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 our Hunting Annual issue each August, we cover the latest gun-hunting gear available to whitetail hunters. During the 20-plus seasons North American Whitetail TV has been on the air, team NAW TV has hunted whitetails all across the continent with firearms, consistently delivering heart-pounding gun hunts for trophy whitetails to viewers. Looking back at the NAW TV archives, there are many gun hunts that we are fond of. For example, episode eight of season 15 featured our Editor Emeritus Gordon Whittington rifle hunting his home state of Texas. Although many Texas whitetail hunts have aired on NAW TV, how many do you remember resulting in a mature buck being taken through the window of an old, abandoned house? Interestingly enough, Gordon took a beautiful Texas buck with a rifle…
Let’s talk about the human emotion known as pride and how it relates to trophy deer hunting. I tried writing about this once before and ended up trashing my draft. What I originally wrote was condescending, and not at all inspiring. It was a rant about boastful hunters who beat their chests and celebrate themselves rather than their deer. We all know something about pride! But, for clarity’s sake, let’s define it. Oxford dictionary describes pride as: “a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements.” That sounds correct . . . And it doesn’t sound bad. Am I proud of the trophy bucks I’ve taken? Heck yeah, I am. Afterall, I devoted a lot of time, focus and attention to them. I even feel like I earned…
Arriving at Stephen F. Austin State University in July of 1973, my new job was to develop a wildlife management curriculum and research program in what then was the School of Forestry. In 1974, we officially organized the Institute for White-tailed Deer Management & Research. I want to make clear: we were not the only scientists working on deer behavior. My colleagues and friends, Drs. Harry Jacobson, Dave Guynn and Marchinton at Mississippi State University and Auburn University, were busy pursuing information about movements and habitat preferences. A lot of this research focused on the impact of forest management on whitetails. In eastern Texas, clea r-cutting as a timber regeneration m ethod was brand new, and hunters were not happy with seeing their favorit e hunting spots denuded of vegeta…
The whitetail’s ability to interpret its environment relies on three basic senses: olfaction, vision and auditory. The deer’s ability to detect danger through its nose is the animal’s superpower, so much so it is difficult to quantify. The outdoor industry is full of products designed to help hunters evade or fool the nose of their prey. The visual acumen of a deer is less powerful than their olfactory sense, but hundreds of products still exist to camouflage a hunter and a hunter’s equipment. We as hunters seem to focus so much of our attention on our prey’s nose and our prey’s eyes, making it easy to neglect a big buck’s ears. This is a huge mistake because, in my opinion, it’s the easiest sense to overcome! This may seem like…
Matt Goreschel had a big problem. The stone quarry where he hunted was being annexed into the city in 2019, and that would be the end of hunting there. Once that happened, it would be against the law to launch any projectile there, eliminating the option for either gun or bowhunting. Access to big Ohio bucks can come at a premium, so he needed to find a work around to the regulations or face searching for another place to enjoy his passion. Matt learned there was a process to gain an exemption and decided to go for it. But what sounded simple at first turned into a long and tedious process. There was nothing easy about his endeavor. The twists and turns as he worked his way through the system…
For most deer hunters, our decision to hunt began with the encouragement of family or friends. Most people who have grown up in a family of non-hunters will likely be non-hunters themselves. It is rather unusual to find a first-year hunter over 30 years of age who has taken up hunting without the encouragement of family or friends. Quebec hunter Olivier Coiteux is one of the hunters who has broken that mold. “I didn’t start hunting until 2020,” said the 34-year-old Insurance Broker from Quebec City, Quebec. “Nobody in my family was a hunter, but deer hunting caught my attention several years ago; it looked fun and exciting. At the time, I had learned all I knew about deer hunting from watching YouTube videos. The more I watched, the more…
