Each issue of North American Whitetail brings you effective techniques for outsmarting monster bucks. You'll learn the success secrets of North America's most accomplished, most knowledgeable whitetail hunters - riflemen and bowhunters alike.
In 1982 the United States retail gasoline price was $1.22 per gallon, compared to today’s $3.45 per gallon. In October of that same year, North American Whitetail launched its premier issue. Our first annual subscription package sold for $14.95 for eight issues. Surely a magazine in its 41st year of production costs more now than it did in year one, right? Fortunately for you, that’s not the case. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator computes that our original subscription price would be worth $47.05 today. Luckily, though inflation has raised the cost of virtually all other goods sold, NAW fans have managed to dodge the brunt of this blow. In fact, visit our website today (northamericanwhitetail.com), and you’ll see our subscription package still contains eight annual installments…
In addition to heart-pounding hunts for free-ranging whitetails, NAW TV also features in-depth land management and whitetail biology information with its Dr. Deer and Build Your Own Deer Factory segments. Tune-in to NAW TV weekly for industry-leading whitetail land management content. Photo by Blake Garlock WEEK OF MARCH 20–26: “Sub-Zero in Iowa”: Haynes Shelton joins Paul Fountain of Fountain Outfitting for a heart-pounding late season muzzleloader hunt in Iowa. In Build Your Own Deer Factory, the team talks about natural and supplemental water. Haynes Shelton profiles the Tony Lovstuen buck, a 307 5/8-inch giant from Iowa. WEEK OF MARCH 27–APRIL 2: “The Finale”: Haynes Shelton takes his Browning rifle to Alabama to chase rutting whitetails with Mark Ezell at the Pushmataha Plantation. In Build Your Own Deer Factory, the team…
The two most common questions we are asked each year deal with antlers. Hunters want to know: Why are some antlers dark brown and others white? And why do we see so many broken antlers where we hunt? The answers to both questions really are inter-related and have a great deal to do with the demographics of the herd and their nutritional plane. Thus, a whitetail’s habitat, diet and social structure all play a role in their antler color and composition. In the following article, I’ll describe why that’s so. ANTLER GROWTH & COMPOSITION Let’s start with a primer on antler growth. Antlers evolved millions of years ago in the deer family, and they apparently served several functions. These functions include social display structures, scent dispersal organs and weapons for…
After years of managing my land for wildlife and visiting a lot of hunting properties every season, I have noticed a common theme: lack of equipment service and maintenance. For an alarming number of habitat managers, the last thing that gets attention in the attempt to grow that monster buck is the equipment. I’ve seen all kinds of equipment in every condition possible, and I’ve decided to take this opportunity to give some tips and lessons I have learned the hard way about keeping this equipment in working order for the long haul! EQUIPMENT SERVICE & MAINTENANCE I bought my first piece of equipment in 1972, so that gives away my age a little. That allowed me lots of years to make mistakes, so hopefully that gives me a little…
Every whitetail hunter has dreamt of finding some woods never touched by man. It’s logical to believe we can’t improve on Mother Nature, so if we could stumble onto such a location, it surely would be the ultimate whitetail destination. What could be better? To support this view, some hunters point to vintage bucks in the record books. These are the legendary bucks that lived long before the term “food plot” even was coined. They ran wild and free on open range, and they did so long before there was any effort to manage the habitat for their benefit. They were the glorious products of untouched land. Really? Think again. True, it wasn’t until around 1970 that anyone started managing private habitat specifically for whitetails. But long before, man began…
Texans eagerly boast that their home state is “like a whole other country,” and it’s hard to argue with this braggadocious claim — except perhaps to suggest Texas really is more like several other countries. It’s obviously a huge place, and within its widely spaced borders you can find subtropical swamps, desert mountains, sweeping prairies and many other categories of wildlife habitat. Yet as disparate as these locations might be, one common denominator links them: the presence of native whitetails. Over six decades of hunting the state, I’ve found them virtually from border to border, whether in the swampy flatwoods along the upper Gulf coast, the arid plains of the Panhandle or the tangled brushlands of the Rio Grande Valley. The elevation differences from one of these locations to the…
