Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Deer & Deer Hunting

“WHEN SOME OF MY FRIENDS HAVE ASKED ME ANXIOUSLY ABOUT THEIR BOYS, WHETHER THEY SHOULD LET THEM HUNT, I HAVE ANSWERED YES — REMEMBERING THAT IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF MY EDUCATION. MAKE THEM HUNTERS.”Henry David Thoreau | Walden. Aug. 9. 1854 It starts as a fascination. A new-age young man living in a world filled with pavement, digital screens and virtual, instant satisfaction discovers the age-old traditions of archery and hunting. The idea of hunting for free-range protein is more than appealing. His buddies show him the basics at the local archery range, and he soon learns this won’t be an easy pastime. Well, not as easy as those guys on TV make it look. Stacking arrows into a 10-inch circle at 20 yards is fun…

Eighty-nine-year-old Delor Wellman is one of Michigan’s most successful deer hunters. While hunting in the UP’s Delta County over the years, he shot bucks 70 years in a row. Some years he shot two bucks. He’s saved the antlers from all of the bucks he’s shot since 1948. Someone with that much experience is bound to have valuable information to share, so I took advantage of the opportunity to interview the veteran whitetail slayer when I learned about Delor’s envious record from his son Dave. Dave Wellman is also into whitetail antlers, especially big ones. He’s a long-time measurer for state big game record keeper Commemorative Bucks of Michigan and is also a scorer for a well known national big game record keeping organization: the Boone & Crockett Club. “I…

I’ll begin by being brutally honest. I don’t love writing articles on what we’ll be covering today. Don’t get me wrong. I sincerely find great satisfaction in being a small part of other’s getting more from our shared passion. I just think both the sport and industry itself is generally too fixated on how many inches hunters put on the ground each fall. I know how rich that is, coming from someone that hosts the “Grow 'em Big” and “Hunt 'em Big” video series, as well as given seminars, written many articles and entire books on the subject. In all cases, I merely hope the work is judged on their contents, not their titles. Why? Because I sincerely believe the best judges of the quality of a season is how…

Even back then, it was my favorite kind of day for hunting whitetails. Gray November skies … the kind that keep the day evening-like in its light, even in the early afternoon. A cold breeze … not blowing hard enough to keep the deer hanging low, but plenty to make whitetails burn their calories and want to come out early to feed. And then, the tick-ticking of snow … at first stinging my face a little and then dusting up the oak leaves on the ground of the Cadiz Township hillside woodlot in which I was hunting. A hunter’s heart leaps in proportion to its desire for a deer in his sights, and mine jumped through my throat and up into the scudding clouds when I heard the shuffle of…

Cautious as ever, the 6½-year-old 8-pointer materialized in the staging area. Standing motionless, he peered from the thick cover with only his head and neck visible. The remainder of his body disappeared in a sea of brush and brambles. Finally, after several minutes of surveying the scene, the old fellow carefully entered the food plot, each step more calculated than the last. Unfortunately for him, I had the wind and, barring an errant swirl, I’d get a shot. And I did. A few minutes later, I came to full draw, settled the pin, and filled my buck tag. Big buck down. Interestingly, I filled my 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 Kentucky buck tags within 75 yards of that very spot. Deer behavior and lines of movement are largely influenced by…

There’s a saying that’s been around forever: “The job’s never over until the paperwork’s done.” When it comes to hunting, it translates thusly: “The hunt’s never over until the meat has been properly cared for.” Why some hunters think that meat care is an onerous chore and not a celebration of the gift from nature baffles me. It’s an easy process requiring nothing more than a few basic tools and some simple skills. Here’s how to go about it. REMEMBER: DEER TASTES LIKE … VENISON Never forget this simple fact: deer meat tastes a bit gamey because it’s game, not a grain-fed cow. No matter how badly you want a free-range deer – even one that eats a lot of agriculture or munches on a carefully-tended food plot --to taste…

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Illinois deer hunters will have more options starting in the 2023 season when single-shot rifles will be allowed with specific caliber regulations. The changes go into effect Jan. 1, 2023, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Legal specifics for the single-shot rifle and caliber: — a bottleneck centerfire cartridge of .30 caliber or larger with a case length not exceeding one and two-fifths inches, OR — a straight-walled centerfire cartridge of .30 caliber or larger. — Both must be available as a factory load with the published ballistic tables of the manufacturer showing a capability of at least 500-foot pounds of energy at the muzzle. — Full-metal jacket bullets may not be used to harvest deer. These caliber specifications are the same for handgun deer hunting in previous…

We’ve all had days in the woods where nothing, absolutely nothing, is happening. There are no birds singing, no squirrels feeding. It’s totally dead … and then all of a sudden everything comes to life. We start seeing birds fluttering around, squirrels coming down trees, everything feeding. If you’ll take note when that happens, the moon is either in the major or minor phase, probably the major. Obviously, there are circumstances which would override or otherwise heavily influence the feeding times. Hunter pressure is one. An approaching storm front is another. These are best described as “local” conditions. The moon affects hunting success, but not in the way we usually believe (full moon --deer feed all night --lousy hunting). Since I do most of my whitetail hunting within 300 miles…

