Once you fire an arrow and draw a deer's blood, it is your ethical duty to work until you find him. It might take you five minutes or five hours, but heed this advice most of the time the trail will end, happily, at your doe or buck. 1. See Buck Run After the thwack of the arrow, watch the deer run as far as you can see it. In thick woods, look for flashes of white as it darts through the trees. In open country, follow a buck as long as you can with your binoculars. At the spot where you lose the buck, pick a marker—big tree, rock, fence post, etc. Climb down from your stand, walk straight [...]

I implore you to read your state hunting regulations booklet this and every season. You’ll keep up to date on any and all rule changes, especially as pertain to Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). I’ll be hunting mule deer in Montana in a few weeks, so reading this new guidance from the state was eye-opening: Scent usage: If you intend to use scents to either mask human odor or as an attractant for deer and elk, you should be aware that the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted regulations in 2021 on which ones you can use. You are safest if you use artificial scents, but you can also use scents certified by the Responsible Hunting Scent Association. You can identify [...]

You scout and glass a couple of small bucks, a decent 8-pointer and a shooter 10 coming to a bean field like clockwork in the evenings. Will those bucks, and especially the 10-point, be around when bow season opens in a few weeks?   That bachelor’s club will start to break up in mid-September, but a few of the bucks may still run together into October. In what is known as the “fall shuffle,” some of the bucks will shift a mile or more to winter range while some of them—maybe that big 10--will stay right there, close to where you’re spotting them now. Keep glassing the fields and edges, and hang a tree stand or 2 in the nearby [...]