1.Set one or 2 cams in a small clearing in the woods 70 to 100 yards off an alfalfa, corn or soybean field or clover plot. Even before hunting season, many mature bucks hang up and stage in these areas in late afternoon before moving out to the feed after dark. 2. A bottleneck of thick cover on a deer trail that leads into a field is a good bet for a camera. A big buck will usually walk the thickest route in, and you can get a close-up image of him. 3. As you scout the woods, look funnels where two or more ditches or drainages with thick cover come together. Oak trees that drop acorns nearby make this [...]

Short answer, no. I’ve had several bad experiences with does and bucks I’ve shot at last light and, fearing a marginal hit, left overnight. I won’t do it now if the nighttime temperature is 40 or above, which it almost always is in early archery season in most places. And 40 degrees is marginal. I believe you need the night air to dip down into the 20s or cooler to have hope of salvaging good, tasty meat from a deer that has lain on the ground, guts in, for 10 to 12 hours or more. To leave a wounded buck or not all night is the most agonizing dilemma that I hope you are not forced to deal with this [...]

The weather will be warm to hot when you start bowhunting in September or early October. Whether you shoot a doe or 150-inch buck, it is your ethical and legal obligation to properly care for the meat. Allowing an animal to spoil is not only the biggest sin in the hunter’s code of conduct, but in an extreme case a conservation officer could cite you for wanton waste. You want to do right and you want good, clean venison; here are some things to keep in mind when the temperature is 60 to 70 degrees or more. After the Shot Climb out of your stand and go look for the deer as soon as you can after the shot.  The [...]

I cannot blog about buck bachelor groups, as I did earlier in the week, without my mind going back to John Schmucker and the enormous buck he killed in Ohio way back in 2006. That summer, John spent many evenings sitting on the roof of his carriage house in his backyard, watching an unbelievable buck through his binoculars. “I saw him almost every night when he’d come out into that bean field,” he said. “Some weeks, I’d see him 5 out of 7 afternoons.” Every time John spotted the 36-point giant, the deer was traveling with 3 smaller bucks, and he filed that away in his subconscious. When the Amish hunter went out with his crossbow on September 30 that [...]

Buck Group Size: Two to 4 to 8 bucks hanging out together is typical in mid-August, but I have seen as many as 10 velvet-racked bucks in a late-summer group. Knowing how much I love to watch and study bachelor clubs, hunters from all over have emailed me with reports and pictures of 12 to 15 or more bucks feeding and posturing together in a field. Last year, a guy from Maryland reported seeing 30 different bucks in a soybean field most every night! Truth is, these mega-groups are rare. Big numbers of bucks are actually 2, 3 or more different bachelor groups that happen to come together and loosely comingle. Summer groups are comprised of bucks of all ages, [...]