Fail upward? What kind of corporate jargon is that? How could this possibly help me become a better hunter? Hear me out. Every hunter that I know with at least a dozen seasons under their belt goes through a natural evolution. That evolutionary path is different for everyone because everyone has a slightly different situation and different personal goals. For example, you might come to a fork in the road after having some success here and there, but never consistently filling your tag. You might shoot a nice buck every single year, but there’s a burning desire deep in your gut telling you to c ..read more

I grew up thinking that big bucks were almost unkillable. While I was surrounded by people who hunted, almost no one ever killed a deer that was even 3.5 or older. When someone did, it was a big deal. Our lived reality was in stark contrast to the hunting videos and magazine articles we consumed. It didn’t make sense, and for years, I struggled with that disconnect. How could some people consistently kill big deer? I couldn’t even find one most summer evenings while running around with an old pair of binoculars. Let alone ever shoot one. It took a lot of seasons of hard bowhunting and enough e ..read more

In the whitetail-sphere, it’s common for hunters to proclaim that their deer are harder to kill than the deer found in other places. It’s kind of like bitching about local weather. We all like to present a life of struggle and, of course, perseverance. With whitetails, no one region or state can claim its deer are the toughest to kill. The truth is deer that don’t suffer hunter mistakes live all over, and they share a few things in common. The first is that there usually aren’t very many of them. Low-Density Deer If you walked up to the edge of a four-acre farm pond with the goal of catching a ..read more

It was early October 1992, and I was sitting in a wooden treestand overlooking an oak-lined ridgetop. I wanted my first deer in the worst way, and she was heading in my direction. The young doe was on the hunt for a few acorns, and when she posed up at 10 yards, I drew and shot. What I didn’t do, was aim. When my arrow passed over her back, my rising panic hit a fever pitch. Another arrow sailed high and buried into the dirt. With a 0 and 2 count, I stepped up to the plate one more time and prayed to the deer gods to let me get this one right. They didn’t listen. My third and last arrow follow ..read more

On a brisk weekend in October, I had an epiphany. After three seasons of shivering, sweating, waiting, watching, and throwing the occasional hissyfit—I was standing over a mature, nine-point deer. Was it a record-breaker? No. Did it come at a high price? Yes and no. This particular instance worked like perfection. The arrow hit right where I wanted it, from about 25 yards. It was a quick, clean kill. I even had the self-control to resist shooting a doe moments before so I could hold out for what I hoped was a buck behind it. This was more than a buck; it was me growing up as a hunter. Of cours ..read more

Hunters have an undeniable fascination with giant antlered, big-bodied bucks. If you've decided to take on the challenge of understanding mature bucks, you're in danger of becoming addicted and obsessed. However, studying mature bucks can also increase your fun in the woods. Mature bucks are king in the big woods. They live in constant survival mode due to hunting pressure, predators, and the drive to carry on their bloodline. It's no wonder that they are rare creatures. Young bucks or does have basic survival instincts, but a few years of experience make a seasoned buck's senses sharper than ..read more

Too much hunting media preaches a conservative approach to whitetail hunting that just doesn’t work for most hunters. This message has largely dominated the conversation around hunting mature whitetails. Minimize pressure, hunt the fringes, wait for the stars to align—the same jargon that’s been recycled every hunting season and convinced hunters to hold out for bigger bucks that just aren’t coming. It’s a top-down message that says, “If you work hard enough and save all your pennies, you can be a millionaire just like me,” without telling you about the trust fund or that their dad owns the co ..read more

Growing up in southeastern Minnesota, I thought we had the laziest hunters. During gun season, the amount of trucks creeping along gravel roads with the windows down was a sure sign of a road hunt in progress. It never made sense to me to take the hunt out of the hunt and shoot one from the ditch, but I naively thought it was a local issue. I thought a lot of things about the average hunter from my home state when I was young, and it wasn’t until I started to travel to hunt that I found out those traits were damn near ubiquitous in the general hunting population. It really hit home for me on a ..read more

I've spent a substantial amount of time hunting whitetails in the big woods. Understanding scrapes has, without a doubt, led me to more consistent encounters than any other hunting tactic. Their basic framework is an open patch of dirt with an overhanging licking branch. The size of a scrape might tell you that many deer use it. A scrape with more depth and a foul smell is a telltale sign that a mature buck frequents it. Its location could tell you when deer actually visit the area. If you're making a postseason scouting checklist, you'll want to add these scrapes. Community Scrapes These larg ..read more

A few years ago, we redid our basement floor. According to my wife, since there were new floors going in, we also needed new furniture and a fresh coat of paint on the walls. While she was right, I mostly felt like my time in the boat throwing topwaters for smallies was disappearing a little more with each one of her wishes. While we flirted with divorce a few times during that lower-level house overhaul, what really struck me as interesting was when it was time to put my deer mounts back on the walls. Even though I don’t mount them anymore, I have enough shoulder mounts to take up more space ..read more