Here's the latest giant on cam, and I'm particularly excited about this one. We'll be trying to shoot this buck on film for BIG DEER TV in a few weeks. We know where he lives and we have a good idea of his pattern, but there are certainly no guarantees with a world-class deer like this. But I like our chances.
Some bucks never die. This picture has popped up again on Facebook and some forums and is causing a stir. Ten people have sent it to me in the last few weeks. I must have received this picture at least 100 times over the past 4 years. When I first posted about this buck back in 2010, the story was it came from Maine or Ontario. That was quickly shot down when a savvy reader said he’d seen it on a website for a high-fence preserve in Wisconsin. Rumor has it the buck weighed more than 400 pounds…another rumor says it looks so big because its body was bloated by the heat. I cannot confirm those things. Will this buck [...]
In 1989, the natural resources office of the Naval Support Facility Indian Head, an installation 30 miles south of Washington, D.C. with 3,000 acres of prime habitat on the Potomac River, initiated a management program that relied on bowhunting-only as the primary means for controlling the big deer herd. The project spanned a remarkable 24 years and was comprised of two parts. From 1989 through 2006, extensive data was collected and analyzed on how many shots hunters launched, how many deer they hit how many of those animals they recovered within a 24-hour period. Click here for the recovery rate results. From 2007 through 2012, a secondary study was added to try and distinguish recovery rates between hunters using fixed-blade [...]
A group of fellow Virginia hunters in the southern part of the state is practicing quality management and growing some big deer. This year they’ve added a few more food plots and gone heavy on corn plots to mix it up. They have some studs on the farm this year, including the two great 8-pointers above. The top buck is “Junior,” now fully mature at 4/5 years old. The guys say: “Thank God for passing hunting on Sunday in Virginia! Should be a special year here…” Here’s a buck one of our bloggers in the Midwest is looking forward to seeing to this fall. He asked for thoughts on age and score. Hard to tell in camera photos sometimes, but looks like [...]
I once had an old Alabama redneck (term used fondly) tell me, “Boy, our deer walk around with their heads craned back, looking up into the trees cause so many of their brothers and sisters and cousins have had an arrow through ‘em.” If you have hunted pressured, spooky Southern bucks you know what my redneck friend is talking about. I recall that because I read an article in which a biologist said a deer’s eyes are oriented to pick up predator movement at or just below the horizon. He said a deer is much less adept at picking up movement above the horizon, so you can get away with more movement in a tree stand than on the ground. [...]