An old-timer once told me, “Boy, you can be the best damn hunter in the world, but if you don’t hunt where big deer live, you ain’t never gonna kill one.” The longer I’ve hunted, the more I’ve realized that guy was right. Many damn good hunters make the mistake of hunting year after year on lands that don’t grow and hold mature deer. So all they ever shoot are 6- and 8-pointers. Well, let’s change that. New Ground Now is the time to get out of your rut and find a new spot to hunt this fall. With whitetail populations healthy to stable in most regions, you shouldn’t have to look far. A small woodland or maybe a 300-acre farm [...]

When you leave a tree stand out in the woods overnight on public land, that stand becomes public domain and therefore anybody can use it. That might be the law in most states, but in the deer hunter’s code of conduct it’s a bunch of BS. Anybody who would hunt another man’s stand, public or private, without permission is a skunk. If it’s legal in your state and you decide to set a stand and leave it up for days, here are 3 things you can do to keep a squatter out: If you use a lock-on, remove the bottom ladder step and haul it out when you leave after a hunt. A bit of a hassle, but nobody can [...]