Look at the vital zone outlined on the average 3D deer target, and you’ll see an area that reinforces what most of us have been taught about aiming at a broadside deer: Hold behind the crease of the shoulder, slightly below centerline of the chest. Most of the time, if...
One morning in the Clearwater Mountains of Idaho, I watched two whitetail bucks skirting a hillside trail across a canyon. “Two hundred sixty yards,” my friend Bob said from below his rangefinder. “Buck in back is bigger.” I rested my .270 in the crotch of sticks and watched as the...
It wasn’t long ago that all a hunter had to consider when buying a riflescope was whether to get a fixed or variable power, a Duplex reticle or a fine crosshair. But optics — especially riflescopes — have evolved dramatically within the past decade. Tubes have gotten larger, glass and...
Just a few days ago, I slipped into a bedding area, climbed a tree, and settled in for the last few hours of daylight. Right after sunset, I watched as my No. 2 target buck rose from his bed a mere 50 yards away. That buck stayed within a few...
Years ago, when someone steered a truck towing a duck boat onto Interstate 55 during December or January, you knew where they were heading: the rice fields or flooded timber of Arkansas. But for about the past decade, many of those rigs have veered a bit northeast of the world’s...
You’re either bowhunting right now or will be in a few weeks. Between shooting your bow and scouting and hanging stands, you probably don’t have time to read and digest a long-winded text on deer hunting. But you probably are scrolling on your phone to pass the hours in a...
I’m often amazed at the people, deer hunters included, who tell me they just don’t like venison. That statement is usually followed by a qualifier: it’s tough; it’s gamy; it’s dry. And so on. I’ve eaten a lot of good deer meat. But I’ve eaten some really bad deer meat,...
My buddy shouted at me from 60 yards away, and it was just the type thing you hope to hear on the First of September. "Coming in hot behind you, to the right!" I twisted around on my bucket seat to catch sight of the dove coming over the barn...
One October I scouted the bends and points of a 400-acre stretch of the Milk River in northeastern Montana and located four good whitetail bucks, two of which would push 140 inches, about as good as the racks get out there. I hunted hard for four days from three lock-on...
When I began seriously bowhunting elk, in 1982, calls were laughably low tech, including coiled gas hoses and homemade PVC flutes. Yet in 1983, when I became a professional guide, I used these basic instruments to lure bulls into range of the compound-bow technology of the day — back when...
I wouldn’t go so far as to say a dead antelope buck smells good , but I don’t mind their odor a bit. There’s a hint of petting zoo goat — not necessarily repulsive in itself — mixed with dry Western air and sage and musk. All combined, somehow, the...
