Big Deer Blog

I just ran across some interesting research in the archives of deer science that I’ve been accumulating for the last 25 years. Researchers David Hirth and Dale McCullough studied and analyzed the snorting and tail-flagging behavior of whitetails on a Georgia reserve some years ago. For 2 years they accumulated data on more than 200 doe groups and 100 buck groups. They found that tail flagging occurred in buck groups 91% of the time and doe groups 95% of the time. Does are no more likely to flag their tails than bucks. They concluded that when deer encounter predators, they flag to keep their groups together. The researchers found that does (38% of the time) were much more likely to snort than bucks (only [...]

In deer camp hunters blow a lot of smoke and talk a lot of smack, much of it not appropriate for mixed company. That’s okay, it’s camp. But some words and phrases are not okay, anytime, anywhere, not in any hunting camp or situation. Act and talk like you’ve been there, which means avoiding these overused and annoying words and phrases. Hit list: This term originated in the Midwest and can be traced back more than a decade to the boom of trail-camera usage. Hunters review hundreds and thousands of cam images of deer and begin to assemble a “hit list” of bucks they’d shoot if given the chance later in the season….That big 10 is on the hit list… Well, [...]

This fantastic guest blog from Maryland hunter and BIG DEER blogger Danny Myers: One day last October I took a picture of a small 8-point through my scope and sent it to my nephew, Colby, teasing him because he’d decided to skip out on the last day of our early muzzleloader season.  Later that evening I ended up missing a bigger buck, to which he teased me back, “Uncle Danny, I wouldn’t have missed.” Well, funny how things come full circle. Maryland’s youth hunt days were November 15 and 16last year. I would sit with Colby, and my brother would hunt with his daughter, Abby. (They are brother and sister.) Colby is 13 and has been hunting since he was 8. [...]

I wore two versions of this boot for pretty much the entire deer season last year. In September and October, I wore the uninsulated boot on blacktail and mule deer hunts in California and the high desert of Oregon. Later in November I switched to the insulated boot for cold-weather stalks in Wyoming and Montana. I put more than 100 miles on these boots in terrain that ranged from rolling hills to moderate canyons to steep, rough mountains; in conditions from dry and dusty to snowy and slick. The ultimate field-test for a new spot-and-stalk hunting boot. The Instinct Backcountry Hunting Boots are designed more like a true hiking boot than a typical hunting boot, something I like. If hiking is [...]