Hunting from one stand on and off for a month last fall, I saw 12 different bucks. Most were small, two were borderline shooters that I passed and one 9-pointer was 150-class. Hot after a doe one day, the giant rolled off the ridge across from me and crashed down into a slough, out of muzzleloader range and moving too fast for a shot. All I could do was sit and gawk his tall tines, brassy like butter knives in the sun. The season came and went, and I never saw him again. I didn’t shoot any buck from the stand, and that is all right. Getting skunked sometimes is part of the game. Just the other day I went [...]

Why do whitetail bucks spend so much time and energy growing antlers over the summer only to shed them five or six months later? “Scientists have pondered it for years and we still don’t know,” says whitetail biologist Dr. Mick Hellickson, who points to a couple of theories. Some scientists believe bucks shed annually so they’ll have the potential to replace damaged antlers. If a buck had to live his entire life with snapped tines or a broken beam he couldn’t fight his rivals or posture for does. A second theory suggests that bucks shed and grow new racks 10 to even 30 inches larger the following year to keep pace with their increasing weight and girth as they mature [...]