If you shoot a 4- or 5-year-old deer you’ve tagged an old one, right? Well, that deer would be considered mature, but it could have lived longer, possibly a lot longer. In captivity, whitetail does have been documented to live 18 to 25 years, and bucks 14 years! But what about the wild whitetails that we hunt? Well, individual animals live much longer than you think. Recent data from Pennsylvania confirms 3 does to be at least 13.5 years old! One ear-tagged doe showed up on a trail camera; another was shot by a hunter in muzzleloader season; and a third has been spotted in a person’s backyard. Biologists captured, tagged, recorded and released all three back into the wild in 2003. That [...]

During the recent par 3 contest last week at Augusta during the Masters, I watched golfing legend Jack Nicklaus shoot an amazing hole in one. That reminded me of a true story that a legend in our bowhunting world, Gene Wensel, told me one time. Many years ago, when Gene was hunting and guiding for whitetails out on the Milk River in Montana, he would occasionally host Jack Nicklaus for a week of bowhunting. One morning as they headed out Gene said proudly, “Jack, I’m taking you to a tree stand I hung stand myself. You're gonna shoot a monster buck there this morning." They arrived early in the pre-dawn gloom. Gene snuck around but couldn't find the stand. He told [...]

If you carry a pee bottle into your deer stand, there’s a less messy and more sanitary, albeit more expensive, way. The Travel John features a unisex “spill guard” attached to a plastic bag that contains a fabric LIQSORB pouch. Pee into the bag and the polymer pouch immediately turns the urine into an odorless, biodegradable gel that won’t spill on your hands or clothes or in your daypack as you hike out. When you get home, simply throw the bag into the trash. I tested several Travel Johns and they work as advertised. After peeing, I immediately turned each bag upside down, and not a drop spilled or leaked. Each bag is reusable. Depending on how much coffee you [...]

Thanks to Midwest Whitetails @thwackem for posting this beautiful picture: Donny Kay with his rare melanistic buck. Killed near Boone, IA. This is just the second black-phase buck shot by a hunter that I have posted in all my years of blogging (here’s the other one). I did some research and found that a deer w/melanism-- their bodies produce too much of the hair, skin and retina pigment known as melanin – are definitely the rarest of the rare whitetails. A black deer is certainly more uncommon than a brown-and-white piebald, and even rarer than the odd albino. Biologists say that a melanic buck is usually not solid black. There are gray and brown/black color phases with white bellies and [...]