Deer & Deer Hunting is written and edited for serious, year-round hunting enthusiasts, focusing on hunting techniques, deer biology and behavior, deer management, habitat requirements, the natural history of deer and hunting ethics
Don't move. My gosh, don't even blink. He's right there. How he got there without making a whisper of a noise is a mystery, but that buck is already within easy bow range. He's alert, though not spooked, and will be gone if you even twitch. It's the first week of October, and the conditions are near perfect. Highs were in the 60s today, but it's been steadily cooling off since the sun peeked behind the hardwood ridge. The slight autumn breeze hitting your face sure feels a lot better than the summer heat and swarms of bugs that plagued you during the daily practice sessions that prepared you for this moment. This year, instead of flinging dozens of arrows in a row at the same target, you tried something…
I have retired as a firearms instructor for the Virginia Department of Corrections and am a 14-year Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Hunter Ed Instructor. I wish I could have Steve Sorensen in one of my classes. His article, “Basic Truths About Shooting,” (January 2017 issue) is one of the best MOA stories I’ve read and explained it perfectly — easy to understand and something I have been trying to explain to some of the “Dead-Eye Dicks” in my classes. It is truly one of the best articles I have read in a long time that the weekend hunter can use. Great job. These are the articles that keep my subscription in the mail. — Leonard Piercy, Danville, Virginia I have one substantive safety comment to make in…
SHOPDEERHUNTING.COM Learn more about the different phases of the rut to improve your scouting and hunting success with “Deer & Deer Hunting’s Guide to Hunting the Rut.” This is one of D&DH’s most popular books and is packed with information about deer behavior during the pre-rut, peak-rut and post-rut periods. The guide is filled with contributions from experts including John Ozoga, Jeremy Flinn, Charles Alsheimer, Patrick Meitin, Bill Vaznis, John Eberhart and many others. You’ll learn about hunting strategies, tips for rattling and calling, reading rubs and other signs, increasing your buck sightings, and more, and experienced-based advice on mock scrapes, mature buck sanctuaries, testosterone studies, moon theories, core areas and other topics. Visit www.ShopDeerHunting.com and search for T5074. Lou Locke of Kansas downed this brute Nov. 26, 2016, while…
Deer & Deer Hunting-TV on Pursuit Channel Deer & Deer Hunting-TV is now on Pursuit Channel, and this year promises to be the best to date. Show hosts Dan Schmidt, Gordy Krahn, Steve Bartylla and Mark Kayser bring incredible depth, insight and experience from their decades of hunting to viewers. But the deer still are the stars of the show. Incredible footage of deer behavior, biology, research and management will help you not only better understand why deer do what they do, but gain a deeper understanding of how to hunt whitetails where you live. We’ll also have our exclusive rut predictions and guides for predicting peak rutting times in the North and South. Deer & Deer Hunting-TV is the thinking man’s guide to whitetail hunting, teaching,…
The spread of CWD in deer populations might be among animals that are related instead of between unrelated individuals. That appears to be the case in Michigan, where eight out of nine free-ranging whitetails that have tested positive for CWD are related, according to DNR deer specialist Chad Stewart. The ninth deer might also be related to the others, but testing on that one is not yet complete. “The relationships of the first eight positive deer were determined through genetic testing,” Stewart wrote in an email, “and the relationships varied between direct descendants (doe/fawn), sibling or distant relative. Some deer are related to only one deer, while other deer are related to multiple deer. “Of important interest is that the three deer tested from Clinton County are not related to…
While hunting whitetails for more than three decades, I’ve formed some opinions. But one issue I still struggle with is which is better: treestands or ground blinds? Treestands have dominated the whitetail landscape for nearly my entire hunting history. I even recall building my own during my high school days back in the 1980s. A plywood platform fitted with sharpened sickle sections to pierce bark and a salvage-yard seatbelt elevated me into treestand hunting. But I also crafted ground blinds from military surplus camouflage netting, cornstalks, tumbleweeds and downed timber. Back then I tagged more deer from the ground, but that steadily changed as treestands became more popular, safe and easier to deploy. Sometime around 2000, commercial popup ground blinds gained traction. Double Bull, a pioneer company, launched late in…
