20 05, 2019

4 Top Trail Camera Tips

2020-06-10T09:15:19-04:00May 20th, 2019|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting|1 Comment

Dave Skinner, pro-staff for Spartan Camera and Go Cam, offers some great tips for setting and positioning your cameras: I like to position my cameras approximately waist high, or about eye level for deer, for the best photo quality and the best angle for judging their age, and antler score. For the absolute best photo quality, you want to set the camera 15’ or so from the target, about waist high pointing north or south so the camera is not looking directly into the rising or setting sun. A nice wall of vegetation behind the target will reflect the infrared flash and result in better quality photos. If it’s a trail set, angle the camera up or down the trail [...]

17 05, 2019

Here’s What Happens When A Buck Injures A Velvet Antler

2020-06-10T09:15:19-04:00May 17th, 2019|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting|Comments Off on Here’s What Happens When A Buck Injures A Velvet Antler

Spring through September the antler-growing cycle for whitetails is approximately 170 days. This gives a buck many opportunities to catch a velvet antler on a fence, smash it against a tree as he flees danger, etc.   Antlers grow fast—up to an inch per day in the summer! They have a complex system of blood vessels that carry nutrients through the velvet and down into the core. When a growing antler is broken, it bleeds profusely, and blood can pool and fill the inside of the velvet. When the hardening of the bone process occurs in September the pooled blood can create a heavy, swollen, club-like antler. If the injury is to the pedicle (the base of an antler) then the [...]

15 05, 2019

4 Unusual Deer Mounts

2020-06-10T09:15:19-04:00May 15th, 2019|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting|4 Comments

Lately some different and unusual mounts have been popping up on social media:                 This is the first backpack mount I saw, and to my surprise there were many variations of the pack mount on Google images. I suspect these are most popular out West; few hunters in the East pack out a caped buck, though I’m sure it happens when guys hunt deep on a big public area.                 Then there is the buck rub mount. I have seen versions of this over the years, but it seems to be making a comeback and is more popular than ever. Again, lots of variations on Google [...]

13 05, 2019

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) 2019 Update

2020-06-10T09:15:19-04:00May 13th, 2019|Big Deer Stories, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Science|6 Comments

On this just released CWD tracking map focus on the light-gray blocks, which show the current confirmation of the disease in wild populations of deer. Cases in north Mississippi and west Tennessee are relatively new, as is the gray block in north-central Virginia (Culpeper County), 20 miles from where I hunt. There are CWD deniers in the hunting industry, but I am not one of them. The scientists and organizations I work with and believe in regard CWD as a real threat with the real potential to disrupt if not decimate deer populations and hunting in the future. Every year that I look at an updated CWD map, I see the expansion of the nasty disease, and we all must [...]

5 05, 2019

Decline In Hunter Numbers Traced To Baby Boomers

2020-06-10T09:15:19-04:00May 5th, 2019|BigDeer|3 Comments

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service studies show that nationwide, participation in hunting has dropped from 14 million hunters several years ago to 11.5 million today. In 2019, only 5% of Americans hunt, about half as many as 50 years ago. My home state of Virginia, for example, has lost one-third of its deer hunters in the last 25 years, from 300,000 in the 1990s down to 200,000 today. Experts with the Virginia Dept. Of Game and Inland Fisheries say the decline in licensed hunters is the #1 deer management issue in the Commonwealth. There are myriad reasons for the decline--family/work obligations; more people living in urban areas; lack of access to hunting land; too many people glued to iPhones, Netflix, [...]

Go to Top