Tabla de contenidos para November 2021 en Deer & Deer Hunting

It’s almost the perfect afternoon for deer hunting. There’s just enough nip in the air to warrant this knit hat, and the air is crisp enough to turn my breath into small billows with every exhale. There’s not much wind, but what little there is creates a windchime effect with the red, yellow and orange aspen leaves. They’re tickling in the treetops above me in a confetti-like dance. I’m taking it all in, saying that I’m deer hunting but I’m just out here to relax. And think. And ponder life’s complexities. Have you have noticed how such vigils invariably bring profound moments? They happen all the time out here on the deer stand. The older I get, the more I realize that almost every hunt is wrought with higher meaning,…

COVID-19 hit America hard. Churches stopped gathering. Funerals were limited to a handful of mourners. Banks forced us out of their lobbies and into the drive-through. We wore masks everywhere. But the pandemic did not hinder hunters from pursuing white-tailed deer in 2020. In fact, the number of hunters increased and the number of deer harvested rose in at least 37 of 44 states where whitetails are hunted. Will the pandemic mark a reverse in the decline of hunting license sales? Will numbers hold (or be even higher) in the 2021-2022 season? Or will the increase be a mere blip, failing to counter the downward slide of hunter numbers? A CABIN FEVER EPIDEMIC Many people were never infected, but lockdowns led to another malady — cabin fever — and social…

Getting within bow range of any whitetail is a rush but stalking up on one while it’s bedded is an adventure all its own. Being able to accomplish such a feat is a tall order to fill, but it’s certainly possible. Here’s how to get it done. UNDERSTAND HOW DEER BED The first step in successfully stalking bedded deer is knowing how they bed. Each bedding area, and even the specific bed, will look slightly different. But how each deer uses these is almost always the same. One of the best deer hunters in the world, The Hunting Beast’s Dan Infalt knows this, and explains. “The biggest mistake people make when stalking bedded bucks is coming straight into the wind,” he said. “Mature bucks tend to bed with wind to…

* TRAIL CAMERAS CAPTURED pictures of the most mature bucks on the land from the beginning of Alabama’s bow season in October until the week before Christmas in December. * THE MATURE BUCKS were far more patternable in daylight during bow season than after the green-field hunters moved into the shooting houses. * JOHN JR. AND I SET UP a hit list of mature bucks we wanted to take and learned that hunting during bow season, when fewer hunters were on the property, provided the best opportunities. * WE SAW A DRAMATIC DECREASE in the number of bucks on our trail cameras from mid-December through mid-February, when Alabama’s deer season ended and the hunting pressure at the club had been at its highest. *WE LEARNED THAT knowing the movement patterns,…

Humans are moving into the countryside, among working farms and undeveloped forest land, and into wildlife habitat, producing a landscape referred to as “exurbia.” This new landscape — a mixture of farms, forests, estates, and large-acreage suburbs dominated by the well-to-do — is creating new headaches for deer managers.According to Daniel Storm, and his research colleagues from Southern Illinois University, an estimated 10 million people were added to exurbia in the United States during the 1990s. This is considerably more than were added to urban, suburban, or rural areas. In contrast to suburban landscapes, where wildlife habitat occurs in patches, human dwellings in exurbia tend to be more interspersed throughout wildlife habitat. In other words, the larger lots and areas of native vegetation between human dwellings makes ideal deer habitat,…

Buck Score: 184 ⅝ inches (typical) Date of Harvest: Nov. 1, 2020 Location of Harvest: Fort Campbell Military Installation Weapon of Harvest: Muzzleloader One of the most recognized military installations in the country, Fort Campbell is a popular hunting destination. It comprises more than 100,000 acres, spans two states (Kentucky and Tennessee), and harbors incredible deer numbers. Some of these reach older age classes and grow monstrous racks. Hunter Schmittou’s 2020 muzzleloader buck is yet another example of that. You see, a friend of his, Nathan McClintock, encouraged him to start hunting Fort Campbell again. He’d stopped due to increased difficulty to gain access, but with him not having any 150-plus-inch bucks on his private farms, he decided to venture out and see what he could find. He worked for…

I’M A PUBLIC land hunter for the most part. I pass on spike bucks and forkhorns for two reasons: 1. Here in Michigan we have a ton of does, and each hunter can get 10 doe tags per season if they want and can (in some areas) hunt all the way to February. 2. I like the idea of letting the little bucks have a chance to live a little bit, grow up, and get an opportunity pass on their genetics. Yes, I know No. 2 is wishful thinking and someone is going shoot them when they get the opportunity, but I personally see nothing wrong with that just not what I want to do. Now, if a 6-pointer walks out into range — that is a trophy to me, especially…

It is a pretty picture. A heavy bodied buck with thick and sweeping antlers holds court in a section of woods recently shed of its foliage. A line of rubs and scrapes ring a kingdom into which no other buck will step for fear of getting thoroughly thrashed. The big-woods monarch spends its rut breeding doe after doe — every doe in its domain — making sure the fawns that hit the ground the falling spring carry one genetic code that promises to deliver big bodies and antlers. It is a great picture, but the only problem is it only exists in hunters’ minds. In reality, it is a far cry from what really happens during the whitetail rut. In the past, outdoor writers and hunters could only guess what…