PUBLIC TRUST RESOURCES It is my understanding that wildlife, along with air and water are among natural resources that are held in “public trust.” That is, they are held in common by the citizenry and are not property owned by individuals or corporations. This idea was codified by ancient Romans and came to America via the Magna Carta. Ownership is vested in the people and the custodians are Congress and State Legislatures who are charged with managing the Public Trust for the benefit of all citizens. Thus, the allocation of benefits and the conservation of the Public Trust are regulated by law rather than by royalty or estate holders as may be the case today in parts of Europe. As human and industrial use of natural resources increased, it became…

Imagine for a moment what it was like learning about the white-tailed deer in the 1950s or 1960s. I know this period very well because I was a young farm kid who was becoming passionate about deer and deer hunting at that time. Unfortunately, there were very few resources available back then to help me learn about deer. In the 1950s, very few people I knew had television, so there was no Versus Country, Wild TV, Sportsman Channel or Outdoor Channel to disseminate deer hunting information. Nor were there any pure deer hunting magazines to read on a monthly basis. About the only way a hunter could learn about whitetails was by spending time in the woods and tagging along with others who hunted. Because most deer hunters where I…

INGREDIENTS: + 2-pound venison roast (sirloin tip, top or bottom round all work great)+ Kosher salt+ Freshly cracked black pepper+ Granulated garlic powder+ Olive oil+ 2 cups Marsala cooking wine+ 2 tablespoons freshly minced garlic+ 1 pint heavy whipping cream+ 8 ounces quartered button mushrooms+ Optional garnish: Freshly chopped flat-leaf Italian parsley You cannot cook a venison roast like you would a beef roast. An overdone beef roast still retains some of its juiciness due to fat content while a venison roast will just taste dry and not have good flavor. While the method to cook a venison roast is different, it is certainly not complicated at all. I recommend a very low-and-slow bake to distribute heat evenly throughout the roast. A roast cooked at high heat can indeed have…

When asked to do a piece on muzzleloader hunting, I struggled with how, as muzzleloader seasons range from before any other season opens to after bow and rifle seasons already had their crack. How can I possibly write a piece on how to effectively hunt the muzzleloader season, when the dates range so wildly from state to state and within provinces? That’s when the theme of this dawned on me. One simply uses the same “if, then, and” statements I did, way back when I had to learn basic computer programming for the day job I used to have. Actually, one can literally use that same language to program our way to muzzleloader success. GRASPING THE PREMISE AND KEYS The concept is simple. The program merely runs a series of…

AFTER THOROUGHLY READING this piece, I would have to agree that “carrying capacity” is indeed a “slippery shibboleth,” and that “readers should expect authors to define terms.” Unless I missed it, nowhere in this article does the author explain what the K in KCC stands for. He makes reference to a “maximum biological carrying capacity,” but for the life of me I can’t find a K in either “maximum” nor “biological.” Ironically, KCC first appears under a “Some Science” subheading, leaving the reader to wonder what scientific information is potentially being withheld. —Charles Slovensky, via email Editor’s note: The K is in the formula for calculating the carrying capacity curve. Most laymen do not use the term, but most deer biologists do. More specifically, the formula is as follows: K = R…

When asked the age-old conversational question, “What month of the year is your favorite?” Or perhaps its more thought-provoking corollary, “What month of the year would you choose if you only had one to live?” My answer is the same. Give me November. Now I admit, I would be hard-pressed not to choose May with its dewy mornings, new-green pastures and hayfields, songbird life, woodland wildflowers, unfurling oak leaves and long days … with wild turkeys to hunt in the glory of it all and trout to fish in the cool, singing creeks. But May doesn’t quite match up to November. For me, three things make that so. One. It must be some combination of the genes in me emanating from the north seas on one side and Slavic steppes…

People often ask me which broadheads are best for big-game hunting. My answer? The choice is simply complex. If you remember that a broadhead has only one function — to cut a hole through hair, hide, muscle, and internal organs — and that to do so it must have blades sharp as a scalpel, be strong enough to withstand some serious abuse, and be designed and manufactured so precisely that it flies like a laser beam, you can eliminate the cheap stuff, choosing only from one of dozens of today’s high-quality broadheads with confidence. There are three basic types of modern broadheads: fixed (replaceable) blade, mechanical, and hybrid heads that combine both characteristics. Here’s a look at each. FIXED (REPLACEABLE) BLADE HEADS Replaceable-blade broadheads were developed to eliminate the need…

Rarely do hunters get to follow a specific buck for three consecutive seasons, but David Miller of West Virginia did. It was a journey he won’t soon forget. “I watched this buck the past few seasons, monitoring his patterns and mannerisms with several trail cameras and maps,” Miller said. “He was the most mature buck in the herd, and one of the least patternable bucks on my radar. He would move into an area for 24 hours, assert his dominance by pushing the other bucks around, then be a mile away on another ridge doing the same the next day.” That said, after continued study of the area, it started to click. He noticed some continuity in how the deer behaved and traveled. So, he hung treestands in key topographical…

Wind direction should always dictate where you hunt. With that said, there are several set ups that can provide the ultimate “honey hole.” What follows is my list, by preference, from a near half-century in the deer woods. Funnels: I hunt nearly every structure ever written about but my greatest successes have come from hunting funnels, especially thick brushy funnels that are not wind sensitive. When a narrow body of cover attaches a bedding area to a feeding area it becomes a prime candidate for a potentially great set-up. It is here that you’ll find rubs and scrapes when the rut ramps up. Inside corners: Inside corners are my second most favorite place to hunt whitetails. What makes inside corners great hunting locations is that a whitetail will usually opt…