Whitetail Deer Hunting

Living hundreds of miles from your hunting property can really make it tough to put in the time needed to prepare for the upcoming season. Combine the time needed to do so and the soaring gas prices and it’s nearly impossible to do enough preseason scouting to put yourself in a good position to harvest a bruiser come this fall. But, with today’s advances in trail camera technology, these constraints can put less of a burden on your whitetail success. There was a time when a hunter had to do all of his scouting via field edges and talking to local farmers. Now days, he or she can still use those resources, but incorporate the use of digital trail cameras to really increase his pre season scouting. With the use of these cameras, hunters can capture a glimpse of what their property has without spending much time there. You can spend one weekend a month through the summer on the property yet gain knowledge of what is on the property as well as potential patterns the deer have throughout the entire summer months. Continue Reading

Many whitetail hunters do the majority of their scouting during the off-season or just before start of the deer season. The knowledge gained during these times is essential in putting the pieces of the puzzle together in order to harvest a mature buck or a freezer filling doe during the fall, but sometimes the areas you’ve located before the season don’t produce like you had hoped. In order to ensure deer hunting success in this situation, you must incorporate some in-season scouting tactics.

For many years, I spent countless hours in the woods before the season trying to figure out feeding areas, bedding areas, and the travel corridors between the two. During some seasons, the information I gathered during this time would lead to some great stands during the following season. Continue Reading

I was making the nightly rounds on my seven-year deer research project when I saw the big bodied 10 point buck for the first time. It was just before sunset on a cold January night, when five does and fawns came down off a hill and crossed the road twenty yards in front of the truck. Luckily I was only going fifteen miles per hour, or I might have hit the buck as he ran across the road ten yards behind the does. The buck was so close I had to hit the brakes to keep from him.

When the deer got across the road they stopped in the alfalfa field and looked back, then they walked fifty yards further from the road, where the does began to feed while the buck surveyed the Suburban. I stopped and grabbed my binoculars for a better look. He had a high wide rack with five evenly matched points on each side, and massive main beams that were almost flat. I watched the buck for about five minutes, until he turned and walked into the woods at the far side of the field. That was the night I decided I wanted to see the buck up close and personal. Continue Reading

1.Based on hunter reports, about one deer in 30,000 is an albino.
2.Melanistic deer are very dark sometimes even black and results from overproduction of pigment and is less common than albinism.
3.Albinism is a recessive trait and both parents must carry the gene before it can occur in their offspring.
4.The speed at which antlers grow, also makes them the fastest growing structures in the animal kingdom.
5.Antler growth is usually complete by the end of August.
6.The deer genus was given the name Odocoileus by Rafinesque in 1832.
7.A doe giving birth in areas of good food will have twins. However triplets are common as well as occasional quadruplets.
8.Largest body weight on record of a Whitetail deer is 511 pounds.
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