Special thanks to South Dakota hunter Kelly Kirsch for this awesome picture. Back in 2013, Kelly told me he’d come up with an idea for his shed collection, and his antler tree blew me away. Fantastic, and now the official Christmas tree of BIG DEER! And thanks to all of you for making 2015 the biggest traffic year yet for BIG DEER. I truly appreciate your support, and look forward to 2016, the 8th year of the BIG DEER blog. Thanks for watching BIG DEER TV, and making it a top-rated show, too. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. God bless you and your family…if you’re still hunting a buck, good luck.—M.H.

One December day in Kansas, veteran bowhunters  B.J. Clement and his son, Todd, dug mock scrapes and laid scent trails with both estrus doe and dominant buck urine through a thick area where they knew some good bucks typically hung out. “When my dad went in to bowhunt his ground blind on the next Saturday afternoon a buck had torn the place to pieces with huge rubs and scrapes,” Todd said. Later that evening a big buck started for B.J.’s blind, but the deer spotted a doe and took off after her. Bummer. But 30 minutes later, B.J saw the buck again. He rubbed a hedge tree, and then walked close.  B.J. fired a perfect arrow. The 12-pointer (picture above) [...]

Hey Mike: This is 15-year-old Sarah Bussinger with her first deer! I work with her father and he is very excited for his daughter. Sarah has been hunting with her family for the past 5 years, and this season she wanted to do it alone. She sat for hours in her Southern Indiana stand until this bruiser came by in the early afternoon. At 2:07 p.m. on Sunday November 15th, the buck cruised through looking for does, presenting Sarah with a 40-yard shot. She took her time as she was taught by her experienced father and made a perfect shot with her .357 rifle. The buck only made it 20 yards and piled up. Needless to say, her dad has [...]

Shelby from North Dakota read one of my articles on drop-tine bucks, in which I wrote: …it must shoot down from a main beam at least 6 inches—7 to 10 inches is better, for then it becomes what I have deemed the highly regarded “drop club,” a term which is finding its way more and more into the deer-hunting vernacular. Also, the thicker and more massive the tine or club the better. The crowning glory is a couple inches of black, hardened velvet on the bottom of the club. You see that on many of the big drop tines and on all the most impressive ones. The bucks can’t or don’t rub the velvet off the bottom tips. It gives [...]

This excerpt from a story in the Springfield News-Leader I found astonishing: Twenty minutes before sunset, (Curtis Russell) spotted the deer among a group of does and one small buck. The bigger whitetail used its antlers to keep the smaller male at a distance. "I did a 50-yard belly crawl to cut the distance and got to within 175 yards," Russell said. "I was using a Remington 700 .30-06, and when I took the shot it was a clean hit." Now for the biggest surprise in Russell's 26 years of deer hunting: The buck wasn't a buck at all. It was a freak of nature, a doe sporting a huge set of antlers. Read the rest of the story here. (Photos: [...]