One time at an outdoor show I bumped into Illinois hunter Chad Goetten, who pulled out this picture of the giant he had shot the previous fall. My jaw dropped. I was amazed then, and still am 10 years later. One of the most impressive wild bucks I have ever seen, and I've seen a bunch of big deer in 30 years of writing and blogging about them. The mass on the 234 7/8-inch, 25-point rack is just freaky: 7-inch bases, and thick as a beer can all way out through the main beams. The 8 mass measurements total nearly 55 inches. Boone and Crockett says the Goetten Buck will go down as one of the top whitetail racks ever recorded in terms of [...]

  Today’s guest blog is written by Dean Weimer: Roy Mercerr’s “Bed of Pain Buck” Indiana hunter Roy Mercerr got to his 152-acre hunting area considerably late on the morning of November 18, 2013. He parked his vehicle, and he and a buddy set out quickly on a familiar trail toward their chosen stands. They might be late, but at least the north wind was right, blowing their scent back toward the road. A short while into their hike Mercerr looked to his right, down into a low bedding area where a week earlier during the bow season he had spooked a big buck. He saw a huge set of antlers atop a buck that was lying in the middle of [...]

Today’s guest blog is from Connor J. Chance-Ossowski, who shot this great buck on October 30 last year in south-central Nebraska: My stand is located in dense woods on a transition point between a bedding and a feeding area. In 2013, I harvested a mature 4x4 out of the same stand on October 26th. It's safe to say the last week of October is and will always be my favorite time to hunt. I believe one weather condition---the first true cold front of the year—helped with my recent success. When a cold front occurs in this area in the fall, we typically get heavy fog and humidity, and cooler temperatures. This is when I've observed the first heavy rutting activity; [...]