I went back and thought about 10 random bucks I’ve shot in recent years: Sask. 30 yards OK 90 IA 70 Sask. 130 WY 150 AL 80 MS 90 VA 60 WY 140 TX 120 Average kill distance: 96 yards. I love shots inside 100 yards (and set a lot of my blinds where I think I might get an easy shot on my TV show) because you can dispatch a deer cleanly and confidently, but there [...]
While you’re out mowing grass or working your land with a tractor or ATV, try this. Mow or bush-hog a strip of grass or a lane through a thicket right up to one or two of your favorite tree stands you’ve hunted for years. Keep those lanes trimmed all summer. Deer will find them and use them. One day this fall, an 8-pointer might walk smack down the strip to your stand. The trimmed lanes are great places to plant mini-plots. Scour old farm/weed fields and clear-cuts for hidden fruit trees, like apple or persimmon. Open up the trees by clearing away brush; prune a few limbs and pour some fertilizer over the roots. A tree should make some soft [...]
Pope and Young, America’s leading bowhunting organization, is excited to announce a new World Record Typical Whitetail Deer in Velvet and a new World Record Non-Typical Whitetail Deer in Velvet. Pope and Young convened a special panel to measure these potential World Records at a Measurers Workshop held in Regina, Saskatchewan on June 15th, and these two amazing bucks have been verified as new World Records in their respective categories. Jack McNaughton shot his Typical Whitetail in Velvet near the Smokey River in Alberta on August 31st, 2013. Jack’s buck has a verified final score of 182 4/8” topping the charts and coming in as a new world record. “Jack’s buck is one of the most incredible whitetails I have [...]
From Kansas to Virginia and north to Canada, 95 percent of the adult does will come into estrous and be bred from roughly November 5-20, regardless of moon phase, or weather for that matter. Biologists will tell you it’s been that way for years in the Northern two-thirds of the country, and will continue to be that way forever. So take off anytime from Halloween though Thanksgiving, and you’ll hunt rutting deer. And anytime you hunt rutting deer you are going to have a good time, with the potential to shoot a good buck. But I do believe that some days and weeks are better than others to take your bowhunting vacation according to when the various phases of the [...]
You can go out and glass fields on summer evenings, and poke around for deer tracks and stuff like you always have (yawn, boring). Or, you can think out of the box to find a huge buck to hunt in a few months (okay, perk up now and read on). Take a Hike Say you hunt a 400-acre block of woods, or maybe even a huge public area. You probably only hunt 100 of those acres, or maybe even just 50 of 75. You figure other people roam the ridges and hollows beyond your stand, so you stay put. Plus, you’ve likely gotten comfy and a bit lazy. You bust a buck in your old, familiar spot every once in [...]