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And from Public Land, No Less
By Mike Handley
Less than an hour after climbing a tree and pulling up his rifle on Dec. 13, 2016, Mississippian Josh Clark lowered it again in preparation to leave. The clock was ticking on the last day of the Canemount Wildlife Management Area's primitive weapons hunt, and Josh wanted to look at something else, preferably a deer. The hunter from Iuka had already... READ MORE
No Bangs for this Okie Buck
By Mike Handley
If Darren Ambrose had been hunting with a compound instead of a longbow on Nov. 18, 2009, chances are he wouldn’t have had an opportunity for a do-over. He was so bedazzled by the whitetail sporting a drop tine and 21 other points that he shot over its back from a mere 10 yards. Fortunately for him, the whisper of the longbow’s string w... READ MORE
Can You Hear Me Now?
By Mike Handley
Ben Humphries might not have been on a rooftop, but he did plenty of shouting on Dec. 17, 2016. The bowhunter from Ozark, Missouri, used every last lithium ion in his cell phone's battery to share the news of his good fortune that day, unaware a dead phone would prevent him from checking-in the dead whitetail. Show Me State hunters must tag deer wi... READ MORE
No Joke
By Mike Handley
When Chris Cypert saw the 2016 trail camera photograph of a buck with an extra beam, said to have been taken within 30 miles of his home in Searcy, Arkansas, he refused to take it seriously. He'd seen plenty of big buck pictures passed around from phone to phone, shared on Facebook, and exchanged by email. The ones purportedly from Arkansas usually... READ MORE
Against a Snowy Backdrop
By Mike Handley
Three seasons after his aging grandfather shot his last whitetail in 2013, Doug Kisamore connected with his best from the same backyard stand. Nobody sat in the box blind on the eldest Kisamore's 4 acres in 2014. The homestead is mostly open except for 100 feet of thick brush at the rear of the tract. After retrieving several trail camera photograp... READ MORE
Ringside
By Mike Handley
It doesn't take a lot of bang to bring in a buck. That Levi Tarwater's giant whitetail materialized while two juvenile bucks were butting heads could be coincidence. Or it could be the older deer, curious, wanted a ringside seat. The 29-year-old bowhunter from Hoyt, Kansas, might never know. "The noises the two spikes were making weren't very loud,... READ MORE
Trading a Soup Spoon for a Fork
By Mike Handley
It took half a decade for Husky Hummel to leave Ohio with something more than a nonresident hunting license in his pocket. The 48-year-old car dealer from McClure, Pennsylvania, is accustomed to eating tag soup. He prefers it to the notion of shooting a deer for the sake of shooting a deer. His first two seasons in Ohio were spent learning and hunt... READ MORE
And the Winner is ...
By Mike Handley
Although voting in Kansas and much of the country was four hours from closing on Tuesday, Nov. 8, Dustin Norris was dying to know what exit polls were predicting. He wanted to see the map. The redder the better, to his way of thinking. The 35-year-old, laid-off welder was eager to see who was going to take the economy's reins, but he also wanted to... READ MORE
Long Poke at a State Record
By Mike Handley
David Lecuyer doesn't always take 280-yard shots at deer. But when he does, he shoots twice. The first two bullets - David's and his buddy Bobby's - probably whizzed underneath the lovestruck buck at the opposite end of the Kansas cornfield they were watching. The third one, from David's .30-06, connected. The long poke was the exception, not the r... READ MORE
When You're Trying to Sleep, and Your Brother Wakes You
By Mike Handley
Had it not been for her older brother Chase's coaxing, 12-year-old Brit Looney would've gladly let the curtain drop on Missouri's late-October youth season without firing a shot. Now the sixth-grader from Higginsville, Missouri, has one less bullet for her .243. "She didn't even want to go hunting that day," said 17-year-old Chase, who was too old ... READ MORE
Deer ... Buck ... Shooter
By Mike Handley
Twenty-six-year-old Ryan Keeter doesn't get many chances to bowhunt during harvest time. But the farmer from Grady, Arkansas, rarely misses opening day of rifle season. Ryan is a member of a hunting club in Lincoln County, and the property he hunts is a scant 20 minutes from his front door. Even so, he doesn't make the drive as often as he'd like t... READ MORE
Lesser Stand
By Mike Handley
When Jeremy Way found both sheds off the buck he'd been hunting for two years, he was thrilled to learn it had survived the 2014 season. But when the 32-year-old hunter didn't see the whitetail during the fall and winter of 2015, he was sure someone else had shot it. The only way Jeremy could deal with the loss was to imagine seeing the next best t... READ MORE
WMA Monster
By Mike Handley
One of the finest whitetails to fall in Oklahoma in 2016 came off land open to all. Ross Fenley, a 26-year-old mechanical engineer for International Paper Co., shot it while hunting with friends at the Three Rivers Wildlife Management Area. The hunter from Valliant, Oklahoma, has hunted there almost exclusively since he was 7 or 8 years old. Last O... READ MORE
Have Bucket, Will Travel
By Mike Handley
Four days into 2017, Leonard Jarrett decided to brave the below-freezing temperature in order to watch the midweek sunrise from a deer stand. Keenly aware that cold weather often keeps Alabama deer on their toes, regardless of the status of the rut, Leonard drove the 10 miles from his home in New Market, Alabama, and arrived at his homemade plywood... READ MORE
Quality Trumps Quantity
By Mike Handley
When Lane Lawrimore of Hartselle, Alabama, told his 17-year-old son, Will, they stood a better chance of shooting a big buck off their land in Lawrence County, he had no idea he would soon be able to say "I told you so." His youngest son wanted to spend the day after Thanksgiving hunting family land in Marion County, farther southwest, because they... READ MORE