Guest blog with some great insight from our good friend Matt “Flatlander” Cheever from Illinois: Hey Mike: Here’s a good late season blog: Reading the rut and what’s left of it. I admit I get pretty caught up focusing my rut hunting efforts from November 3rd to November 12th.  This is not to say I don’t hunt outside that, I hunt nearly every weekend of the season, but this is the bulk of my vacation time. This year I noticed some shooter bucks cruising in mid-October.  On Oct. 18th I botched a chance at my best bow buck to date, later to have a neighbor get him.  Though I came up short against that buck, it told me that big [...]

Got this from Tony W. the other day, great story: Mike: My daughter turned 10 this fall and that meant she was old enough to hunt.  She has been wanting to bowhunt ever since seeing the animated movie “Brave” a few years ago.  I bought her a crossbow for her birthday last year, and that gave us a year for her to practice.  She was consistently hitting a 6-inch target at 30 yards so I was confident in her shooting out to that distance. The practice paid off on Nov 13th, the day before opening day of rifle season in Nebraska.  We had sat out that morning and didn’t see a thing.  We were driving back and I spotted a [...]

Special thanks to South Dakota hunter Kelly Kirsch for this awesome picture. Back in 2013, Kelly told me he’d come up with an idea for his shed collection, and his antler tree blew me away. Fantastic, and now the official Christmas tree of BIG DEER! And thanks to all of you for making 2015 the biggest traffic year yet for BIG DEER. I truly appreciate your support, and look forward to 2016, the 8th year of the BIG DEER blog. Thanks for watching BIG DEER TV, and making it a top-rated show, too. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. God bless you and your family…if you’re still hunting a buck, good luck.—M.H.

One December day in Kansas, veteran bowhunters  B.J. Clement and his son, Todd, dug mock scrapes and laid scent trails with both estrus doe and dominant buck urine through a thick area where they knew some good bucks typically hung out. “When my dad went in to bowhunt his ground blind on the next Saturday afternoon a buck had torn the place to pieces with huge rubs and scrapes,” Todd said. Later that evening a big buck started for B.J.’s blind, but the deer spotted a doe and took off after her. Bummer. But 30 minutes later, B.J saw the buck again. He rubbed a hedge tree, and then walked close.  B.J. fired a perfect arrow. The 12-pointer (picture above) [...]

Hey Mike: This is 15-year-old Sarah Bussinger with her first deer! I work with her father and he is very excited for his daughter. Sarah has been hunting with her family for the past 5 years, and this season she wanted to do it alone. She sat for hours in her Southern Indiana stand until this bruiser came by in the early afternoon. At 2:07 p.m. on Sunday November 15th, the buck cruised through looking for does, presenting Sarah with a 40-yard shot. She took her time as she was taught by her experienced father and made a perfect shot with her .357 rifle. The buck only made it 20 yards and piled up. Needless to say, her dad has [...]