Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January - Winter 2026 i North American Whitetail

NORTH AMERICAN WHITETAIL Managing Editor Blake Garlock and I pulled into our deer lease in north-central Kentucky in late September 2025 with high hopes of checking our Browning trail cameras and discovering big shooter bucks looming about. Our hopes skyrocketed when we pulled the first SD card and found a tall-tined 9-pointer we’d known for the previous two seasons. The Browning cam, positioned on the edge of a warm season food plot, had taken several photos of him in velvet throughout the late summer — and he was much bigger than he’d been in 2024. About 10 minutes later, we wheeled the Polaris side-by-side into the farm’s creek bottom and were met with bad news. Buzzards. The black birds of death were circling overtop a drainage not far from where…

IN A RIFLE MARKET INCREASINGLY dominated by Cerakote finishes, carbon fiber and polymer parts, there’s something timeless about the warm glow of a finely finished wood stock. While modern materials and weatherproof finishes serve their purposes and offer their own great aesthetics, I’ll always be a sucker for a fine wood gun. A deer rifle with a well-finished hardwood stock speaks to tradition and craftsmanship. Browning understands this better than most. They’re one of the few production rifle manufactures still offering elegant wood stocks on rifles that are reliable, and deadly accurate. Browning’s latest walnut and maple offerings in the X-Bolt and X-Bolt 2 lines prove that these “Modern Classics” (as I call them) are still out there — ALIVE AND THRIVING. GRADE, FINISH AND FEEL Let’s start with the…

EVERY DEER HUNTER worth his doe pee knows to be on-stand first thing in the morning and last thing in the afternoon. Whitetail can be hunted at other times, of course. The rut makes bucks do crazy things, even in broad daylight. But devoted deer hunters make sure they are ready and waiting when the sun wakes up in the morning and when it slips off to bed at dark. That’s because, in the whitetail woods, magic is made in the shadows. I have seen bucks step out of lengthening shadows like they just stepped out of the next room. On one occasion, the tree branch that I’d been staring at all morning turned out to be the main beam and brow tine of my target buck. I had my…

FOR MANY WHITETAIL HUNTERS, December is when they wrap up the final hunts of their deer season. Across the Midwest, Northeast and West, the whitetail rut has passed, and although many states have late seasons that run beyond the new year, many hunters have already filled their tags. For NAW TV, we usually complete our final hunts of the season in December, too. Although we love sitting over a standing bean field looking for a Midwest giant in the snow, we’ve actually opted to head south and end our season with a rut hunt during the last few years. Specifically, we head deep into South Texas to the historic Cochina Hunt Club. Currently airing on NAW TV are Haynes Shelton and Dr. Kroll’s Cochina hunts from December 2024. On that…

BADLANDS Built for frigid sits, the Pyre Jacket from Badlands is a great outer layer for late season hunts. This 100-percent-waterproof jacket carries 160-gram PrimaLoft Silver fill that helps retain body heat during Mother Nature’s worst. Add in the tree stand tether export, rangefinder lanyard and fleece-lined handwarmer pockets, and you have a jacket designed to keep you on-stand in winter weather. (badlandsgear.com) REMINGTON For those of you hunting with straight-walls this month, you need to check out the .360 Buckhammer. Tipped with a Core-Lokt soft point, one of the most-used and respected whitetail bullets of all time, this lethal round comes in 180- and 200-grain options. With a bullet that size, you can rest assured that you’ll see top-end straight-wall performance out of this cartridge! (remington.com) BROWNING TRAIL CAMERAS…

IN THE OCTOBER ISSUE of North American Whitetail, I discussed each of the eight types of Whitetail Habitat: forage producing, mast producing, cover, edge, staging, sanctuary, water and travel corridor. Each of these must be conveniently distributed within the basic home range of a whitetail to maximize production of deer on your property. The travel corridor is the habitat element that connects these critical components in the “deer landscape.” By using properly designed and located travel corridors, I have been able to determine where deer travel; but I have never been able to get them to travel when I want them to! That remains the fun part of deer management and hunting. In this installment, I will discuss what exactly is a travel corridor, what factors influence their use, and…

DEER HUNTING IS A challenging activity, especially when targeting mature whitetail bucks. Each situation requires critical thinking and the proper application of tactics. What works for one deer or one property may not work for the next, and failing to pick up on this could lead to you messing up without knowing. Here are five mistakes many hunters don’t know they’re making. Not Staying Current on a Buck’s Changing Patterns: Deer patterns change throughout the season. They operate on long-, mid-, and short-term patterns. Hunters must stay up to date with where deer are bedding, feeding and traveling. Studying bedding area needs, food source preferences, hunting pressure, and other circumstances can unveil these patterns. It can even help you anticipate pattern shifts before they happen. Missing Key High-Odds Hunting Days:…

NATURE’S TRACKS DON’T always fade away. In fact, over time some only grow more obvious. Heavy rains gouge the ground in much the same way as huge claws, ripping loose soil, stones and vegetation. And then, before the land can fully heal, it sometimes happens all over again. There are few better examples of this than in the Central Texas Hill Country. While usually desperate for moisture, every so often this broad area of ranching country gets far too much of it too quickly. In extreme cases, stalled thunderstorms dump shocking amounts of water – as much as half the region’s average annual rainfall of 25-30 inches – in just a few hours. When billions of gallons of water and debris rush down narrow, rocky drainages more like rooftops than…

HAVE YOU SHOT A TROPHY BUCK? Please submit a clear photo and full details of the hunt to: North American Whitetail, 2 News Plaza, 3rd Floor, Peoria, IL 61614 or email submission to: whitetail@outdoorsg.com. Photos cannot be returned.…