Big Deer Blog

Thanks to our friend Wren for this hunt report from deep in the Brush Country: As for this awesome drop, Wren wrote,” Thought about you when I saw this buck one  Saturday recently. Based on buck activity we have observed I am betting on the rut peaking early in our area. Does getting harassed and staying in the brush, avoiding open senderos. Older bucks showing aggressive behavior, lots of scraping, rubbing antlers / fighting scrub brush, have seen several pretty serious fights between mature bucks. It’s early for us to be shooting trophies, we are focused on meeting our management numbers now. Looks like a great year for racks in the Brush Country!" Jake Degeyter of Atchafalaya Taxidermy sent Wren the picture of this [...]

This is perhaps—no, make that definitely—the most unusual Christmas decoration I have ever seen, but in a weird sort of way I think it’s kind of cool. The lady who posted this picture to Facebook told NBC Montana that reaction has been mixed. "A lot of people were just like, 'Well, be glad it's dead. You don't have to worry about it eating your pets...but I don't know. To me, it's morbid, it rings of animal cruelty.” But Sanders County Sheriff Tom Rummel says the hanging animal is perfectly legal. For one thing, a coyote is a predator (and a deer killer) and not a game animal. The lawman went on to say that because the coyote is already dead, it’s not an issue of [...]

I had not hunted the great state of Kansas for a few years. Several recent trips out there had been a bust. I had hunted lands leased by outfitters, and those places were badly overhunted, as are many outfitter lands across the Midwest. Anytime you hunt a property where dozens or even hundreds of people have hunted before you that season (with either bow or gun) your odds of killing a big deer are low, and astronomically low when you are trying to film a TV show. With all that human pressure (movement, scent and shooting) the big bucks not killed or pushed off a property go completely nocturnal. You might get lucky, but... Remember that and do your homework before [...]

Hey Mike: I read your post a couple of weeks ago about the best dates to hunt in November. You hit the nail on the head! Thought I would send you this pic to prove your theory was right. I killed this deer on November 8. As you can see I got to share it with a some very special people. My dad, my 6-year-old son, Briar, and some close family friends, which are not pictured, helped me track him. We lost blood at one point and Briar was the one to put 4 grown men back on track—it doesn't get any better than that!  Keep up the good work Mike and good luck with the rest of your season.--Nathan “Necbone” Crain Great buck Bone, [...]

Mike, at our hunt club we gut our deer out in the woods, bring them into the skinning shed and weigh them before processing. We obviously know the dressed weight, but are always guessing the live weight of those deer. Is there a good way to calculate that?—Thanks, John from VA John, to get a good estimate of a buck’s or a doe’s live weight, hoist your gutted deer and weigh it on a scale. Then pull out your Smartphone, open the calculator and multiply the field-dressed weight by 1.28. For example, a gutted buck that goes 140 on a scale would have weighed about 179 on the hoof in the woods. A mature 10-pointer that dressed out at 170 [...]