For bowhunters, saddle hunting rules the current mobile hunting trend. Ultralight lock-on stands come in a close second, but we’re in the heyday of saddles. While this might be the go-to method for archers, it hasn’t gained as much traction with the rifle-hunting crowd. I constantly meet or talk with hunters who are intrigued by saddle hunting, and they always ask the same question: Is it comfortable? The short answer is absolutely. More...
No matter where you hunt, navigating gun hunting pressure presents challenges. In the Midwest, especially straight-wall cartridge states, you might only have to worry about the orange armies for a few weeks every season. In Southern states, gun season might span months.
In my home state of Mississippi, gun season basically runs from the week before Thanksgiving to the end of January. On public lands, six of those weeks might be dedicated gun...
For many reasons, the rut can be the best and most exciting time to kill a buck. Even sage bucks let down their guards this time of year, and there’s always a chance that one could run through your setup. As hopeful as rut hunting might seem, those same chance encounters can make it unpredictable and frustrating. Even if you blanked during the rut, you should still have high hopes for the late season.
By this time of the season the temps, leaves...
Whether you’re hunting the early season, rut, post-rut, or late season, finding fresh sign should be your top priority. After all, if you can consistently find deer, you’ll have a lot of success—and fun—during hunting season. You’ll find that phrase (fresh sign) in almost any article you read on deer hunting, including plenty that I’ve penned. But, like other vague terms, “fresh sign” only becomes helpful if you understand what it means.
For...
One of the big trends in whitetail hunting is box blinds. What was once a Texas anomaly has spread across the whitetail’s range in a major way during the last decade. This is a great move if it fits your style and your budget.
The other end of the spectrum is the mobile craze, with its saddles and featherweight stands and sticks. I’m a big proponent of embracing as many options as possible, because you never know what you might need to be...
I know a lot of hunters who observe some sort of hunting tradition around Thanksgiving, whether it falls on the actual day or encompasses that weekend. During this time of year, gun seasons are typically underway. From famed ladder stands to annual man drives or deer-dog camps down South, hunting traditions can be some of the most exciting and fun times of deer season.
For a lot of hunters, these traditions have sparked a lifetime of hunting...
This is not the rut I was expecting. In fact, my 2024 whitetail rut has been about as far from what most whitetail hunters dream of as it could possibly get.
I have not seen a single buck chasing does. I have not witnessed a single buck fight. I have not heard a buck grunt, snort wheeze, or even sneeze! It. Has. Been. Slow.
But, with that off my chest, I also recognize that there’s no point dwelling on it. The important question is this; What can...
I’ve never owned a four-wheeler or a side-by-side. I also rarely hunt places where my deer die close to the road. This reality has led me to consider all aspects of getting deer out of the woods without killing myself via a miserable drag.
What that has taught me is that a lot of folks just don’t understand what the options are, or how to figure out which one is best for individual hunts. That’s a shame, because there’s nothing better than...
Rifle hunters typically receive unfair generalizations. After all, those fuds make easy scapegoats, tramping through the woods in blaze orange. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of hunters who fit the fud stereotype, but that’s hardly an indicator of most rifle hunters. While it’s easy for us bowhunters to see rifle hunting as a less refined way of taking game, annual data on man days and successful harvests should tell us that rifle hunting...
They were definitely buck tracks. I was standing on a wide open hillside in the warm afternoon sun, looking down at the tracks and wondering if I even had a chance. We’d had good snow in the early season, but a warm front had come through the day before, pushing a sheet of rain ahead of it that melted every beautiful white inch of accumulation before I had managed to find a track worth following.
I was planning to give up on tracking that day and...
When you think about the rut, still-hunting probably doesn’t pop into your head. All-day sits, setting up downwind of doe bedding, or hanging in a funnel usually top the list of rut-hunting tactics. If you’ve done your homework and put the time in, you’ll probably have a decent shot at shooting a buck.
But what if all-day sits just don’t interest you, or you’re hunting somewhere new? Those all-day sits won’t do you any good if you’re hunting a...
When I first started saddle hunting I thought the money I spent on the gear bought me an instant level-up. If you’ve hung in a saddle for any amount of time, you know this isn’t the case. Sometimes too much freedom leads to paralysis or over analyzing, and this is especially true for saddle hunting. Just because you can theoretically hunt any tree, doesn’t mean you’ll have a sure shot at a big buck—even during the rut. You still have to read the...
The archery opener has come and gone, along with the entire month of October, and you still haven’t crossed paths with a mature buck. Turn the page to November, crisp mornings, cold fronts, and the rut brings the promise of crunching leaves and cruising bucks.
Unfortunately, almost as quick as the newfound hope arrives, the grind begins, and you find yourself on the back half of the rut, running low on sleep and ideas. You know that time on stand...
This is essentially what my wife told me after I returned, complaining, from a recent hunt. It’s not exactly the consolation I was looking for, but it was an honest assessment, albeit frank. While she didn’t mean it as a slight or even a passive-aggressive dig, she did help me reevaluate my goals and expectations as a hunter who works multiple jobs, has a family, and pursues other commitments and interests. Now, before you tear me apart in the...
According to my wife, I’m a late bloomer with a lot of things. She’s not wrong, but one that she doesn’t care about but which bothers me a lot, is that I’m just starting to really incorporate decoys into my deer hunting strategy. I’ve spent so much time hunting public land and other pressured places, which often lack a good class of mature bucks, that it just never really resonated with me.
I did manage to lure in a cruising Nebraska buck several...
Opening day has come and gone. The October Lull is fading in the rearview mirror. And, now, the whitetail rut is staring us right in the hairy eyeball. It’s just about here.
As you might have guessed by now, my opening day plan did not go as I’d hoped. In fact, the two bucks I’ve been after in southern Michigan have been complete ghosts. One hasn’t shown since October 3rd. The other, which I wrote about last time, has been AWOL since the...
As the saying goes, there’s a grain of truth in every lie, just like when your hunting buddy “passes” up a buck to let him grow another year. How many arrows did you start the hunt with, bud? All joking aside, there’s definitely an ounce of truth to every widely held whitetail belief.
But the fact of the matter is, whitetail hunters with relentless optimism tend to find a way to fill their tags every season. They make hay while the sun shines...
Some of my first hunting experiences occurred at a deer camp. Looking back, that camp persisted on nostalgia and the culture it fostered in a rural Mississippi community.
Occasionally, someone would shoot a big buck, and I don’t mean big for the pine hills of Mississippi. They would have been big anywhere. But those opportunities occurred about as frequently as snow did. When someone killed a deer of that magnitude, it might as well have been...
Few things substitute experience and time in the field. While it can be tempting to think a new piece of gear can help you level up, it rarely works that way. As a gear editor and reviewer, I’ve used some of the best hunting gear money can buy, and I can tell you that no single piece of equipment has directly correlated to me killing a big buck.
However, I have experienced direct success thanks to in-season scouting, consistent time on stand, and...
When I was first starting out deer hunting, signature hats were all of the rage. I don’t mean like the flat-brim craze that you see in the western hunting crowd these days. I mean goofy styles that could set you apart from your bow-toting brethren.
This has a lot to do with Chuck Adams. If you’re too young to know who he is, just think about your favorite hunting influencers and then imagine someone who probably has 1,000 times their bowhunting...
