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Entries for April 2019
Curtain Falls, Despite Curtain
By Mike Handley
Bowhunting from ground blinds with curtains has one drawback: Curtains. True, many homemade blinds don’t have them, or the windows might have sliding doors or Plexiglas. And some of the store-bought models have “shoot-through” mesh. Wade Johnson’s blind has regular, thicker-weave mesh over the openings, material that has to ... READ MORE
Punching One of the Dancers
By Mike Handley
After a decade of hunting public land in Ohio, Bryan Weaver expects to run into other deer hunters. He never imagined seeing a whitetail conga line, however. That’s what happened during the Maryland man’s deer-cation last November. The first day afield was a bust. Bryan saw lots of deer stands, but few deer. On Sunday, after a friend dr... READ MORE
Antique Store Buck Cracks Top-10 List of Typicals
By Mike Handley
If the telegraph were still in use today, the nation’s deer sleuths would be slinging a lot of clicks about an old mount recently rescued from a Pennsylvania antique store. Ever since man began measuring and keeping records of antlers, hunters and collectors have delighted in discovering vintage whitetails that have never been scored. Perhaps... READ MORE
Brewster Buck is Deer of the Year
By Mike Handley
Buckmasters’ Deer of the Year for 2019 is the new world record arrowed in Illinois last fall. The largest free-roaming whitetail ever felled by a hunter, it wears a tag bearing Luke Brewster’s name. The 30-year-old former marine from Bristow, Virginia, shot it Nov. 2 on his grandparents’ Edgar County farm. The Virginian drove the ... READ MORE
26-point Swan Song
By Mike Handley
Two years ago, Barb Putz Sanders put her shingle in the closet. After 50 years of plying her trade as a taxidermist, she walked away from the bench, abandoning her apron, knives, putty and paint, all the tools she used to turn dead animals into works of art. In the fall of 2018, the great grandmother dusted off those tools to mount one last deer. H... READ MORE
THREE-OH-OH!
By Mike Handley
Kansas yielded its second-ever, 300-inch whitetail during the 2018 season, the first actually felled by a hunter. (The other, a victim to EHD, was found dead in 2012.) Several hunters were reportedly drooling over the buck when it was alive, but none were more serious about taking it home than Arkansas brothers Mark and Rob Watson. Though they hunt... READ MORE