Table of contents for November/December 2020 - Whitetail Special in Bowhunter

I CAME TO DESPISE THE BUCK. Okay, maybe that’s too strong a word. Let’s just say I wasn’t happy with the deer I called “Baby Booner.” We were friends for about four years as I watched the buck mature, but when he reached 5½ years old, our relationship became adversarial. He wanted to stay alive. I wanted to run an arrow through him. After three years of traveling to Kansas with the singular focus of tagging that buck, I lost access to the property and Baby Booner vanished. In some strange way, it was a relief. I had been released from a self-imposed obligation to hunt only that buck. Therein lies the downside of spending an entire season, or multiple seasons, in pursuit of a singular animal. All other deer…

ONE OF THE MOST traditional wildlife meetings in the country is the annual gathering of the Southeast Deer Study Group. This meeting brings together all the top deer biologists and researchers in the world to present the latest science on whitetail deer. This year was the Group’s 43rd annual meeting, and it was hosted by the Alabama Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries at Auburn University. As always, Bowhunter Magazine was there. At this meeting, the depth of material was extensive, with 35 scientific presentations and 15 student poster papers. There is no way to cover every presentation here, so I’ve selected the papers that contain information that I believe will be of the most interest to you. Researchers from Mississippi State University looked at the age-old question of whether…

ANSWER Yes, nighttime blood-trailing is possible, and I don’t really consider it much of a disadvantage. In some cases, it’s a necessity. If you hunt in coyote country, you may not have the luxury of leaving the trailing work until the next morning. I’ve seen coyotes get on a dead deer in less than an hour, so you could end up with only a spine and a head. Learning to follow blood at night is a necessary skill. In fact, I don’t mind trailing at night, because the blood glistens in the light of your flashlight or headlamp and is often more visible than it is the next morning after it dries. For gear, you’ll want a quality headlamp and extra batteries in your pack, but you’ll also benefit by…

WHEN I THINK of the term “wild game,” I come away with two distinct meanings. The first and most obvious is that the meat has not been manipulated by man to ensure a more favorable monetary outcome. The wild game itself is just that: Completely wild, organic, and unabated in its ability to grow and survive in wild places. The second, and perhaps just as important to many of us, is that wild game comes from wild places. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the wild places that our big game animals thrive in that I seek just as much as the wild meat that is often the result of the endeavor. Sure, there may be less natural danger to the Midwestern whitetail that lives on the Back 40 than…

From atop a well-seasoned hunting horse named “Brownie,” I was momentarily mesmerized from watching his head bob back and forth as we rode down the muddy trail. That’s when I spotted large, round tracks in the mud that I knew couldn’t be more than an hour old, because it had rained all night — letting up just before we left camp — and there wasn’t a drop of water in them. Curious at first, I suddenly realized the tracks belonged to a very large mountain lion! The hair on the back of my neck, along with my anxiety level, started to rise to new heights. Here I was, somewhere in the high peaks of Arizona’s enchanting Superstition Mountains, hunting a small, cagey deer that up to this point, I had…

ONE OF MY FIRST jobs as a wildlife biologist was to locate bucks prior to, during, and after the hunting season with radio-telemetry equipment. Since I was already a diehard bowhunter, I thought I had the keys to unlocking the door to the deer world. The problem was, the telemetry equipment I was using back in the 1980s was primitive compared to the cellular collars we use today. The small sample size of data we were collecting made it tough to pin down any absolutes. And, just when I thought I was figuring them out, something would happen that totally surprised me on how elusive and unpredictable deer could be. After some time “figuring them out,” I wanted to see how close I could get to some of the collared…

FEEL SAFE IN SAYING this has never been done before by anyone in history. Ancient man used antlers and bone to make various tools and arrowheads, but truly petrified antler has always been rare. Even today, most is buried in mud, or found underwater. Early man had better types of rock to work with for edged weapons and tools. Flint, jasper, chert, obsidian, and agate produced better edges and were much easier to find than petrified antler. Mostdeerhunters,antlernuts,stonearrowheadorartifact collectors don’t realize petrified antlers even exist. I’ve never seen one in any museum, and I’ve kept my collection fairly mum until recently. Many people know about petrified wood and dinosaur bones, but few realize whitetail antlers can also turn from bone to stone over many thousands of years. I own what…

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Brought to you by Bowhunter® Magazine and Nelson Outfitters Bowhunter Magazine has joined with Nelson Outfitters (Dave Nelson, 307/751-2262, nelsonoutfitters. ) and a topnotch group of bowhunting equipment manufacturers to sponsor our 2021 Youth Hunter Essay Contest (see the list of sponsoring manufacturers below). This is our 25th annual essay contest, and we hope youth participants will make it another great one! Last year’s Grand Prize Winner, Ethan Paulat, and his adult sponsor, Mark Paulat, from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, would have spent three days chasing longbeards in Wyoming, but unfortunately, due to disruptions caused by COVID-19, young Ethan instead chose a great prize package that included a new Hoyt Helix bow, Ozonics Orion unit, and a SIG SAUER range-finder. Congratulations to young Ethan, as well as to the rest of…