Big Deer Blog

Today’s blog is from 20-year-old Ohio bowhunter Pierce Moore: As opening day in Ohio closed in, I made the sudden decision to take off the first week of bow season. I told a few people I was taking off the first week, and they looked at me like I was crazy. The first week of season is when the deer have had the least amount of pressure, if any pressure at all. I also took into account the moon phase for the week, and I was left with no doubt in my mind that I had to be in the stand opening week. I had two mature bucks I was anxious to see from my tree stand and hopefully have the [...]

November 8 Regardless of weather or phase of the moon, most does in the northern two-thirds of America will be bred between November 5 and Thanksgiving—this year, next fall and so on. Historically, November 8 has been and will continue to be one of the top big-buck days within this window. Get this: A whopping 15 Boone and Crockett bucks were killed on November 8, 2003, by far the most of any day that fall. Why so good? Well, in two or three days most of a herd’s does will pop into heat. For these two or three days prior, the horny big boys lug around in a daze and wait for that to happen. A giant might walk right [...]

Today’s excellent guest blog was sent by Andrew O’Day, 13, from Iowa. Way to go Andrew, awesome buck! The 2014 Iowa youth season had its typical challenges that come with hunting in September...rain, warm temps and an abundance of standing corn awaiting harvest. Fortunately, the Iowa DNR made some changes recently that allow youth hunters to use an unfilled youth tag during other select seasons. After several opportunities to take younger, smaller bucks, I was able to take advantage of some quite noticeable pre-rut activity on one particular farm. An unusual ratio of day-to-night trail pictures led my dad, Clint, to determine that we needed to give this new stand a try during the final weekend of the early muzzleloader [...]