America’s state wildlife biologists are underpaid and underappreciated, and they have to put up with a lot of politics, bureaucracy and other BS, but they do great work, not only for deer but for all game and non-game animals and birds. Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Facebook: District biologist Pete Acker rescued this bald eagle that had been struck by a vehicle (recently) in Surry County. He says, "Quickly I found the mature bald eagle could not fly but was still very nimble on the ground. I was able to capture it without further injury and transport it to a local rehabilitator, Smithfield Animal Hospital. They stabilized the bird and arranged to transport it to the Wildlife Center of [...]

Field report from a hard-core bowhunter in Ohio: After many days of hunting and 20 days of getting pictures, always at night or in the early morning, I finally took down the "Ghost Buck." November 10, 2015, about 900 am. He rounded a bend of the creek, saw my buck decoy and ran 400 yards in about eight seconds. He slowly circled the decoy, and at 12 yards I took the shot. I have taken 130s deer from this stand, which is 32 feet up in the air, but this 170-class buck really had me shaking up there. I called my buddy and the track job was on. We jumped the buck 25 minutes after I shot him. I knew better than to [...]

Only a handful of cases of "Bullwinkle Disease” have been documented in whitetail deer, and we’ve covered most of them here on BIG DEER Blog. Does and bucks with big, swollen snouts have been documented from Florida to Texas to Michigan. Ground zero for the disease seems to be Alabama, where the first known case of Bullwinkle (the disease is so new that scientists don’t have a technical name for it yet, but the common name fits for now) was documented in 2007. Hunter Courtney Stanley (above) shot this nice buck with a swollen nose near Furman, Alabama in January 2015. And last month I received emails from two more Alabama men who shot the latest known cases of Bullwinkle bucks in the January [...]

  Got this field report on Christmas day from my friend Brandon Schreiber, who lives in central Saskatchewan and operates Buck Country Outfitters, an outfit I will be hunting with this fall. Brandon wrote: I had an epic day fulfilling one of my dreams, to harvest a wolf. Anyone who has pursued wolves knows how smart they are and what it takes to connect on these animals. I wanted to know more, so I asked my friend to elaborate… The only way to harvest wolves in Saskatchewan is to obtain a fur license and either trap them or shoot them. I have had my fur license since I was 12 years old, and my dad taught me a lot about trapping [...]

Got this report the other day from our friend Wren. Note: All these deer came from free range with native browse and local genetics, from a property with a MLD management program. Having hunted low-fence ranches with similar programs down there in the past, I cannot tell you enough how impressive these bucks are: (Wren’s 158” 9-point) Mike: We are still hunting hard down in South Texas, it has been a very good year for racks, and our management program on the ranch combined with a couple of "wet" years really has shown great results. Our harvest plan called for taking 152 deer this season, spit evenly between bucks and does.  Due to some very wet weather and the cycle [...]