Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January - Winter 2025 i North American Whitetail

The only whitetail I’ve taken with a shotgun, I shot at just six yards. That was roughly the distance my tree stand was hung, or 18 feet above ground. The big-bodied Missouri buck came in grunting and posturing to a smaller buck. By the time I spotted the big 11-pointer through the thick underbrush, he’d literally stopped under my tree. And I was looking at him between my feet, through the grate of my hang-on stand. The buck eyed his subordinate in the clover food plot in front of us, and eventually walked a couple feet forward and gave me a clear shot. Thankfully, I had a low-power 1-8x scope on my Browning Maxus 12-guage slug gun, and I sent the big sabot right through his shoulder. Even with the…

Cole McBride was in shock! Stammering for words that wouldn’t form, Cole felt as if his entire body had gone numb. What have you done? He silently asked himself. How could this happen? His inner-self screamed. Finally, he found he could push a few words through; in a low voice, he whispered, “I just missed the biggest buck of my life.” His denial of what had occurred was hitting hard! Fighting through an avalanche of raw emotion, Cole struggled with the reality of what had occurred. As he fought for more words, he could only repeat what he had just said, “I just missed the biggest buck of my life!” He turned to look at his long-time friend, Connor Mobley, who was sitting three feet away in the same double…

For those who don’t know, I cut my trophy whitetail hunting teeth in my home state of Wisconsin. The first 20 years of my pursuits were spent chasing wilderness deer in the far northwestern part of the state, as well as occasional hunts in the farmland regions found near my home. Somewhere along the line, I decided to expand my hunting horizons into other midwestern and western parts of the whitetail’s range. After a number of successful hunts, I decided to expand my horizons ever further to include some eastern and southern areas. It turned out to be a very wise choice for many reasons. To begin with, some of the areas I hunted in the east and south weren’t all that different from areas I’d hunted in the upper…

A big part of deer hunting, especially if a hunter is lucky enough to locate an exceptionally big buck, is developing a plan to hunt the buck. Unfortunately, a hunter’s plan and the deer’s plan don’t usually coincide. Such was the case for a father and son team in central Illinois during the 2022 deer season. Hunter Brandon and his dad, Jeremiah, had been hunting a big 6x6 whitetail. They had gotten several trail camera photos spread over three square miles of the typical 6x6 buck. The buck’s massive rack had a few small sticker points, and at that time they thought the deer was 4 1/2 years old and would score in the 170s. Although they hunted the buck hard during the early youth firearm season, the elusive buck…

“Godzilla” was the nickname they gave the ol’ buck. And he was estimated to be about 6-years old. That’s a long time to live in the woods, fields and forests of rural Adams County, Ohio — an area well known for producing trophy whitetails and popular with hunters, both resident and from far away. The buck was a well-kept secret among a few other local hunters who knew of the deer but seldom whispered a word about him. The big non-typical lived among the oak and hardwood ridges. This deer lived not far from a buck that’s now a haunting memory, known as the giant “Restitution Buck,” a big main frame 10-pointer that was poached that scored over 197 Boone & Crockett points. “After the 2021 deer season, I had…

What we call “the American Dream” takes many forms. To some people, it can be as basic as becoming a U.S. citizen. Others might say it means buying that first home or seeing a child earn the family’s first college degree. Whatever the details, though, making the dream come true involves working hard for a better life. Back in 1965, 25-year-old South Texan Leonel Garza was doing all he could to live out his version of the dream. But the odds definitely were stacked against him. He was the third of 13 children of migrant farm workers born to Lazaro and Olivia Garza, who supported their family by picking cotton in Texas and other crops as far north as the Great Lakes states. Leonel had been a track star in…

A sudden movement to his side caught Dan Weisman’s peripheral attention. He watched as two young does ran out of a spruce swamp to his north. The two does were oblivious to Dan’s presence, as he was safely tethered 20 feet up the trunk of an oak tree. He watched over a long, narrow, overgrown opening that separated two bedding areas. The opening had a couple of years of willow and poplar regrowth, and young pine trees growing in thick stands. It was the perfect place for evening deer movement. Dan was strategically located to take advantage of deer activity as they went from the afternoon bedding location to their evening feeding area. Wisconsin’s archery season was well underway in the third week of October, and deer movement was picking…