In states where bow season opens early in September, many hunters and archery outfitters I know are reluctant or downright refuse to hunt the mornings. Their reasoning is that it’s tough to get back into stands near a bedding area without spooking deer that are already home and bedded from a long night of feeding in a nearby crop field. Some truth to that, but when I’ve only got a few days or a week to bowhunt an area, I want to hunt the first two hours of each day, which literally doubles my chances of killing a buck. Say I’m on a 5-day hunt. Only 5 sits if I hunt the afternoons only, but 10 if I hunt the [...]

If you want to kill a big, gnarly whitetail in a couple of months, and who doesn't, do the legwork now. It’s not hard. Put in a little time and effort this summer, and your odds of success shoot way up. Find The Deer Food Take a day and drive out to your best hunting spot. Spray down with chigger/tick repellent and hike around the green woods, get a little exercise and zero in corn, soybean or alfalfa fields a farmer planted in the spring. Or didn’t plant, you need to know the location of fallow fields and work them into your plan. If you hunt 80 to 200 acres or so of all timber, roam around and check the [...]

Nobody wants to blow a shot and wound a deer, but it happens. If you wing or graze a buck with an arrow or bullet, will he return and stay in his core area, or will he leave for good? I reached out to a couple of America’s top deer biologists who are also hard-core hunters for their thoughts. “Yes, a mature buck will come back to the area where he was injured,” says Kip Adams of the Quality Deer Management Association. “Depending on where it occurred, maybe in an open food plot or field, a buck might not move there during daylight hours for a while, but he’s not leaving his home range. That’s where he feels safest, so [...]