I started my trapping career on the game lands of central North Carolina. By that time, I had already spent a decade hunting public-land deer and thought I had a pretty good grasp on the process. I had no idea that my winter trapping adventures would teach me not only all about furbearers but even more about the whitetails they share the land with. I spent two years learning to trap in my favorite whitetail honey holes but generally viewed ..read more

It’s a near-constant drumbeat in many hunting circles. The public land is just too crowded. It’s a blanket statement tossed around, at least partially, to blame folks like me for promoting public land whitetail hunting too much. It’s also a good statement to use if you want to explain away how you didn’t fill a tag last year. It’s also, in some areas, true. At least at certain points of the season, it’s true. But overcrowding is subjective. The ..read more

Texas game wardens announced yesterday that 22 suspects have been charged with 1,200 violations related to illegal whitetail smuggling and black-market wildlife trade. The smuggling operation encompassed three deer breeding facilities, ten release sites, one deer management pen, and three illegal, unregistered facilities. The smugglers and illegal breeders are accused of poaching wild deer to replace their own, falsifying mandatory CWD tests, and ..read more

Last winter, at least in the Upper Midwest where I live, was dreamy. If you’re not passionate about sledding or building snowmen, it was dreamy anyway. We didn’t get any real snow to speak of, and for me, that meant I had a lot of time to work on my small deer properties. Every other week, I drove across the river into Wisconsin to work on my ground. I got a lot done, but that opportunity was an outlier and not the rule. This year, real winter ..read more

It doesn’t take long to browse YouTube before you find that there’s an unlimited amount of hunting content. For better or worse, you don’t have to be a pro to upload your hunting adventures. You can watch everything from seasoned hunters, like the Element crew, chase big bucks across the country to weekend warriors shooting their first GoPro hunts. Regardless of content quality, that endless stream of hunting media has conditioned hunters to have ..read more

Like the UFO poster hanging in agent Fox Mulder’s office states, I want to believe…that maybe the moon and deer movement are connected. Personally, I’ve never considered moon phase when hunting, but I know plenty of hunters who live and die by the moon phase and position. The theory that moon phase and position somehow affect buck movement has permeated our modern hunting culture for decades. In fact, hunters of all calibers (old school, newbies ..read more

For most hunters, February marks a definitive end to deer season and likely a welcomed break. Unless you plan to post-season scout, take down trail cams, or join the increasingly popular shed hunting community. February, for me at least, serves as a reminder that the work of deer hunting extends beyond the official seasons. For better or worse, my wife has also come to this realization. As a certified weekend warrior, I already struggle to find ..read more

Post-season reflection isn’t just about missed opportunities, but it’s a great time to evaluate your hunting setup, too. Improving your hunting skills requires learning from your mistakes and making changes next season so you don’t repeat them. This includes your hunting gear. Just like you might drop or add certain hunting techniques and strategies, you’ll also know which gear stays and which gear needs to go to eBay or the dump. As someone who ..read more

Hunting hill country or mountainous areas presents its own set of challenges. However, the terrain at least provides a starting point that flatlands don’t give up so easily. Saddles, benches, or drainages typically stand out on a map. Subtle terrain features and soft edges don’t. The lack of terrain and monotonous habitat, especially in the big woods, can be intimidating when you’re e-scouting. Unless you’re working with hard edges, you’ll have ..read more

Trail cameras can be incredibly handy tools for deer hunters. You can learn more about what deer frequent a specific area, how they use the landscape, and whether or not a booner or a forkie has worked that one scrape. But like all technological advancements in the deer woods, they can serve more as a stumbling block than a resource for many hunters. I like to think of trail camera data as a movie preview. You can infer a lot from a preview, but ..read more