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22 Articles

It was one of those coming-of-age moments I’ll never forget. A gangly teenager, I was clueless on how to hunt deer, yet I was determined to figured it out. Dad walked me to the woods the week before the season and showed me a stump. “Sit here and look that way,” he said while pointing to a logging trail that wound through some thick regrowth. “Don’t move a muscle,” he continued. “When you look around, just move your eyes. Don’t move your head — not even just a little bit.” When opening morning arrived, temperatures had fallen into the teens. Determined to get a deer, I pulled on two layers of long underwear, two pair of wool socks, a sweatshirt, a flannel shirt and a ragged pair of blue jeans. I…

TO WATCH THESE POPULAR D&DH VIDEOS, SCAN THE QR CODES ON THIS PAGE WITH ← YOUR SMARTPHONE. → Why Iowa Has Big Deer with Bill Winke @paulbernitt4280 GREAT podcast. I busted my butt to get to a point of financial independence. I am scaling back my work and spending a lot more time outdoors with my wife. I am getting ready to retire and getting ready to give back by bringing people into nature. @T-Mak-s7x Iowa gun season starts after the rut in December. That probably helps. If Michigan has SO much pressure, then limit the pressure. People would be mad, businesses would be really mad. Michigan doesn’t limit the pressure, Michigan wants to increase pressure and opportunities. Just gotta deal with it which is tough and a lot of work to kill a big…

CONNECT & WATCH OUR 4 SHOWS WWW.DEERANDDEERHUNTING.COM DEER & DEER HUNTING • MODERN HUNTER • DDH PROPERTIES • DEERTOPIA SOCIAL MEDIA, WEBSITES/STREAMING APPS FACEBOOK: WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/DEERHUNTINGMAG YOUTUBE: WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/DDHONLINE INSTAGRAM: WWW.INSTAGRAM.COM/DEERANDDEERHUNTING PURSUITUP: WWW.PURSUITUPTV.COM/DEER-AND-DEER-HUNTING/ WAYPOINT TV: WWW.WAYPOINTTV.COM/DEER-AND-DEER-HUNTING WILDTV: WWW.WILDTV.CA/PROGRAM/DEERDEER RUMBLE: WWW.RUMBLE.COM/C/DEERANDDEEERHUNTING TWITTER: @DEERHUNTINGMAG PINTEREST: WWW.PINTEREST.COM/DEERHUNTINGMAG/ BROADCAST TELEVISION PURSUIT CHANNEL - SATURDAY NIGHT DEER CAMP WILD TV WAYPOINT TV BOB RIECKMANN Huge congrats go out to 76-year-old Bob Rieckmann, of Wisconsin, for his best archery buck ever! Way to go, Bob! WHAT’S NEW ON FACEBOOK? THOSE WERE THE DAYS! WE AREN’T SURE OF THE ORIGIN OF THIS VINTAGE DEER CAMP PHOTO (POSSIBLY MICHIGAN), BUT IT’S ONE FOR THE AGES. THE FIRST PART OF THE CAPTION READS: “FIRST YEAR EACH HUNTER SHOT HIS OWN DEER.” D&DH TV IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: eastonarchery.com wildlife.com keeneoutdoors.com hornady.com banksoutdoors.com rakkfuel.com cuddeback.com ritonoptics.com greatplainsag.com dryshodusa.com codeofsilence.com sevrbroadheads.com tidewe.com tenpointcrossbows.com silencercentral.com deergro.com…

30% OF HUNTERS FAIL TO REPORT HARVEST

An estimated 79,615 deer hunters who shot bucks or does in Michigan during 2023 failed to report their kills, according to the DNR’s 2023 Deer Harvest Report compiled by DNR statistician Brain Frawley. The annual mail survey of a random sample of deer hunters came up with a harvest estimate of 347,008 for all 2023 seasons. Only 267,393 kills were reported; a difference of 30%. Although an average of 30% of 2023 deer kills went unreported in the state, according to DNR estimates, the nonreporting rate was higher for the northern Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula. The estimated deer harvest in the northern LP was 34% higher than hunter reports and figures from the DNR’s annual hunter survey show that the UP deer harvest last fall was 41% higher. The DNR…

30% OF HUNTERS FAIL TO REPORT HARVEST

100 DEER POACHED, 4 SUSPECTS INVOLVED

Authorities in Wisconsin have concluded their investigation on a despicable poaching case that involved more than 100 deer killed. It was determined the poaching took place from spring 2023 to July 2024. Fond du Lac County Sheriff Ryan Waldschmidt said the investigation started when a resident called the department. “In mid-July we got a call basically of a strong stench or strong odor coming from garbage at the neighbor’s house,” Waldschmidt said. “When the deputy went to investigate, he found in the garbage multiple heads of bucks in velvet in the garbage rotting. That is what was causing the smell.” Waldschmidt contacted the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the two agencies collaborated in the investigation. After hundreds of combined hours of investigation, a 36-year-old female from Campbellsport, Wis. and three 16-year-old males from…

100 DEER POACHED, 4 SUSPECTS INVOLVED

FLAG ON THE PLAY

If you’ve hunted long enough, you’ve seen that telltale game-over signal. That tail puffed out, held high, exposing the white “flag,” a deer might stand around, alert, momentarily before fleeing to parts unknown. Many researchers have examined this behavior over the years, trying to learn exactly why deer exhibit this behavior. One team was led by T.M. Caro, Leslie Lombardo, A.W. Goldizen and Marcella Kelly in the mid 1990s. The researchers reported these findings in “Tail-Flagging and other antipredator signals in white-tailed deer: new data and synthesis,” published in Behavioral Ecology (Vol 6, Issue 4): “Costs of tail-flagging were apparently low and no data supported the idea that flagging serves as a warning signal to conspecifics, in either this or in other studies,” the group reported. “Flagging deer fled at greater speeds…

