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.
Like many whitetail hunters out there, the NAW TV team looks forward to November more than any other month of the year. Although we love November, we never overlook the potential of October. With the right conditions in the right location, October can produce incredible big-buck action. And one hunt from the season of NAW TV currently airing on the Outdoor Channel illustrates this perfectly! In October 2023, NAW TV fan-favorite Stan Potts crawled into a ground blind overlooking a lush clover field in his home state of Illinois. We’ve seen Stan have plenty of heart-pounding encounters with Midwest bucks in the past, but his hunt last October was the pinnacle of what October food source hunting can be. One after another, some impressive bucks poured into Stan’s clover plot.…
As a North Carolina native, I’ve always been a Dick Idol fan. He too grew up in a rural part of the Tar Heel State, no more than 45 minutes from my front door. Dick went on to pursue a successful football career as part of the “White Shoe Defense” at North Carolina State (No. 1 team in the nation and winners of the Liberty Bowl while he was there), and later cofounded the Dixie Deer Classic show in our capitol, Raleigh. But Dick’s contributions to the hunting community didn’t end there. After graduating with a degree in Wildlife Biology, he moved to Alaska and began a taxidermy business before taking up guiding, outfitting and booking hunts for big-game clients around the world, including in Alaska, Africa, and the West.…
It would have been interesting to be in North America in the Pleistocene Epoch to see the awesome diversity of mammal species i nhabiting the continent at that time! S pecies such as the Giant Sloth, Wolly Mammoth, Mastodon, Wooly Rhinoc eros, Longhorn Bison, Giant Peccary, an d the monstrous Stag Moose roam ed over huge expanses of tundra, prai rie and forests; pursued by giant predat ors such as the Saber-tooth Cats, Cave a nd Short-nosed Bears, and Cave and Di re wolves. The plant eaters repre sented the largest group of species, with every adaptation in feeding ha bits you could imagine! All these speci es had been “at war” with plants for m any centuries, adapting to new defense s by plants to keep from being eaten.…
DEER SCENTS, A CENTURIES-OLD TRADITION, have been part of hunting long before commercialization began in the 1960s and 1970s. This rich history connects modern hunters to their ancestors, who used scents to attract deer. Upon their arrival in North America, the first Europeans learned and adopted the hunting techniques of the Indigenous peoples. These practices, which included using deer urine and glandular secretions to attract deer, were a significant part of the Indigenous hunting culture. European settlers also observed the Indigenous using plants and natural odors to mask their scent, as noted in multiple journal entries. I know, surprising. I was shocked, too. We tend to think of using deer scents as relatively new, but that’s far from the truth. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, hunters started testing…
Back in 2019, a local antler group on Facebook sold 65 tickets for $100 each, with the lucky hunter winning a free whitetail hunt to northeastern Alberta, Canada. Matt Beard, being an avid whitetail fanatic bought tickets No. 10 and 12 for $200. He could hardly believe his luck when they announced the winner — it was No. 12! He would be spending his seven-day hunt (Nov. 1st – 7th) with Zach Kalinski and Jessie MacEachern, owners of Iron River Outfitters located near Bonnyville, Alberta. He did not kill a buck on that hunt, but he established a strong relationship with Zach and Jessie. No one could have ever guessed or predicted that Matt’s winning of that fateful No. 12 ticket would trigger a chain of events that would culminate…
Living in the rural areas of Darke County, Ohio, I spent every possible second I could in the woods or on the water fishing. Growing up, deer hunting was just something I saw on TV, and many of the houses I went to had some sort of deer mount hanging on the wall; it was also something my best friend and I always wanted to try as kids. So, when I was old enough, the 2016 season was the first year I was able to go hunting. On opening day my dad and I went out to scout where to set up a tree stand. I know I was a little late to the party, but I was just excited to finally be a deer hunter. While scouting, we jumped…
