14 03, 2023

Here’s What Deer Hunting Will Look Like in 2030

2023-03-14T08:41:17-04:00March 14th, 2023|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, CWD, Deer Hunting, Deer Science, whitetail deer|3 Comments

When I moved on from squirrels to birds to hunting deer with my dad in the 1970s, there were about 200,000 whitetails in Virginia. Today, we’ve got almost 5 times that many. In the 1980s and 90s, we went from “if it’s brown it’s down” to the “horn porn” era. Whitetail management was in its infancy, and many people mistakenly took working to improve the health of a deer herd for engineering the growth of gigantic antlers. All you saw in hunting magazines and on videos, which were exploding in popularity then, were images of pen-raised bucks with enormous, protein-loaded 190- to 250-inch-plus racks. If the average hunter dared drag a forkie or 6-point back to camp, he was ridiculed [...]

28 02, 2023

What Causes Bucks to Have Weak Brow Tines or No Brows?

2023-02-28T15:35:19-05:00February 28th, 2023|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Deer Science, whitetail deer|1 Comment

Last month I hunted a friend's ranch in West Texas, 5 hours west of San Antonio and 80 miles north of Del Rio. This is a raw, rocky desert environment that had experienced a long drought, though there is a good water system on this 1,000-acre property. My buddy Cecil recently purchased the ranch, and he has been running 8 to 10 corn feeders year-round. There has been minimal protein feeding here the last 2 years, but he plans to fill the protein feeders and increase supplemental feeding this year. I hunted a week and one thing jumped out at me: 7 out of every 10 bucks of all age classes we saw had small and weak brow tines (that’s [...]

6 02, 2023

150-Inch Bullwinkle Buck Shot W/Bow in Pennsylvania

2023-02-06T07:56:22-05:00February 6th, 2023|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, Deer Science, whitetail deer|0 Comments

Troy Dietterich sent this photo and email: I may have shot a Bullwinkle nose deer. I have it butchered and in my freezer, and plan to eat it as it is mixed in with my other deer meat.  I did not contact any state departments about this and just stumbled upon this issue as a friend sent me the article. Southeastern PA, WMU 5C Killed Oct 29 2022 A.M. This deer was the biggest one around. This area rarely produces deer larger than 120''. This buck scored 153 6/8'' gross and weighed 246# live weight and 192# dressed. Just a massive animal for these parts. I butchered the deer myself and the meat and bones/joints all looked healthy. I did [...]

2 11, 2022

3 Ways To Hunt Whitetail Scrapes

2022-10-31T14:18:31-04:00November 2nd, 2022|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Science, whitetail deer|Comments Off on 3 Ways To Hunt Whitetail Scrapes

Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted a two-year study on a 3,500-acre property in the northern part of the state where the rut peaks in mid-November, as it does in most regions. The land was managed for a healthy whitetail population, and the age structure of the bucks was good. Those bucks were wild, and hunted by people. This was not another study of pen deer, but a real-world project that unearthed some interesting results. Aiming their trail cameras at every scrape they could find, the researchers got reams of videotape and images of deer at scrapes. One major finding--while multiple bucks of all ages (in one case 13 different animals) might eagerly paw one set of scrapes, similar [...]

31 10, 2022

What Do Hundreds Of Buck Rubs Tell You?

2022-10-31T14:14:02-04:00October 31st, 2022|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Science, whitetail deer|Comments Off on What Do Hundreds Of Buck Rubs Tell You?

Research years ago by Dr. Karl Miller, Larry Marchington and Matt Knox provided some good skinny on whitetail buck rubs. The highly regarded biologists found that when an area is blazed with a noticeably large number of rubs, dozens or hundreds, the peak of the rut often occurs days earlier than normal. The theory is that by depositing gobs of “priming pheromones” on all those trees, the bucks stimulate the does into early estrus. So if you find twice or three times as many rubs as usual in your hunt zone this fall, you might want to take off work and hunt a week earlier than you planned. The number of rubs that pop up in the woods can also [...]

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