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Better Than Birthday Cake
By Mike Handley
Few riflemen get an opportunity at a buck in velvet. Louisiana native Joshua Bruce is accustomed to waiting for October before donning his camo and heading to the deer woods. This year, however, he discovered a mid-September window that not only allowed him to jumpstart his season, but also to hunt with a rifle when many Kansas bucks’ antlers... READ MORE
A Place to Hunt
By Bob Humphrey
Finding a place to hunt is becoming increasingly difficult. My neighbor came to me recently with news that hit me like a cold slap in the face. “It looks like they’re going to sell that piece behind me.” That “piece” was a parcel of land that held special meaning to me. I’d spent more than 20 years learning it in... READ MORE
Voices
By Conrad McCall
You never forget the lessons you learn in the deer woods. Some people claim to hear voices inside their heads. Most of the time, that’s not good. Hearing voices means you’re either crazy or touched by the Divine, with the former being most likely. If hearing voices means you’re crazy, I’m certifiable. I don’t hear stra... READ MORE
‘Squiggles’ Makes a Mistake
By Tony Hough
You never know when a giant might mess up and make a daytime appearance. Mark Krall and his hunting buddies retrieved trail camera photographs in late October of a distinctive buck they nicknamed Squiggles. It’s not uncommon to see an uptick in mature buck photos on trail cameras that time of year, which might be considered the pre-rut, when ... READ MORE
Never Stop Scouting
By Dana R. Rogers
You can’t adjust to changing deer patterns if you don’t have the right information. It’s uncanny how you can scout whitetails for weeks, have every detail of their routines logged and memorized, and then one day they’re just ... gone. It’s like the whitetail rapture happened. While it sometimes seems otherwise, deer ar... READ MORE
Rumors
By Mike Handley
You can’t always believe wide-eyed tales of giant bucks, but they’re true sometimes. The tiny community of Bladon Springs, Ala., was abuzz last fall when word spread about the buck an Orange Beach man shot on the day before Thanksgiving. It was the kind of deer the locals had to see to believe. Jerry Loper owns 2,500 acres in nearby Was... READ MORE
The Right Deer
By David Hart
Choosing which doe to shoot can be more important than buck selection. These days, everyone with a few acres and a hunting license wants to manage their deer herd. They want to strike the proper balance between the overall population and the habitat while producing more and larger bucks. That’s a good thing. A healthy, balanced deer herd not ... READ MORE
Rattling Basics
By Bob Humphrey
Calling in bucks is no big mystery, and it can work almost anywhere. It won’t work down here,” said Joe Champion when I asked about rattling. And who was I to argue with his nearly four decades of experience as a guide at the Hit-n-Miss lodge in Central Alabama? At least one guy in our hunting party was not convinced, but he kept his sk... READ MORE
Finding Funnels
By Tracy Breen
The more deer concentrate in a small area, the better your chances of tagging one. As browsers, whitetails are constantly on the move from one food source to another. They’re also creatures of habit, sticking to areas and trails that have provided safety and security in the past. Every year, hunters successfully pattern and kill individual bu... READ MORE
On the Edge
By Dana R. Rogers
Use observation stands to figure out deer movement before you move in for the kill. Maybe you lucked out and got permission to hunt a new piece of property shortly before hunting season, or perhaps you’re a do-it-yourselfer on a trip out of state. How can you get a quick read on a new property and give yourself a reasonable chance of filling ... READ MORE
Droopy, not Droppy
By Ed Waite
Sometimes Plan B works out even better than Plan A. At first glance, Joe Lacefield’s 2012 buck might appear to sport identical foot-long drop tines on a 4x4 mainframe. That’s exactly what Joe, a B&C measurer and wildlife biologist with the state of Kentucky, thought when he peered at the dying animal through his binoculars. Actually... READ MORE
No-Brainer
By Dale Weddle
A buck in the hand is worth two on the right. Because they had to work during opening weekend of Kentucky’s 2013 modern gun season, Leslie Hull and her boyfriend (now husband) Devin weren’t able to hunt until the following Tuesday, Nov. 12. That cold afternoon, the Maysville couple went to a Mason County farm about 2:00 and took up a po... READ MORE
Balance of the Sexes
By P.J. Reilly
Can you fix buck-doe ratios, and should you even if you could? The second day of Illinois’ 2010 firearms season was foggy and warm. I couldn’t see more than 10 yards through the pea soup, so I heard the little doe coming well before I saw her. It wasn’t her footsteps that caught my attention; it was her incessant bleating. She cam... READ MORE
Breaking Bad
By Ed Waite
Skill and experience can’t prevent a treestand accident – but a safety harness can. Imagine clinging to hope, practically covering your ears, while a suffering friend begs you to kill him. Or imagine being in such excruciating pain that you would plead with someone to end it, to pull the plug before there’s even a plug to pull. Mi... READ MORE
Muzzleloader’s Paradise
By P.J. Reilly
With the flexibility to be used in several seasons, smokepoles are gaining ground on other firearms. The hammer falls and a high-pitched crack melds into a thunderous boom. The crack-boom is mashed together, but it's clearly two separate sounds. White smoke then spews from the barrel, and the scent of sulfur hangs in the air. Even if you're shootin... READ MORE
Family Tradition
By Chrystal Schultz
It’s good to have an Ace in the hole when you’re after a big buck. Hunting is a tradition in my family. My great-grandfather taught my grandfather, and he passed it down to my dad. Once I expressed an interest, Dad and Grandpa began to teach me. It didn’t take long for me to realize I wanted to hunt more than just the rifle season... READ MORE
Once in a Blue Moon
By Russell Thornberry
A story of what usually happens when we ignore the voice of reason in our heads. If two full moons occur in a single month, the second one is called a Blue Moon, which is something of a rare event. Thus the saying, “Once in a Blue Moon.” I was working in my office and wrestling with whether or not to go bowhunting one evening before I h... READ MORE
Slippin’
By Bob Humphrey
When the deer won’t come to you, it might be time to revive the lost art of still-hunting. Like most deer hunters, I spend the majority of my time waiting for deer to come to me. That gives me plenty of time to think, and I was doing just that one day last fall, taking account of past successes. I’ve killed most of my deer from an eleva... READ MORE
The UV Factor
By David Hart
Science indicates deer hunters should be concerned about the blue “glow.” The decoy looked as real as a decoy can get. It was covered in a thin cloth printed with all the details of a real whitetail, right down to a gleam in the eyes. So what spooked the buck? It wasn’t me. I stood motionless, covered head to boots in full camoufl... READ MORE
Strike a Pose
By Dana R. Rogers
When using a decoy, you’ve got to set the stage if you want to drag more than a plastic buck out of the woods. As I approached my camera setup, I could see the GlenDel buck lying flat on its side. The frozen ground had given way, and the rebar stakes were bent. The target’s legs were twisted and cracked – and that’s exactly ... READ MORE