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 [...]