to Texas to Michigan. Ground zero for the disease seems to be Alabama, where the first known case of Bullwinkle (the disease is so new that scientists don’t have a technical name for it yet, but the common name fits for now) was documented in 2007. Hunter Courtney Stanley (above) shot this nice buck with a swollen nose near Furman, Alabama in January 2015. And last month I received emails from two more Alabama men who shot the latest known cases of Bullwinkle bucks in the January [...]