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 [...]

A “deadhead” is the commonly used term for a buck deer carcass that you might stumble across in the woods, with antlers still attached to the skull. Generally, such a buck has been dead for several months or even a year or two, and the carcass has been ravaged by time, weather and predators. All that might remain are a grisly skull with antlers, a portion of the spine and maybe some rib bones wrapped tautly with pieces of hide black as used motor oil. If the skull has been lying on the ground for more than a few months, you might see teeth marks on the antlers where squirrels and mice have gnawed them. Rodents are attracted to the [...]