From the Leader Register: What’s it like to walk up on a buck of a lifetime? Webster High School science teacher Greg Widiker knows. Widiker had been watching the deer on trail cameras and scouting since 2014… 2015 the buck got a lot bigger and was estimated to be 4 years old... By 2016 the buck had grown a drop tine, and this year, now estimated to be 6 years old, drop tines were on both beams. “I was definitely very aware of him and the last two years the focus was definitely on him. He was the only deer I was going to shoot,” said Widiker. Greg shot the 16-point beast on 9/17/17, click here for the full story. [...]

The first buck of 2017 on BIG DEER blog! Guest post from North Dakota native and bowhunter Kelsey Deutz: We had a couple of years of history with the buck we call “S-10.”  My husband, Nick, hunted him last year.  He was very visible on camera but never came within bow range during the daylight hours. In 2017, we first spotted S-10 about a month before season opened.  We were so glad he made it through the year. He blew up!  Once again, he was very visible on camera, and Nick had seen him on the hoof a few times just after sunrise in the weeks before season opened.  We set up a couple different blinds in different parts of [...]

A popular question this time of year: Will the bucks I’ve been watching in fields and getting on my trail cameras this summer stick around when hunting season opens, or once the bachelor groups start separating will the bucks disperse and disappear? According to Penn State’s Deer-Forest study, more than half of the small-antlered yearlings (18 months old) you’ve been seeing will hit the road from mid-September through early November. The adult bucks, however, won’t be going anywhere, which is good news. Very rarely does a mature buck have a different home range during the breeding season from one he used all summer. However, it might seem like the big bucks disappeared. First, the bachelor groups break up. And then during [...]