North American Whitetail

NORTH AMERICAN WHITETAIL Managing Editor Blake Garlock and I pulled into our deer lease in north-central Kentucky in late September 2025 with high hopes of checking our Browning trail cameras and discovering big shooter bucks looming about. Our hopes skyrocketed when we pulled the first SD card and found a tall-tined 9-pointer we’d known for the previous two seasons. The Browning cam, positioned on the edge of a warm season food plot, had taken several photos of him in velvet throughout the late summer — and he was much bigger than he’d been in 2024. About 10 minutes later, we wheeled the Polaris side-by-side into the farm’s creek bottom and were met with bad news. Buzzards. The black birds of death were circling overtop a drainage not far from where…

FOR MANY WHITETAIL HUNTERS, December is when they wrap up the final hunts of their deer season. Across the Midwest, Northeast and West, the whitetail rut has passed, and although many states have late seasons that run beyond the new year, many hunters have already filled their tags. For NAW TV, we usually complete our final hunts of the season in December, too. Although we love sitting over a standing bean field looking for a Midwest giant in the snow, we’ve actually opted to head south and end our season with a rut hunt during the last few years. Specifically, we head deep into South Texas to the historic Cochina Hunt Club. Currently airing on NAW TV are Haynes Shelton and Dr. Kroll’s Cochina hunts from December 2024. On that…

IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE of North American Whitetail, I discussed each of the eight types of Whitetail Habitat: forage producing, mast producing, cover, edge, staging, sanctuary, water and travel corridor. Each of these must be conveniently distributed within the basic home range of a whitetail to maximize production of deer on your property. The travel corridor is the habitat element that connects these critical components in the “deer landscape.” By using properly designed and located travel corridors, I have been able to determine where deer travel; but I have never been able to get them to travel when I want them to! That remains the fun part of deer management and hunting. In this installment, I will discuss what exactly is a travel corridor, what factors influence their use, and…

IN A RIFLE MARKET INCREASINGLY dominated by Cerakote finishes, carbon fiber and polymer parts, there’s something timeless about the warm glow of a finely finished wood stock. While modern materials and weatherproof finishes serve their purposes and offer their own great aesthetics, I’ll always be a sucker for a fine wood gun. A deer rifle with a well-finished hardwood stock speaks to tradition and craftsmanship. Browning understands this better than most. They’re one of the few production rifle manufactures still offering elegant wood stocks on rifles that are reliable, and deadly accurate. Browning’s latest walnut and maple offerings in the X-Bolt and X-Bolt 2 lines prove that these “Modern Classics” (as I call them) are still out there — ALIVE AND THRIVING. GRADE, FINISH AND FEEL Let’s start with the…

IN OCTOBER 2022, CENTRAL INDIANA’s Brandon Scott was finally able to make a lifelong dream come true; he purchased a beautiful piece of land (along with a country home) that he and his family could call their own. Perhaps the coolest thing for the Scotts is that they’d get to harvest lots of venison there, as they all prefer it to store-bought beef. While the property wasn’t huge, at a bit over 23 acres total, Brandon says it was “an overgrown mess” and a “jungle.” Although roughly half of the property is wooded, the other portion was an overgrown CRP field that hadn’t been tended to in quite a while. Perhaps an eyesore to look at for some, but it was great whitetail habitat. In addition, it was surrounded by…

FEW PEOPLE GET AN OPPORTUNITY to chase their dreams. Even fewer take that leap when the chance to do so finally arrives. Curt Geier did just that, though. He started the Working Class Bowhunter (WCB) podcast. Today, it’s one of the most popular hunting podcasts in the country. “We started in early 2015,” Curt says. “We’ve been doing it a little over 10 years. We’ve never missed a week. I started it as a fun passion project, but it turned into something where I’m able to do it full-time. “Everything we’ve learned, and how we’re killing deer now, is just from having guests on the podcast and rubbing elbows with big buck killers,” Curt continues. “We’re just trying to level-up as whitetail hunters.” Without question, he’s accomplished that, and the…