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Staying Power
By Bob Humphrey
Endurance is often the critical part of a successful deer hunt. Growing darkness marked the end of another long day. Glancing at my watch, I calculated the time. For the third consecutive day I’d endured 11 hours of bone-penetrating cold in northern Saskatchewan. Mornings began with temperatures well below zero, and on only one day did they s... READ MORE
Make The Shot
By Steve Flores
Make every shot count by following these simple steps. Bowhunting success is fickle. Once an arrow leaves the string, crazy stuff can happen. Many bowhunters never get to the point of even launching an arrow, however. Those who do often see their plans fall apart in that brief moment called the shot opportunity. Why is that? WHEN TO DRAW One of the... READ MORE
A Matter of Taste
By David Hart
Why does some venison taste better than other venison?
You grind it, smoke it, smother it with barbecue sauce and wrap it bacon. Or maybe you do all of those at the same time. No matter how you try to camouflage the flavor of deer meat, though, your wife, kids and pretty much everyone else you foist it upon refuses to eat it. You always seem to en... READ MORE
Build a Better Deer Trap
By Tracy Breen
Getting a perfectly broadside shot doesn’t have to be an accident. Some hunters always seem to get a buck. Even when conditions are tough, it’s a given you’ll return one afternoon or evening to find them sitting on the tailgate, calmly sipping a cup of coffee, while admiring the nice set of antlers on the deer in the truck bed. Th... READ MORE
Uncommon Sense
By Bob Humphrey
The latest on how deer communicate with sight and sound. Perception is defined as the organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information. Not only must an animal see, hear or smell something, but it must also decide what it means. Sense organs — ears, eyes and nose — are the information detectors, while the central n... READ MORE
Deer Diets
By David Hart
Knowing deer foods and eating habits can help you fill more tags. There are about 4,000 native and naturalized plants in Alabama. New York has nearly as many species, and Florida has at least 4,200 different plants. Whitetails eat hundreds, if not thousands of them. From a hunter’s perspective, choosing a place to sit based on a food source c... READ MORE
Final Exam
By Jon Walker
Why a laboratory soil test is critical for a quality food plot.
You’ve probably heard the term “magic bullet.” It describes something reputed to provide a wide range of benefits easily, efficiently and precisely, even though common sense tells you it won’t. Sadly, magic bullets never seem to fulfill our lofty expectations. ... READ MORE
Metro Giants
By Mark Melotik
Father-son team makes an art of hunting suburban Minnesota bucks. It’s early November, and Mark Herr knows he should be home finishing up the three deer mounts drying in his quaint, suburban taxidermy shop. But the whitetail rut has kicked into overdrive in the chilly Minneapolis suburbs, and Herr has other priorities this crisp weekday after... READ MORE
Paper Tuning Made Easy
By P.J. Reilly
Perfect arrow flight requires a properly aligned setup. Straight as an arrow. You hear the expression, and immediately an image appears. You see a perfect line – no bends, no waves, no variation of any kind. Straight as an arrow is the gold standard. So what bowhunter wouldn’t want their arrows to literally fly straight as an arrow? If ... READ MORE
Beauty and the Beast
By Ed Waite
Nothing says love like a bloody arrow and a big gut pile. Skylee Moore wasn’t a hunter, but her boyfriend, Peter Gravens, sure seemed excited when he talked about it. And because it would be another way for the couple to spend time together and get outdoors, the 19-year-old decided to give it a try. It didn’t hurt that Peter’s fam... READ MORE
Whitetails in the Myths
By Bob Humphrey
Debunking some of deer management’s most common misconceptions. How are myths and misconceptions created? It often starts with limited understanding of the subject. We’re constantly looking for answers to unravel the mysteries of the whitetail, so we make assumptions and draw conclusions based on information available to us at the time.... READ MORE
Donnie’s Darko
By Mike Handley
Iowa bowhunter arrows unique first deer. Donnie Kay had almost grown accustomed to blank stares, scowls and even guffaws. That’s how the first-year bowhunter’s claims of seeing a black deer in Boone County, Iowa, last fall were received. He might as well have said he’d seen a 6-foot-tall rabbit. “Nobody believed me,” h... READ MORE
Fast (and Cheap) Food Plots
By David Hart
You don’t have to spend a fortune to draw and hold deer. Life tends to get in the way of food plots. Kids, work, vacations and other obligations fill up our evenings and weekends. Before you know it, you’ve missed the window of opportunity for planting a food plot. If that’s not enough, you’ve whittled down your bank account... READ MORE
Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!
By Bob Humphrey
An inside look at the Whitetail Fighting Federation. Ladies and gentlemen: Welcome to tonight's main event. In the blue corner, weighing 248 pounds, sporting 8 points and heavy mass, the challenger: Bruiser McBuck. And in the red corner weighing 257 pounds and sporting 10 tall tines, the reigning heavyweight champion, Old Mossy Horns. Let’s G... READ MORE
Know When to Hold ’Em
By Bob Humphrey
How to tell when it’s time to go all-in while hunting out of state. It’s the first sit on the first day of a five-day hunt in a place you’ve never been. The sun has yet to rise above the treetops, but the surrounding forest is coming alive. Woodpeckers bark their scratchy calls, and the first squirrel stirs from its slumber and sc... READ MORE
Weather Gone Wild
By David Hart
How do whitetails cope with extreme weather events? Ice-covered branches crashed to the ground like chandeliers falling on a marble foyer. With each passing minute, the limbs in the forest in front of me grew heavier as rain fell and then froze on everything it touched. By 4 p.m., a half inch of ice coated the southwestern Missouri landscape. I was... READ MORE
Right or Left
By Rodney Bryson
It pays to practice gun shooting from both sides. My first rifle was a .35-caliber Marlin, and I couldn’t wait to take it to the range. There, I met June Harrill, who watched me before asking if I wanted to learn how to shoot. I must have been really bad. I was able to swallow my pride and accept the offer, and June and I became good friends.... READ MORE
The Last Drag
By A. Hunter Smith
Old habits die hard. Some harder than others. My brother is older than I am by 20 years, and I’m no spring chicken. After 40-plus years in the field together, and both of us hard hunters, lately we find ourselves more “stove up” in the mornings than not. A walking stick is no longer a novelty for us, but a dire necessity. Yet we s... READ MORE
Stop, Drop and Hunt
By Bill Zahm
Thank goodness for work meetings on the opening day of firearms season. Although armed with my beloved crossbow, I spent opening day of Indiana’s 2011 gun season in a swamp stand at my Tit Lake hunting area in Huntington County. It was a frosty morning, and my rattling and grunting lured a big 8-pointer with a broken rack to within 15 yards j... READ MORE
A Question of Weight
By P.J. Reilly
Are you shooting the correct poundage on your compound bow? There’s nothing sweeter than watching a nock disappear into a buck’s vitals. When you see that, the odds are pretty good you’ll be picking up that deer’s rack before too long. Conversely, the sight of a nock flopping up and down as a buck runs off carrying your arro... READ MORE