The 2024 deer season ended a few months ago, guess what? Time to start the initial prep for next fall! Initiate these 3 things now and carry on throughout the summer, and you’ll be ahead of the game when archery season rolls around in September. Reevaluate Your 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 just get tired of the pressure on a WMA near home? If so, start looking for new ground. 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 [...]

“Everybody needs a safe, comfortable place to sleep, even deer,” says Pennsylvania biologist Jeannine Fleegle, who contributes to the great Penn State University Deer-Forest blog. Penn State’s research shows that the best security cover is vegetation thick enough to hide 90% of a deer from observation at a distance of 200 feet or less. “That’s pretty thick,” Fleegle notes. “Saplings and shrubs do the job very well.” Is that thicket 70 yards ahead of you dense enough to hide 90% of a bedded doe with a rut-crazed buck standing guard over her? Or shield a big buck that is rubbing or scraping? Think like that and look with binoculars that as you still-hunt or approach a blind. Also, mature bucks use multiple [...]