Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Bowhunter

HONESTLY, SINCE I WAS A YOUNG BOY, I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t obsessed with the bow and arrow and with hunting whitetail deer. When I was seven years old, my dad bought me my first bow — an Xi Silverhawk XP — and I was hooked from that moment. Fortunately, my home state of Virginia has plenty of deer, so over the years Dad and I were able to enjoy many great bowhunting adventures. But as a teenager reading countless hunting magazines and watching more than my share of outdoor TV, I began to dream about making a trip to the Midwest’s Cornbelt. When I went off to college, my time and funds were limited, but I still figured that somehow I’d make it happen. In 2008,…

At a young age, I was given the gift of my love of hunting by my dad and other family members. Through the years, I have passed this gift on to my son. Countless hunting stories have been told around the family dinner table, a late-night campfire, or even in the downtime on a hunting trip. I have been bowhunting whitetails since I was 20, and I’ve had the opportunity to guide whitetail hunters in Illinois where, in 2002, I met another guide, Mike, from Pennsylvania. Since then, Mike and I have become close friends, and we have leased various Illinois properties where we spend two weeks hunting together each fall. When our sons were young, we hoped they both would join us one day for the yearly trip. Eventually…

SOMEWHERE BURIED in the sea of kochia weed lay a very impressive 6x6 whitetail buck along with a hot doe. I contemplated my options and decided to loop around and set up on the edge of an adjacent cropfield, hoping to ambush the deer when they came out to feed in the evening. Many hours passed, during which I had several exciting encounters with mule deer that came to investigate the buck decoy I’d deployed out in front of me, but there was no sign of the magnum whitetail. The sun was setting and still no buck, so I waded into the thick kochia. I never did see the buck I’d spent all day waiting on, which left me pondering what I could have done differently. Welcome to the world…

During a guiding career spanning more than three decades, I have met hundreds of highly dedicated hunters. Many of them have literally traveled the world in pursuit of their passion. These people spend a lot of time — and plenty of loot — on their hobby, but when I think of sheer bowhunting enthusiasm and a pure love of the pursuit of game, one name instantly comes to my mind. Dave Butler is a retired detective from New Jersey who has been hunting strictly with a bow and arrow for nearly 50 years. He gave up hunting with guns after being shot accidentally a couple of times. The second mishap convinced him that gun hunting was no longer his thing; the story is actually pretty darn funny, and if you…

OVER THE YEARS, I often have been asked what time period during the deer season I most prefer to hunt mature bucks. While I once would have answered that my favorite time to hunt big deer is during the rut, that’s no longer the case. Now, it’s not that I don’t absolutely love chasing mature bucks during the rut. It’s just that years of experience doing so have shown me that I stand a much better chance of patterning and killing a big buck during the late pre-rut. A PERFECT CASE IN POINT One such hunt that immediately comes to mind involved a mature nine-point I took in my home state of Wisconsin some years back. The hunt was made extra special by the fact that I arrowed the big…

AS THE NEW JERSEY 2021 archery season began, I was excited to begin another season of chasing a good whitetail buck with my bow. But it seemed the ugly cloud of 2020 that brought us some really difficult times was still lingering when it came to my hunting area and the NJ deer herd. Unfortunately, Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) had struck in southern New Jersey and was making its way toward northern New Jersey, where I live and hunt. As August approached, the sad and ugly news began to spread of deer being found dead everywhere — from woodlots to golf courses and beyond. This was something of concern, as many of my fellow bowhunters were describing how they were finding dead deer, especially bucks — many in velvet, and…

Q I WOULD LIKE to submit a story to Bowhunter for possible publication. What is the process? Russell H., via e-mail A I GET THIS question quite often, so it’s time to address this again. Every publication has a specific focus. At Bowhunter, we publish articles about bowhunting adventures, tactics, gear, and great destinations. The best articles include all or several of these elements. I will address photos first, because the lack of, or poor quality photos is the number-one reason an article gets rejected. If you send us a story with fuzzy photos of a buck in the back of a truck, you’re wasting everyone’s time. Don’t send prints or slides — those days are over. Digital photos are best taken with a “real camera” rather than a smartphone.…

“I don’t know. Looks like we have a unicorn to hunt this fall,” replied my longtime friend and Kansas outfitter Miles Willhite. We were looking at a trail-camera image of a buck that was at least 7½ years old. His consistently scraggly seven-point rack was unmistakable. After seeing him on and off over the years, I decided in 2019 that I wanted to take him because of his maturity rather than his antlers. But the buck avoided me in both 2019 and 2020. The 2021 photo we were now looking at showed that besides his tall, heavy beamed, seven-point rack, he was now sporting a forked main beam jutting straight out of the middle of his forehead! The previously unnamed buck’s status instantly rocketed skyward in my mind, and he…

ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2021, a small fire somehow ignited inside a storage shed on the outskirts of the tiny Boulder County town of Marshall, Colorado. Its first tiny flames quickly grew and spread into a nearby mini-ocean of tinder-dry prairie grass. There, lashed by roaring winter winds later clocked at 90 to 100 miles per hour, the blossoming range fire soon exploded into an out-of-control inferno that wreaked total devastation on the houses, subdivisions, and businesses standing in its path. Some investigators, with good reason, later called it one of the worst and most expensive fire disasters in Colorado history. By the time the Marshall Fire was finally contained long hours later, some 30,000 area residents had been evacuated, with more than 1,100 of their homes and contents destroyed.…

This very special bowhunting adventure started much like most do…with an excited, “Oh my gosh, honey, I finally drew that tag!” In this case, after 20 years of applying in my adopted home state of Colorado, I had finally drawn an archery bull moose tag, and I was over-the-moon stoked, as was my nonhunting wife of 36 years — read into her excitement what you will. I live in the southwest corner of Colorado, about 15 miles northeast of Durango. In that part of my home state, I’m fortunate to be able to hunt elk, mule deer, black bears, and turkeys literally in my front yard. This moose tag, however, was for Unit 6, which is in north-central Colorado, on the Wyoming border. I had applied there for years but…

WHEN I WROTE THIS ARTICLE, it was the second season of the Canadian border being closed due to COVID. Thankfully, the border is now open, with conditions, but that’s good, because there is too much great hunting in Canada, and some truly great Canadian outfitters were in danger of having to close up shop as a result of nonresident hunters being denied entry. Normally, I would’ve found myself flying to Edmonton, Alberta, to meet my friend and Bowhunter Assistant Editor Brian Fortenbaugh for our annual spring bear hunt at Buck Country Outfitters in Goodsoil, Saskatchewan. As this outfitter’s name implies, they’re known for big whitetails, but the bear hunting there is topnotch as well. Prior to the mandatory border closing, Brian and I had been enjoying our bear adventures for…