When this publication began in 1982, many whitetail hunters regarded bow season mostly as a chance to scout for gun season, the deer year’s main event. Any legal whitetail taken with stick and string was enough to spark a major celebration.
On occasion, someone would arrow a genuine trophy buck, especially in Midwestern farm country. But one thing you almost never saw, either while on stand or as you admired another bowhunter’s wall, was a whitetail rack in velvet. Why? Because there was no legal velvet opportunity to speak of.
In many parts of North America, the current landscape is quite different. There now are a fair number of states and provinces where such trophies are feasible to hunt, including Kentucky, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington,…
