Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Deer & Deer Hunting

The biggest mistake many managers make is believing they can’t have top grounds if they allow others to hunt it. Every time someone else steps on that property, they risk educating deer and pushing them off. Though that last sentence is true, the first is a tragic myth. You should share your hunting grounds with family and friends. Doing so is rewarding and greatly increases the fun factor of hunting. The trick to having your cake and eating it too all revolves around how you lay out your improvements and how the ground is hunted. When making improvements, strive to create high odds, low impact stand locations. Then hunt them smart and you’ll have great hunting on this ground, while enjoying it with others. — Steve Bartylla…

A more recent development in trail camera technology is GEO-tagging capabilities, an internal GPS marking captured images and overlaying them on detailed topographical maps for more detailed analysis. Bushnell’s new Trophy Cam HD Aggressor and Stealth Cam’s N42NG, for example, include such capabilities. The best systems combine this technology with a user-friendly web app to better help you understand patterns of specific animals at various camera locations and simplify the process of managing thousands of images from numerous cameras or properties. Bushnell, partnering with DeerLab, offers a web-based subscription that automatically synchronizes images with comprehensive local weather data and filters them by camera, date, weather condition, specific deer, moon phase and more. Cuddeback’s Trophy Room analyzes images for movement patterns based on time of year, moon phase and position and…

The afternoon was way too warm for late December, with temperatures in the upper 50s. Blizzard-like conditions had already hit several Western states, and were barreling down on the Great Plains. The forecast was for the storm to hit my hunting area within 48 hours, and I was hedging a bet that deer would feed a bit early — despite the spring-like temperatures. Constantly shifting winds made it impossible to find a suitable ground blind site on the side of the nearly half-mile long river-bottom hay field where the deer tended to travel. Fortunately, a large weed patch along the opposite side allowed me to chop out a spot for a nicely concealed blind, with a couple of openings for taking a shot. Directly across the field from the blind…

I recall it clearly from almost 40 years back. It was a gorgeous fall morning early in the archery season, and I had the great opportunity to be slipping through the beautiful woods of the Patuxent River Naval Air Test Center. It was a favorite spot, with a slough to the southeast and a bare open field to the northwest. The woods were thick and I was moving at a snail’s pace, taking in everything. And then, I could hardly believe my eyes. There, at less than 30 yards, was a huge set of antlers only 18 or 20 inches above the ground. They were backlit by the sunlight reflecting off the still waters of the slough, and the lighting honestly made them look too big to be real. As…

As I negotiated my truck in four-wheel-low over a slick South Texas ranch road on a foggy, drizzly December morning, an exceptional buck appeared in the distance like an apparition standing motionless on the side of the road. As my truck slid to a halt, I slowly exited to set up my spotting scope, but not before the deer disappeared into a sea of brush. Creeping up to where the buck disappeared into the thorn scrub, I exited the truck again, this time with a rifle, just in case I caught up to it and it was a keeper. Tracking over the damp clay soil was easy, and I found the buck browsing on regrowth on a recently shredded tank dam. At approximately 300 yards, the buck’s rack appeared large…

If you’re reading this magazine, odds are good you own a few trail cameras. In a basic sense, trail cameras expand our deer-hunting enjoyment. Checking trail cameras — for me at least — has become almost as fun as hunting itself. The simple act of capturing a world-class buck on camera, even if it is in the middle of the night and I have exactly zero chance of killing him, is a real thrill. I collect trail-cam images like we once amassed baseball cards. There was no real purpose, it was just fun. But most of us also deploy trail cameras to collect useful information on the area(s) we hunt, or particular bucks we covet. This has transformed modern trail cameras into one of the most remarkable innovations of our…

As the popularity of whitetail hunting continues to rise and properties that have been hunted for years are lost to development, hunters are faced with the challenge of finding good-quality places to pursue deer. When searching for new ground, many hunters tend to overlook small properties. As a wildlife professional and hunter, I know that many small “back yard” properties are big-buck hotspots and can be home to monster bucks without the landowner even knowing it! Other properties might require detailed management practices to realize their full potential. I believe that hunting small properties can be divided into two parts: physically implementing management practices that will attract deer to the property, and actual stand setup and hunting. Creating High-Quality Deer Habitat Not all small properties are equal in potential and…

Jim Bills was hanging out in his friend Robert’s workshop when fate suddenly intervened and laid the groundwork for a deer-hunting story of epic proportions. As the two buddies were chatting, a doe entered Robert’s back yard garden for a quick meal. “I can’t stand those things,” Robert said. “Every time I turn around they’re eating up my garden.” Bills responded as any avid bowhunter would: “Does that mean I can hunt here?” Robert granted him permission, and soon Bills would be building a ground blind on the compact 5-acre property. While most whitetail bowhunters prefer the elevated advantage of a treestand, Bills is an exception. His poor vision makes it difficult for him to make consistently lethal shots from a treestand. “I wounded too many deer while trying to…

Watching the brute drop that had terrorized the property I was managing had me so excited I completely forgot my Hunters Safety System vest was still attached to the tree. After several tugs, I finally figured out I wasn’t just caught on a branch. For as silly as that might sound, it does help reveal how amped I was to finally take this bully out. My client was paying me to transform his property into a top end buck factory, and the 6½-year-old, 130s 8-pointer hadn’t added 5 inches of antler since he was 3½. He needed to be removed. Believing they must remove bucks with lower end headgear for their age is just one of many common mistakes managers make these days. Between yearling buck dispersal and the doe…

It wasn’t too many years ago that crossbow use for deer hunting purposes was illegal — for a multitude of reasons. Today, like it or not, crossbow use plays an integral part in deer harvest management, probably especially so in residential areas where hunting access is limited and burgeoning deer herds are otherwise difficult to control. Needless to say, however, some traditional bow (recurve and longbow) enthusiasts, as well as some compound users and gun hunters, are still critical of crossbow use, saying the device is simply too easy to use and too effective. Others are quick to contradict such claims. In fact, I know of some who have even given up their crossbows and gone back to using their faithful older model compounds. That’s an argument I’ll leave to…

Even though this past deer season is in the rear view mirror, deer fanatics never stop thinking about their next whitetail encounter. As crazy as it seems, that might involve only part of the whitetail — one that has been left in the cold, literally, and long forgotten by its owner, only to be discovered and celebrated by the hunter who chased that deer all fall. I’m talking about shed antlers, of course. Each late winter or early spring, shed hunters head afield in search of “white gold.” Some are looking for the head gear from a specific buck — one that haunted them all fall. Not knowing whether it survived the hunting season is eating them alive. So as soon as the snow begins to melt, the search is…