Big Deer Blog

“The Harrisburg (PA) Show” has long been quite the event, with tens of thousands of hunters, shooters, fishermen, boaters, etc. coming from up and down the East Coast (and across America) to buy stuff, book hunting trips and vacations, gawk at the giant buck mounts, attend seminars, meet celebrities, enjoy cooking displays and just have a jolly good time for a week in early February. I have attended the show as both a seminar speaker and a consumer, and I always enjoyed it. But things are not so jolly this year, and I won't be going. On the eve of the 2013 show, the event’s organizer, Reed Exhibitions, decided to ban the display and sale of Modern Sporting Rifles and [...]

Mike, I got over 30 trail cam pictures of this buck throughout the summer, but those pics were all at night. So after not seeing him feeding on our family farm during the first week of bow season, I decided to change things up. Fortunately I had permission to hunt a property across the road. My hope was that I could catch him crossing that property during shooting light on his way to my land. I took my climber and set up about 15 yards off a lane that connected two corn fields. The wind was perfect, and I figured the element of surprise would be in my favor. Sure enough, on October 10, he walked down the lane at [...]

From Alex in VA: “Hey Mike, not a big buck picture, but a HUGE bear for Virginia! Thought you might appreciate it since it was killed in VA. 674 lbs., killed by DJ Lacks in Lunenburg County, VA on 12/11/12. Love your blog and show!” I figure the guy on the left is 6 foot, look how much bigger the bear is!

From usnews.com: A day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to release Vice President Joe Biden's recommendations to curb gun violence in the United States, the National Rifle Association told U.S. News and World Report that they have seen membership grow by 250,000 in the month since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. "I would say that every time President Obama opens his mouth and Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein opens her mouth and they talk about gun bans and restricting the rights of law abiding Americans, people pay attention to that and sign up," says Andrew Arulanandam, the NRA's public affairs director. I worked for the NRA for a decade and am a Life Member. Are you a [...]

Mike: I hunt in North Florida and I have a cam picture of a whitetail doe with a large snout. I cannot find a lot of info on this subject except that it is believed to be a bacterial infection (that causes the nose swelling). Is the meat safe to eat? Does the deer need to be taken out of the herd? Thanks, Marcus I have posted on this weird topic several times; BIG DEER is amassing the best Internet database on big-nose deer. Here’s the best biological info we have to date, from Kevin Keel, a wildlife pathologist at at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study in Athens, Georgia: Mike: I have a series of these cases from all over the country. The lesion that [...]