Table of contents for October 2023 in Bowhunter

ABOWHUNTER’S BRAIN is no ordinary assemblage of gray matter. We think differently. We are undaunted by the promise of failure. We knowingly, willingly, accept that our odds of notching a tag pale against the odds of going home empty-handed. We’re good with it. Whenever I ask someone if they’re a bowhunter, there are only two answers: “No, I don’t have the patience” or “I don’t have the time.” Time is a factor for us all and is based on priorities. But patience is something else and can be defined in several ways. You may not have the patience to babysit three screaming toddlers or wait your turn at the DMV, but from a bowhunting perspective, patience is a misnomer. It’s not so much about tolerance. In fact, my imaginary Bowhunter’s…

I AM ALWAYS anxiously awaiting the start of the fall seasons. Like a lot of you, I chased some other stuff around this past spring and summer. Turkeys are fun to hunt, and bowfishing is a blast, but if I’m being honest, nothing quite compares to the fall. I eased the string back slowly, trying my best not to make any hasty movements. I was on a moose hunt, and this was just the opportunity I was looking for. I picked a spot as I drew and released, and my Muzzy broad-head-tipped arrow flashed through the air, followed by a puff of feathers. The grouse fluttered straight down and stopped moving. I was elated, because I knew I was going to be eating good that night back at my wall-tent…

WHEN I STARTED bowhunting in the late 1970s, I missed more deer than I care to admit to. I was very proficient at the bow range but terrible when it came to real-life shooting opportunities. Because I was typically missing high, I always assumed it was because I was flinching upward right before my shot. For many bowhunters, missing deer is simply a case of eating humble pie. And many just point to themselves, like I did, as the main source of error. But is this correct? Luckily for me, and everyone else involved with Bowhunter TV, (now entering its 20th year on Sportsman Channel and Outdoor Channel), we have topnotch cameramen who do a great job of filming our shots and provide us with footage that we can review…

It was forecast to be another warm and windy day on our family farm in northeast Missouri. My plan was to hunt from one of my favorite ladder stands on the edge of a draw leading to a big hollow on the north end of our place. Due to a late start, I got in my stand a little after daylight but in time to see the sunrise, which illuminated my one-acre rye food plot about 50 yards to my right. The wind was supposed to be due south, which is usually pretty good for this stand, but I quickly noticed it was coming more out of the east-southeast that morning. I was cussing under my breath as it carried my scent directly down the draw and into the big…

IHADN’T SEEN my two hunting friends for quite some time, and what better way to catch up and reminisce about the good ol’ days than to grab our bows and shoot some arrows. Soon, my friends were uncasing their bows and launching arrows at distant targets in my backyard. By the time I came on the scene, they were stretching the distance to 50 and 60 yards. In the weeks prior, I hadn’t shot much, so I doubted my capability a little. However, when I drew back and aimed at the Rinehart 3-D target, I felt at ease. My 60-yard pin glided smoothly to the spot and then rolled around ever-so-slightly as my index finger hugged the trigger almost as if it weren’t there. I simply aimed and waited for…

If I had to pick my favorite time of year to bowhunt whitetails, it would have to be the last week of October into the first few days of November. The days are getting shorter, the weather is cooler, and in my experience it can be the best time to kill a mature buck. More than once it has been during this transition season when a particular buck made a mistake that sent him to my freezer well before winter’s freeze had an opportunity to settle in. As if it were yesterday, I can still see him slipping under the heavy cottonwood canopy in the fading light. It was one of those late-October evenings when I just knew a buck couldn’t help but move early. A north breeze was blowing,…

WE ACTUALLY KNOW a lot about CWD and its impact on deer. I’ve reported on some of this in previous columns. We know from a study done in Wisconsin that deer with CWD had a 75-percent annual mortality rate, while those that did not have CWD had a 24-percent mortality rate. That does not mean that you’ll find CWD-positive deer lying all over the woods, because CWD impacts other forms of mortality. If a deer has CWD, it has a higher chance of being shot by hunters because infected deer are less aware. If a deer has CWD where there are mountain lions, it has a higher chance of being caught and killed by the big cats, because the deer with CWD are less wary. If a deer has CWD,…

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I TIPPED BACK my baseball cap and mopped my brow. My pocket thermometer said 102 degrees, and it wasn’t even 10 a.m. Welcome to early summer blacktail hunting, I thought to myself while silently chuckling. It was July 16, and I had been glassing and hiking the hills for nearly a week. Heatwaves danced like ghosts along the ridges, and ankle-deep leaves crunched like cornflakes underfoot. Even in the shade of giant oak trees, the air was stifling and hard to breathe. I knew the deer would be tucked in the thickets of manzanita, madrone, chapparal, and poison oak until the cooler evening hours, so I hiked toward my vehicle for some lunch and a siesta. No point wasting time in the late-morning heat. The weather on my 2023 bowhunt…

I WAS IN A FOUL MOOD as I scrambled to set up that afternoon. When I left my camper early that morning, I realized I was low on propane, and unless I wanted to deal with frozen pipes, I had to find some during the middle of the day. By the time I found a place to refill, I was running late. My DIY Kansas deer hunt is one I always look forward to, and I’ve been pretty successful there over the last decade. If you’re a fan of Bowhunter TV, you’ve probably watched a few of those hunts on past episodes. We were filming again this year, but this hunt had been a grind. The region had been devastated by the worst drought in over 100 years, and the…

It was October 26, and my son, Jacob, and I were hunting our 30-acre woodlot behind our house in southeast Michigan. The sun had set, and we had entered that magic time of the evening when deer just seem to appear out of nowhere. I was set up in the southeast corner of the property, along a ditch that separated our woodlot from a standing cornfield. Jacob was in a ladder stand in the middle of the woodlot, with a standing cornfield to the north and a cut bean-field to the south. Suddenly, my phone started buzzing in my pocket. It was a text message from Jacob that read, “I just shot Clubber!” “Clubber,” as Jacob called him, was the dominant buck on the farm, and my son had just…