I recently read that the illegal use of ATVs has supplanted garbage dumping as the No. 1 law-enforcement problem on our national forest lands and other public areas. I knew it was going on, I just didn’t realize the magnitude of the problem. Apparently, fools are flying up and down roads on their bikes behind locked Forest Service gates, cutting illegal trails around the gates, racing though the timber, and doing doughnuts in meadows and fields. They are littering trash, shooting up signs and basically raising all kinds of hell. They are ruining it for law-abiding people like us who hike, hunt ..read more

Every whitetail fawn born now through July will have on average 272 to 342 white spots on their reddish coats. Each spot ranges in size from 0.24 to 0.51 inches in diameter. Yes, some unknown biologist actually counted and measured the spots and documented them! According to Penn State biologists, spot patterns are unique to every fawn as to the exact number of spots, their size, and how they are dispersed on a baby deer’s reddish coat. The spots serve as critical camouflage for fawns during their first weeks and months of life. At birth, fawns are scentless. Their spotted coats blend with the ..read more

The .30-06 Springfield, developed by the U.S. military in 1906, has become one of the top hunting cartridges of all-time. For decades it has ranked as one of the most popular deer hunting rounds in America based on ammo sales (along with the .30-30 and .270). Every store in America that sells ammunition, from the Cabela’s in Maine to a mom-and-pop hardware in the remote Heartland, will carry at least a few boxes of 150-grain loads, the most common .30-06 round for whitetails. No matter where you live and hunt, you’ll find ’06 deer rounds and bullets at the ready. While there are faster and sex ..read more

It will take a whitetail superfreak to top the 213 5⁄8-inch typical buck that farmer Mio Hanson shot near his home in Biggar, Saskatchewan one snowy November day 30 years ago. Will it ever happen? My analysis of the top 200-inch typical racks in the Boone and Crockett records shows that to top the Hanson buck, a deer’s rack will likely possess 11 to 14 points, with the G-2, G-3 and G-4 tines on each antler in excess of 10 inches. For reference, the 14-point Hanson Buck had 11-to 14-inch tines, and the iconic Number 3 Jordan Buck, killed way back in 1914 in Wisconsin, had 10- and 13-inch G-2s a ..read more

Here’s your practical and affordable way to get into the land leasing game—and shoot more and bigger bucks.  My old college buddy Dave hunts a 22-acre brush-and-briar thicket within walking distance of his house in Kentucky. “Nobody else hunted that spot, but I figured it is close to the house, so I’ll ask permission and try it if I can,” he said. Dave got the okay from the landowner, and he has hunted the spot for the last several years. In October he sees mostly does, and the bucks came in November, piling into the cover to breed the does and to flee the booming guns on surrounding land ..read more

For the next 6 months, between ballgames and vacations and cutting the grass, many of us will slip away to the woods on occasion to work on food plots, set out minerals, hang trail cameras, etc. Times flies and bow season will be here in about 5 months. Late spring and summer is when ticks and snakes are out and active, so heed these precautions. The first and best thing you can do is to wear knee-high boots, which protect against both snakes and ticks. From May to September, I NEVER go into the woods without wearing tall boots with long pants legs tucked snugly in them. Tick Precautions Spra ..read more

Exert advice on where to set your cams and find the biggest bucks on your hunting land We are not going to bore you with what size tree to strap your camera to…how high off the ground to set it…or any other basic stuff you probably already know. What we are going to do is point you to 11 high-level locations, based on terrain and cover, where you are likely to capture images of the biggest bucks on your land. How solid are our sources for this advice? The experts quoted here have taken and analyzed hundreds of thousands of cam pictures of mature bucks over the years! Read on and find out where ..read more

In the springs of 2016 and 2017, Justin Dion and his fellow researchers at the University of Delaware captured and collared 109 newborn fawns in Sussex County in the southern portion of the state. The study area had about 50 deer per square mile, but a noticeable lack of predators. No confirmed sightings of bobcats and no bears. Only 9 coyotes had ever been reported harvested statewide in Delaware at the time of the project. Each of the 109 collared fawns was monitored daily. When a fawn died, the researchers investigated the scene, collected data and sent the carcass to a veterinarian for nec ..read more

Kip Adams, who works for the National Deer Association and who is a whitetail habitat expert, is a big believer in keeping food plots “covered” throughout the year. The best way to keep a plot covered is to have some plants growing in it for as many months as possible. As different varieties of plants grow in a plot, they hold the soil and help to continuously build organic matter. That is why cover cropping has become so big in commercial agriculture. Farmers used to harvest corn or soybeans, and then leave the soil open until the next planting season. Now they seed winter ..read more

Huge rain and flash flooding here in Virginia this weekend, and it’s moving up the East Coast. Later this spring there will be some flooding in the Midwest and South, as happens every year. How will all this water affect the deer? Biologists say that rising floodwaters of river and creeks won’t kill many if any adult deer, though it will displace animals for days and perhaps weeks. But the deer will eventually filter back into their habitats once the waters recede. While pregnant does will simply move out of rising water now and for the next few weeks, the primary concern for deer herds in and ..read more