Bowhunter brings you expert advice from legendary Bowhunters! Each issue is filled with updates from major bowhunting organizations, coverage of bowhunting locations across North America, complete coverage of the sport and much more.
IF YOU’VE BEEN in this whitetail game long enough, you will exhibit symptoms of your addiction that can be both confusing to the public and confounding to those you live with. Most of those who know you will be able to complete this sentence: “We know you’re a whitetail hunter if…” ✓ You spend an inordinate amount of time and energy in August working to please your spouse and complete all her honey-do projects for the sole purpose of acquiring “points” for the hunting season. ✓ You go through the options on your truck and eliminate all horns, beeps, flashing lights, and anything else that may give you away when you start, turn off, park, or lock your vehicle. ✓ Your eyes fly open at 4:25 a.m., when your alarm…
EVEN AFTER 25 YEARS, I can still vividly remember every detail of my first November buck. I froze when his 160-inch frame surprisingly appeared just 10 steps from the base of my old Kansas cottonwood. When he walked behind a screen of brush, I pressed my Hoyt into service, and the rest is history. I still consider myself an old-school bowhunter, but without question, the gear we have at our disposal today has certainly made the process a whole lot easier. Take scent management, for example. For over 15 years, Ozonics (ozonic-shunting.com) has been changing the way bowhunters think about scent-elimination, and the [1] HR500 ($499.99) is their latest version of this proven scent-management technology. The HR500 is 40% quieter than its predecessors in Boost mode while also giving users…
YOU’VE WAITED all year for the rut, and it’s finally here. Then you start hunting harder than ever but see nothing in comparison to what other hunters claim to be experiencing through posts on social media — some of them even hunting very close to where you are. As a result, you start questioning yourself. Those hunters who find themselves struggling during the rut usually blame other factors such as the weather and the moon. The purpose of this column is to go over what science knows about these factors, and more. Moon Phase/Position Oftentimes, hunting scenarios simply don’t match the science behind deer movements — especially if you kill a good buck. When that happens, all the scientific data in the world doesn’t matter going forward, because most hunters…
THE 46th ANNUAL meeting of the Southeast Deer Study Group was hosted by the Wildlife and Fisheries Department of Louisiana in February. As always, the top deer researchers, professors, and graduate students were in attendance and presented a number of papers on the latest deer research. And, as always, Bowhunter Magazine was there. This year, I am also including discussions of some of the many papers presented in Denver at the 4th International CWD Symposium. I believe you will find some of that information interesting. First, to the Deer Study Group meeting. Alex Jensen, from Clemson University, presented a paper on coyote diets in the Piedmont region of South Carolina. He noted that coyotes eat fawns in early summer — the first few months of a fawn’s life. However, the…
“WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? WHERE DID YOU Go?”LYRICS FROM THE FOLK SONG “COTTON EYE JOE” IT’S HARD TO KNOW where to start on our story with the buck we call “Cotton Eyed Joe,” because while we only knew of him for the span of two weeks, he’s the type of deer that you spend all your efforts trying to catch up to, whether you know he exists or not. He’s the type of buck that has made me brave single-digit temps, sit all day in a treestand, and put in extra time during the summer in preparation for the fall season. The type of buck that you always dream will show up — even when you know the odds are not in your favor. We may have only known…
When I was 12, my grandpa took me deer hunting with him for the first time. Since that day, I have always been obsessed with hunting deer — especially with a bow. I love the challenge that bowhunting presents, and as I have grown older, my addiction for these wonderful animals has only worsened. And, I’ve become obsessed with targeting specific, mature whitetail bucks. These journeys can last multiple seasons, and they can really take a toll on you. My 2022 Kansas whitetail season was no different, as I was focused on a deer that I had nicknamed “Locus” in 2021. In 2021, I was not targeting Locus, even though he was already very impressive at what we figured was a 4.5 or 5.5-year-old buck. The reason was, I had…
