Bowhunting Archives

15 07, 2025

The Complete Guide to Deer Scouting

Clay Hanback2025-07-15T08:40:47-04:00July 15th, 2025|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, whitetail deer|0 Comments

Praise the deer gods, it won’t be long now until you put the stress and uncertainty of the pandemic behind and head out for some much-needed rejuvenation time in a tree stand. But don’t wait until the last minute to get ready. To tie your tag to a big whitetail, the advance work you do right now is as important, maybe more so, as the hunt tactics you’ll employ in a couple of months. Here’s your plan. Chart a Course On your kitchen table with the A/C cranking, check topo and aerial maps, either old-school paper ones or on an app like Onx Hunt, of the lands you’ll hunt this fall. Study the contours of crop fields, pastures and woodland [...]

7 07, 2025

How and Where to Find Big Bucks with Trail Cameras

Clay Hanback2025-07-07T10:52:33-04:00July 7th, 2025|BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, whitetail deer|0 Comments

I run a few trail cameras year-round on my hunt property just to see what I might see, but right now is when I start serious recon for the upcoming season. Velvet antlers are up and growing full bore. A buck’s rack will have developed its eight or 10 points in June, and most of the of the tine and beam length will fill in by late July. When you get a single image of a potential shooter, your eyes will pop, and you’ll know it! Then you can scatter more cameras throughout your property to start tracking and narrowing his movements. Mineral Cams If it is legal to attract deer with mineral licks where you hunt, do it. Building [...]

7 03, 2025

Now Is Time to Look for New Hunting Land

Clay Hanback2025-03-07T09:56:11-05:00March 7th, 2025|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting|Comments Off on Now Is Time to Look for New Hunting Land

If you’re satisfied with the public or private ground you hunted last year, great. But did you lose permission to a farm, or lose a lease, or get tired of the pressure and lack of deer on a WMA near home? If so, start looking for new ground now. I could write a book on how to search for good hunting opportunities on the vast array of public lands across the U.S., but here I offer my best piece of advice. Think small. Most small to mid-size and out-of-the-way WMAs or state forests in rural areas have much less pressure than larger public spots near cities. When you’re investigating larger national forests or BLM lands, with tens or even hundreds [...]

21 01, 2025

Giant Indiana Jestes Buck, 209 7/8 Inches NT

Clay Hanback2025-01-21T15:35:54-05:00January 21st, 2025|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Hunting News, Shed Hunting, whitetail deer|1 Comment

Great guest blog on one of the coolest deer from the 2024 season from Big Deer field reporter Dean Weimer. On the evening of October 4, 2023, Danny Jestes watched a couple of does and a small buck feed in an open grass field for the better part of an hour. Then, as if shot out of a cannon, all three deer skedaddled into a nearby thicket. At the edge of the woods stood what Jestes assumed was the reason for their abrupt exit. “When I turned and looked over at the edge of the woods, there stood a magnificent buck with all kinds of headgear,” he says. “The buck was looking straight toward me.” After a few minutes the [...]

9 01, 2025

The Rescue: Bowhunter Saves Puppy

Clay Hanback2025-01-09T10:24:35-05:00January 9th, 2025|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Hunting News, Shed Hunting|Comments Off on The Rescue: Bowhunter Saves Puppy

Thomas Barr, who goes by T-Barr, drove 14 hours from his home in Pennsylvania to bowhunt southern Illinois. It was early November, the rut was ready to rock and a cold front was on the way. The next afternoon he one of those classic Midwest funnels you read about. It was a narrow strip of timber and brush bordered on either side by a cornfield and a clover plot. A deep creek with steep, nearly vertical banks cut the middle of the cover. His stand was in a tree that swept up and out over the water. An old, crumbling barbed-wire fence ran hard along the creek and beneath the tree stand. “I climbed up and was pumped,” says T-Bar. [...]