Table of contents for November - December / Whitetail 2017 in Bowhunter

Each deer season is like an action novel. The story is developed with the honing of shooting skills, fine-tuning of gear, scouting, and dreaming of success in the coming days. The first cool evenings of late summer signal that something is happening, which motivates stand selection and revisiting notes from the previous season. The plot begins with the first hunt of the season, and it builds with each passing day. The sighting of a buck across a soybean field, and a new scrape in early October. As the days shorten, the layers of clothing thicken, and rubs appear on young saplings. As the anticipation grows, the bowhunter rushes to his or her treestand as if somehow able to force a desired ending, but none of them knows how long the…

IT WAS NOVEMBER 20, 2016, and my watch read 9:47 a.m. I was 18 feet up a tree in my favorite whitetail state — Kansas. For the first time that morning, there were no deer within bow range of my stand. Although it’s not unusual to have a hot stand after a five-day rest, I didn’t expect to see so many young bucks scent-checking does during the rut’s tail end. Of the bucks I’d spotted so far, only one was a three-year-old sporting only a mediocre four-point right side — clearly the result of fighting. The truth is, I was hunting for one deer, and one deer only. He was a four-year-old giant I’d nicknamed “Trashy.” I had hundreds of trail-camera pictures of him dating back to 2014. In 2015,…

UPON REACHING the platform of my treestand, I felt an inexplicable urge to turn around. As I did, there he was — one of the largest bucks I’d ever seen, looking straight at me. My heart exploded at both the size of his massive rack and the certainty that I was 100-percent busted. For 10 seconds my frozen, still exterior belied my inner shock. I was certain he would bolt away at any second. Much to my amazement, he started feeding right toward me. As always, I was excited to get out of the big city and head up to Kansas for my first trip of the fall. I hunt with 10 guys who loosely formed a hunting club about 10 years ago. Collectively, the ranch and a few more…

IT WAS JANUARY, and it was bitterly cold. My phone said the temperature was 19 degrees. The wind out of the north cut like a sharp knife. I was bundled up and looked like the Michelin Man: three layers on the bottom, five layers on top, two pairs of gloves, two stocking caps, a neck gaitor, and six handwarmers stuffed in strategic places. My headlights navigated my way through the dark at 5:30 a.m.to the Texas Panhandle riverbottom. Big snowflakes drifted sideways in the darkness. Then the snow turned to sleet, which stung like a bee when it hit bare skin. At daylight, silhouettes turned into bucks. Eight bucks to be exact, ranging from spikes and dink six-points to a mature eight-point and a fine 10-point, and all were within…

A BUSY, HARDWORKING FAMILY MAN and lifelong nature lover, Ryan Jacque has always treasured the spare moments of his limited free time. Every autumn since his late teens, he’d slip away to enjoy solo bowhunts in the woods near his western Massachusetts home. So it was not at all unusual when the avid whitetail hunter rose early on November 1, 2008, slipped into his camo clothes and boots, strapped on his safety harness, and stepped outside into the cool predawn Saturday darkness. Ryan carried only his trusty camera, a cell phone, favorite bow, and high hopes for the chance to release a well-placed arrow. The Jacque family freezer was running low on tasty venison. Ryan’s hunt plan was uncomplicated. He’d spend a half-day in a hang-on treestand before heading back…

The report wasn’t encouraging. Over the phone my hunting partner, who was already camped out and hunting in north-central Nebraska, explained to me how the sign was there but the deer didn’t seem to be. It was his first time on the parcel, a place I discovered while turkey hunting five years ago, so I tried to point him in the right direction. He then mentioned that there was another hunter camped nearby who was using a dirt bike to cover every inch of the public land that he could reach. The Wildlife Management Area consisted of about a square-mile of land, although only about half of it has any kind of cover you’re likely to find a deer in. With someone cruising through the openings and along the wood…

ROUGHLY 30 YEARS AGO, I read somewhere that if I purchased a tube-shaped device called a “buck grunt,” it could be used to call in a whitetail buck. Heck, for a guy hunting pressured bucks in the eastern Virginia hardwoods, I’d have bought a bull horn if I thought it would work. With the thought of What do I have to lose? I closed the deal and set off into the whitetail woods. During this time period there were no DVDs, or YouTube, and few if any instructional VHS tapes about much to do with hunting, let alone how to call a whitetail buck with a grunt tube. I entered the woods with some cluelessness and an attitude that said, This has gotta work, the packaging said so. I’m sure…

I wouldn’t categorize myself as being superstitious, so I didn’t give the fact that it was Friday the 13 th  a second thought as I walked to my stand in the predawn darkness that November morning. A light west wind had placed me in the only decent tree along the pasture, 200 yards behind my rural Kansas home. It was a great observation stand, and despite not being so fond of the tree itself, I was confident that I would see any deer well before it approached my location. Two decades of bowhunting this narrow valley had given me a vast knowledge of deer travel patterns. But on this morning, I would be humbled and proven wrong. Suddenly appearing at 50 yards, a large-framed buck had entered the same…

LIKE COUNTLESS BOWHUNTERS, my favorite time of the season is the November whitetail rut. Whether I’m toting a longbow or camera system, it’s the promise of seeing bull-necked rutting bucks that really gets my blood pumping! The start of last November’s chase phase found me at one of my favorite whitetail photography areas, a sprawling refuge that was rife with rutting sign, including myriad huge scrapes and unending trees rubbed hard by the local bucks. Brimming with excitement, I hurriedly exited the truck long before sunrise and began a lengthy hike into the riverbottom. The morning was abnormally warm — nearly 50 degrees at first light. I’ve seen warm temps slow rut tempo before, but with the heavy proliferation of buck sign, I figured to see loads of deer action…

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QUESTION I’m trying to streamline my hunting setup, and I’m considering going to a rangefinding binocular. I noticed Curt Wells using rangefinding binos in the past. What do I need to consider before I take this leap? Clint E., via e-mail ANSWER I had some reservations when I decided to make the switch to rangefinding binoculars about six years ago, but I quickly became comfortable with these optics and am enjoying the advantages. Like any change in equipment, it will require some getting used to. The obvious functional advantage of using a range-finding binocular is having just one optical device hanging around your neck. You would never leave your binos behind, but forgetting your rangefinder can be disastrous. When you’re hunting in the West with a daypack on, you’ll obviously…