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.
November is here! Probably just like you, the NAW TV team waits all year to get in the woods during the whitetail rut. It’s our favorite part of the hunting season, and during November 2023, our crew had phenomenal success. From Nebraska to Canada, the NAW TV staff downed several mature rutting bucks. One of the most action-packed hunts from last November occurred in western Saskatchewan. Editor in Chief Haynes Shelton and his dad, Con, both bagged big Canadian bucks with their Browning rifles. In the unpredictable fashion of the rut, Haynes was just opening his blind window after shooting light began when he saw a big 6x5 standing within shooting range! Haynes downed the heavy-bodied buck with one well-placed high-shoulder shot. Not long after his son filled his tag,…
I was born and raised in North Carolina’s Piedmont, the plateau region nestled between the Appalachian Mountains and Atlantic coastal plain. My small hometown of Mocksville, in Davie County, is where you’ll find the rest of the Shelton clan. It’s also where my wife, Maddie, and her family are from. My family’s 200-acre farm is where I learned to hunt whitetails, wild turkey, doves, squirrels and you name it. Down a gravel road sits the farm pond where my grandad taught me to fish for bluegills with bamboo poles we cut from Bear Creek. Interestingly, it’s the same Bear Creek that Daniel Boone once hunted and trapped; in fact, his parents, Squire and Sarah Boone, are buried downtown (right next to our local Tractor Supply). The bulk of my hunting…
So far in this series on Whitetail Management, I have focused on managing native habitat on your property. Now, its time to talk about ways to supplement the nutrition of your deer! There has been and will continue to be a great deal written about this topic, yet there still is a great deal of confusion, often made worse by commercially motivated articles on the subject. It is my goal here to clear away as much of this confusion as possible in the space of this column. PURPOSE OF SUPPLEMENTAL NUTRITION? If we look at what the average whitetail deals with over the cour se of a year, there is seldom a time w hen even adequate nutrition is av ailable! Years ago, we developed a grap h that depicts…
As few as 10 years ago, I had very little experience hunting whitetails from box blinds, or “permanent blinds” as many call them. I killed my first deer from a hang-on tree stand when I was just a kid, and for the next 20-plus years I primarily hunted from small, mobile platform stands, during both archery and firearms seasons. While my beloved hang-on style stands and tree steps can’t be beat for their light weight and modularity (except maybe by popular new tree hunting saddles, which admittedly I’ve not tried), there’s a reason why most of the bucks I’ve shot since 2015 were taken from permanent blinds. In this article, I’ll briefly explain why I’ve started hunting from permanent blinds as often as I do, and why I’m punching tags…
Anyone who has had the experience of hunting an individual buck for any period has learned the importance of keeping a positive frame of mind. Lifelong Ontario, Canada resident Dearl Hill always carried such a mindset, firmly believing that one should always “dream big.” He lived by that motto, and his approach to deer hunting was no different. In the pre-dawn darkness of Nov. 4, 2021, Dearl parked his vehicle along a field approach that gave access to 200 acres of private land he had permission to hunt on. He was close to his hometown of Sarnia, Ontario, which made this property one of his favorite hunts, and it gave him ample time to do diligent scouting. It wasn’t by chance that Dearl chose this location to hunt during the…
I woke up a little later than I typically like to, but luckily the short 20-minute drive to the farm left me plenty of time to get in the stand by daylight. A quick double check of the weather forecast showed cloudy skies with scattered rain showers, but the wind was perfect for the stand I planned to sit. I told myself: Today could be the day he finally messes up and shows himself during the daylight hours. Probably not, but I’ll never know if I’m not sitting there. Parking a half-mile or so down the road, I decided it would be better to take the extra steps than park at the pull-off closest to the stand. I didn’t want to take a chance of bumping the deer out of…
