A guy emailed me this picture and asked: Hanback, would you shoot this buck? I love weird racks, but I don’t know. This looks to be a young buck. If you are managing a property, you would definitely classify it as a “cull” buck, as you don’t want him passing on those genetics. And he has a little drop tine! But I don’t think I’d shoot him…it would be interesting to see what the rack looks like in a year or two. Would you shoot him or pass?
Bill wrote and talked about bowhunting an urban zone near Indianapolis: One of my best stand sites backs up against the interstate. Weird being in that tree before daybreak and hearing all those cars and trucks going behind me. But it turns out to be a great travel route. They (the deer) go from park property on the other side of the interstate, follow a creek under the interstate and move through the property. Two 10 pointers and a good-sized 8 were taken last year. Bill hits on a killer bow tactic. A bridge access or box culvert beneath a busy interstate or a lonely rural road is a great deer funnel. Whitetails are like us; they take the easiest, [...]
Don Horton hunted the early muzzleloader season in south-central Kansas with Logan Mcallister. Here’s how his hunt went: With the crops still standing in the fields due to late-spring rains, conditions were tough, but we were seeing bucks. We passed on several 140” to 150" bucks early in the week, but then the Kansas heat persisted and sent the already wary bucks into a nocturnal pattern. I was hunting a 160-class 8-point, but the winds would give me little leeway in pursuing him. I switched to a new location and checked a Reconyx camera that had not been checked in a week or so. I was elated to see that a great 9-point I estimated to score in the mid-150s was [...]
Montana wildlife officials say that more than 100 whitetail deer have been reported dead in the west Missoula Valley, in and along the Clark Fork River. “People are seeing healthy looking deer fall over dead,” said Vickie Edwards, FWP wildlife biologist in Missoula. FWP personnel have collected blood and tissue samples from a number of affected deer and are awaiting the results of laboratory analysis, but most certainly the cause of the death is epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD). Montana hunter Toby Bridges posted this picture from the area: “Along maybe 10 miles of river, there has been a near 100 percent loss of whitetails. If you cruise along that stretch with windows down, you will smell the death all along [...]
This is the first true monster of the 2013 season, shot last week in southeastern Wisconsin. Photos of the incredible buck were first posted on the Whale-Tales Archery website. Word is the rack rough-scored 244” and could be the new state archery record. That’s all we know for now. Funny, I was up in that part of the world in July, talking with and filming Wisconsin bowhunters for an episode of BIG DEER TV to air this October. I remember standing with the current No. 1 non-typical bow buck--Wayne Schumacher’s 243 6/8” monster—and saying into the camera, “This is some of the best big buck country in America…Wayne’s record could stand for another 10 years, or it could fall this [...]