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BuckMag Features
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Pondering Point Restrictions
By David Hart
Are antler point restrictions the answer to quality buck opportunities? In 1995, the Mississippi Legislature passed a law requiring the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to implement sweeping changes to the state’s deer hunting regulations. Among them, hunters statewide were restricted to bucks with at least four antler points. It was a ... READ MORE
Melissa’s First Buck
By Richard P. Smith
Take a kid hunting, and you’ll both enjoy a life-changing moment. Not many whitetails in the Midwest are taken by stalking, but that’s how my niece got her first buck. Melissa and I were in a blind on one end of a large hay field, hoping a buck would come within 100 yards. A spike came out and presented a shot, but Melissa wanted someth... READ MORE
Young Guns ... and Bows
By Mike Handley
Some hunters don’t wait very long to shoot their buck-of-a-lifetime. They can walk into a movie theater and watch “Bambi,” but they’re not old enough to pass through the turnstile for “The Deer Hunter.” Many couldn’t even see “Avatar” by themselves. Except for holidays, they can’t take vac... READ MORE
The Natural Advantage
By Bob Humphrey
There’s a lot you can do besides plant food plots to improve a deer hunting property. I don’t own a lot of land, but it’s enough that there are places I might not set foot on for an entire season or two. It was one such corner that I happened into one warm, blustery November afternoon. With wind and temperatures being what they we... READ MORE
Management Myths
By David Hart
Don’t believe everything you hear about improving your whitetail herd. Deer hunters have become an educated group. Thanks largely to an insatiable appetite for knowledge about our favorite game animal, we know more about whitetail biology, behavior and management than any other generation. While many of the myths and misconceptions have been ... READ MORE
Tips and Tidbits
By Joe Blake
The writer shares a few tricks learned over his 30-plus years of bowhunting. The hunter’s moon was rising in the east, sending millions of light shimmers reflecting off the frost-covered grass along the edge of the meadow. The day was nearly done, and shooting light was fading fast on the last day before the opening of the 2007 Minnesota gun ... READ MORE
Earth, Wind & Fire
By Bob Humphrey
These three elements are the key to every deer hunt. You see the titles every year in hunting magazines: “A Dozen of the Deadliest Deer Hunting Tricks,” “10 Tips for Tall-Tined Monsters,” “Six Can’t-Fail Treestand Tactics,” “Five Sure-Fire Methods for Big Bucks.” You’d think you have to be... READ MORE
Lee Lakosky’s Gentle Giant
By Ken Piper
The timid nature of some big bucks makes them hard to hunt. Fans of “The Crush with Lee and Tiffany” already know the Lakoskys tag some monster deer every year, and their success is no accident. The husband-and-wife hunting pair have farms in Iowa and Kansas, and they work hard to manage the land and the deer with the goal of allowing b... READ MORE
Never in a Million Years
By Jean Willcox
This former anti-hunter can’t wait for next deer season. If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would be hunting and loving it, I would have told them they were crazy. That would NEVER happen ... not in a million years. I grew up in an animal-loving, hunter-hating, anti-gun home in Altoona, Pa. To this day, my family doesn’t know th... READ MORE
The Day Shift
By Bob Humphrey
What does science say about big bucks moving in the middle of the day? My morning started badly. Before I even left the cabin, the lid blew off my thermos, splattering me with scalding cocoa. Then my guide and I were late leaving camp. Thirty minutes down the road, we were nearly to the pull-off when we encountered another guide broke down on the r... READ MORE
Keep Your Head in the Game
By P.J. Reilly
Learn to keep your cool in the heart-pounding seconds surrounding a shot. By the time I reached my buddy J.R., he was a wreck. His face was ghost white, his hands were shaking and his voice was stammering — pretty typical symptoms for someone who had just arrowed his first buck and subsequently been bitten by the bowhunting bug. J.R. said he'... READ MORE
Hunt Like a Lady
By Mike Handley
No longer novelties in the woods, the ladies are taking some really big bucks! Just a couple of years ago, the Wall Street Journal published a story about how a troubled outdoors industry was staking its future on women who hunt and shoot — seeing as how fewer guys and more gals are going afield. USA Today tackled the subject more recently fr... READ MORE
Food Plots: What’s Right for You?
By David Hart
Think about your goals to determine what to plant. When did things get so complicated? It seems like you need a degree in agronomy to grow some deer food these days. Soil sample. Fertilizer. Herbicides. Tractor or ATV? Disk or tiller? Clover, wheat, beans or chicory? It’s enough to make some hunters quit before they even begin. The good news ... READ MORE
Bucks on a Shoestring
By Tracy Breen
You don’t have to spend big bucks to hunt out of state for big bucks. Lots of us dream of harvesting that one big buck before our hunting days are over — and usually that dream goes unfulfilled. Why? Simply put, most whitetail hunters don’t live where a majority of the big bucks do. Sure, an occasional local tags a monster, but he... READ MORE
Deer Talk 101
By David Hart
It’s not that difficult to pull in bucks by rattling and grunting. When daylight broke on a cold Iowa morning two years ago, Rick White knew exactly what to do. It was the pre-rut in early November, so just a few minutes after he settled into his stand, the 47-year-old Cedar Rapids resident pulled a rattle bag out of his backpack and started ... READ MORE
Brown Velvet
By P.J. Reilly
Looking for the perfect something to hang next to that Elvis painting? Sitting in my stand for Maryland’s archery deer season opener, I could feel sweat beads rolling down my chest and back. It was hot, and the evening sit was going to be brutal. But it was opening day! My stand hung in a tulip poplar about 50 yards off a soybean field. A wel... READ MORE
Bow Bucks in the Deep Freeze
By Jeff Murray
Cold-weather bowhunting requires extra practice. When the 10-pointer with noticeable kickers circled behind me, it was like a scene from a Michael Sieve painting — real but surreal. All I had to do was draw, aim and release. But for some reason, I couldn’t get to full draw that day. Back then, I could easily draw a bow set at 75 pounds,... READ MORE
Right Time, Right Buck
By Jamie MacMaster
Weather and an empty stomach get the best of this old warrior. I heard it close behind in the belly-deep powder snow. It was a quiet, sifting sound like salt being poured into a shaker. It was heading west into a northwest wind that blew my scent above it, and it kept coming. I couldn’t see anything through the cedars, but I knew it had to be... READ MORE
Old White Foot
By Danny Scott
Four-year hunt ends in a cloud of smoke ... and a flood of emotions. As I hunkered down in a little clover patch with my hands on the antlers of a mature whitetail, I found myself experiencing so many different emotions that nothing made sense. I had been watching and keeping up with this buck for four years, so I was happy and proud — but al... READ MORE
Illinois’ Icicle Buck
By Tom Fegely
Monsters like this aren’t supposed to be around in the second season. Billy Joe Austin knew he and his father, Dennis, and brother, Michael, would probably have the woods to themselves on that miserable morning of Dec. 5, 2003. But none of the Austins were convinced they really wanted it. It was the next-to-last day of Illinois’ second ... READ MORE