Thanks to Mark Birtzer for today’s guest post. Amazing the cool and unusual things that happen in the deer woods: Last November 8th during Southeast Minnesota's shotgun season, I started the day on one of my favorite stands: just inside the woods near a field corner, at the top of a steep coulee. Our hunting area consists of only 2 things: level crop fields, and wooded gullies that are so steep only a mountain goat could love them, but that tough terrain holds some really good bucks. Plus, 4 years of state-mandated Antler Point Restrictions have paid off in even more mature bucks being sighted every year. The wind that morning was forecast to be OK for my stand, but eventually [...]

  Like many of us Dick Sheflin grew up in the “if it’s brown it’s down” days, and that is not a bad thing. A new hunter needs to kill some bucks, regardless of rack size, early and get his hands dirty so he or she will experience the thrill of the hunt, be hungry for more and hooked for life. In this article Dick said, “Over the last 10 years, my sons have been pushing me to let younger bucks go if I wanted a big one…I finally started listening to them.” And that is part of a hunter’s maturation, too, because the longer you hunt and the more deer you shoot over the years, the more patience you [...]