Sometimes, we whitetail hunters have a commitment problem. We’re not talking about human relationships here. We’ll leave that kind of stuff to the counsel of your shrink or a good friend over a cup of coffee or glass of beer. It’s human nature to hedge your bets. Deer hunting is no different. I see the evidence year-round as I drive the Upper Midwest for work commitments, family gatherings and sporting adventure. I am talking about the permanent, elevated deer houses, shooting blinds or whitetail condos you see on the landscape. Call them what you will: I wish I had one! But I don’t. Nor do I have that kind of land access to command such stadium seating over a large spread of whitetail habitat. In the end, few of us…

Deer camp, wherein groups of men hunted deer from “camps” began over a century ago, when deer were plentiful and restrictions on harvest were few. Wiki describes such camps as “…rough, but with unique comforts. Over a century ago, hunters would spend weeks in camp as it took so long to get there. Chores were done during daylight hours to prepare and serve food and clean up after hunters with appetites whetted by outdoor exercise. Cabins were initially quite drafty and simple and the wind would whistle through the logs, perhaps echoing the call of the loons on the lake. All provisions, including water, had to be carried into cabins equipped with wood stoves for heat, and using candles or kerosene or gas lanterns for light.” Most camps were begun…

Two things of prominence annually occurred on our gun deer hunting season when my brothers and I were too young to hunt deer: HUNTER’S CLOSET 1. Dad called home Sunday night before Thanksgiving, after the second day of hunting, to let us know how he and the other guys in the hunting crew had done. Dad and his hunting partners would be hunting through Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving, and we wouldn’t hear from him again until he came home. Sunday….waiting for that phone call from Dad….was the longest day of the year. Longer even than the day before Christmas. Because that phone call was better than Christmas. Christmas happens only once a year, but when Dad came home after Thanksgiving we would get to hear it all over again…

I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve heard this kind of description of a previous year’s whitetail rut: “The rut didn’t happen last year like many were predicting. All the action I saw seemed to be early. During the first week of November, I saw all kinds of bucks cruising around. By the end of the first week, there was some chasing going on, then everything seemed to crash. From then on, I couldn’t buy a buck sighting. What happened to the rut last year?” What this frustrated hunter was sharing with me in a recent e-mail exchange is typical of what can take place during the rut. Too often, deer hunters envision the rut as a frenetic helter-skelter event that lasts for the better part of…

I’ve always been adamantly against baiting deer or hunting over bait because of how I was raised. Growing up in Alabama, baiting was illegal and considered cheating, indicating a hunter’s lack of woodsmanship and hunting skills. Then about three years ago, Alabama began letting people hunt over bait for a $17 annual permit. Deer hunting is an evolving sport, and we’ve learned much since Southern hunters primarily used dogs and drives. Next, hunters planted green fields with fruit and nut trees around them, and those became legal baiting sites for taking deer. Those green fields were considered silver bullets for hunters to quickly and easily harvest big bucks. But planting the same areas and hunting out of the same shooting houses and tree stands every year soon decreased the chances…

I’d argue a great sausage recipe is among the pinnacle of the wild-game-cooking masterpieces. It’s the balance of the right ingredients in precise measurements. For this reason, it never hurts to use a dry goods scale and work with grams, as great sausage comes down to percentages in relation to meat. For this recipe, I translated metric measurements to standard equivalents. The main rule when making sausage: Keep your meat cold. This could mean freezing your grinder chute ahead of time or putting meat in freezer after each step. Warm meat, and this can happen when your own hands add heat to meat, ruins texture and complicate the process of stuffing casings. INGREDIENTS (PER 5 POUNDS OF SAUSAGE): + 48 ounces venison trim, ground+ 32 ounces pork fat, ground+ 8…

Most land managers use scouting cameras to help get a census of the resident deer on their properties. Unfortunately, this practice has gotten a bit of a bad rap regarding deer management. But fear not, I promise I’ll never push anyone to shoot or pass on any legal deer. That’s 100 percent the hunter’s call. Unless you’re hunting on someone else’s grounds or hunting regulations dictate, no one has any right to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn’t shoot. That said, even if a landowner doesn’t set minimums, censusing deer to get a better idea of what’s out there is an important step in managing the herd. This column takes a quick look at how to get a general census of your resident deer. No, I’m not going…

With all the publicity that food plots are getting nowadays, one might think that a whitetail’s year-round food requirements can be met by simply planting a variety of forages. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, at least for most deer hunting locales. In many ways, whitetails are like people when it comes to their nutrition requirements and food choices. For both people and deer to thrive, a proper balance of minerals and vitamins is required. In a whitetail’s case, its mineral and vitamin requirements come from a variety of food sources (both grown and natural) that are preferred at specific times of the year. Depending on region, there are about 500 natural food sources and many agricultural foods that whitetails will eat during the course of a year. A whitetail’s preference…