FLAG ON THE PLAY

WHY THE RUT’S TIMING IS SO CRITICAL

Because whitetails are seasonal, short-day breeders, the timing of deer births is critically important for the species’ survival. Regardless of the environment, in the Northern hemisphere, whitetails are adapted to conceive at the proper time each autumn, so that fawns are born in spring (about 200 days later) when weather, food and cover conditions are favorable for maximum fawn survival. It’s noteworthy that other, larger North American cervids, such as caribou, elk and moose, also exhibit this adaptive breeding/birthing schedule. Although they have an earlier breeding season and longer gestation (220 to 260 days), as compared to whitetails, they, too, typically give birth during late May and early June. Given the importance of this breeding/birthing schedule, reliable environmental cues are required to trigger the reproductive process in a timely fashion. Among whitetails,…

WHY THE RUT’S TIMING IS SO CRITICAL

HOW TO BREAK DOWN(& VISUALIZE) YOUR HUNTING LAND

Deer hunting is about understanding whitetail lines of movement. Knowing how deer traverse the landscape, how they get from point A to B, and even knowing where A and B are located, are incredibly important tasks to complete. These and more are part of breaking down and visualizing your hunting land. It’s very important to see properties in person. There are things that you cannot determine without boots on the ground scouting. Likewise, there are features that might go unnoticed or undervalued without seeing these from an aerial perspective, such as apps and maps. In the past, hunters could only do this on paper via maps. Today, hunters have many different apps available to them. Hunting centric apps allow hunters to better visualize properties they hunt on. Advanced layers and tools provide…

HOW TO BREAK DOWN(& VISUALIZE) YOUR HUNTING LAND

Let me tell a quick story about a neighbor to a property I used to manage. Let’s call him Fred. Well, Fred bought a 20 with dreams of plastering his walls full of mounts. He worked in a larger city, but would spend most every weekend puttering around on his little oasis of tranquility, shaping and manipulating the place into exactly what he had visioned. I got to know, “Fred” quite well and he is a great guy, but almost every season he would convince himself that there wasn’t a buck on his grounds worthy of hunting. They were all just too young and needed extra years or the rare mature bucks he’d get just didn’t seem to have much headgear. Fred entered most seasons we were neighbors nearly as depressed as someone…

Deer were scarce where I grew up in northwest Ohio, so without any prior practice hunting them, I had to rely on reading magazine articles; and accepting myths, legends and hearsay from friends, classmates and others when I first decided to give it a try while in college. In some cases, their helpful advice turned out to be false information. What is true is that “Experience is the best teacher” and over the years, I learned valuable lessons from my own deer hunting incidents. The following missteps enabled me to fine tune my deer hunting methods and allow me now to tag deer during most annual firearms seasons despite being choosy on when to shoot. The use of straight-walled rifle cartridges was approved by the Ohio Division of Wildlife in 2014 and many…

SMART SCOPES FOR DEER HUNTING

One of the very first things that I learned when I started shooting was Kentucky windage. I was spread out over the leftover piece of insulation we used as a redneck shooting mat, my rifle barrel balanced on cross-sticks. My dad was behind me with a spotting scope, watching to see where my .22 bullets hit on the steel ram silhouettes 100 yards away. Typically, I lined up the crosshairs on the center of the ram, equidistant from its legs. My dad held up a corkboard version of the target with a bright thumbtack where my previous shot hit – above the front leg. I quickly loaded another round and made the decision to hold above the ram’s back leg. Ping! The target went down, and I turned to look at…

SMART SCOPES FOR DEER HUNTING

Magnificent MAST

Editor’s note: This is Part 1 in a two-part series on trees for whitetails. Part 2 will focus specifically on apples and will appear in the February 2025 issue of D&DH. Anyone who owns land for hunting deer or just enjoying wildlife, should give serious consideration to planting mast-(fruits and nuts) bearing trees and shrubs. There will be little or no benefit for several years. When those mast-bearing plants start producing a substantial yield, the potential impact on deer hunting opportunities, and wildlife encounters, are likely to be dramatically enhanced. More mast will attract more whitetails. It is that simple. As I write this I feel blessed to be able to watch a bachelor group of bucks accompanied by a few does eat apples from the wild trees growing in our yard.…

Magnificent MAST

My first muzzleloader whitetail was killed with a roundball fired from a .50-caliber Thompson/Center Hawken. I remember the day as if it were yesterday. The 4-pointer appeared seemingly out of nowhere at 50 yards and after slowing my blood flow and pulse I took aim and pulled the trigger. Through the dispersing smoke I saw the buck run about 20 yards where it slowed, wobbled and finally dropped. In the years that followed that momentous personal event my first black bear, elk, caribou and moose were also killed with a roundball. By then I had taken several deer with my .50 caliber and although I had faith in its killing ability and my own ability to out the roundball where I wanted, being my first hunts for these larger and heavier…

A BUCK NAMED TOMBSTONE!

In 2023, Jeff Marriott ended the hunt for a deer he’d followed for years. “To me, this journey is an experience that involves being alone and being surrounded by friends, great days and days of defeat, successes and failures, strategies that worked and busted strategies, hard work and sweat, and happiness and sadness,” Marriott said. “But every journey has a beginning and an ending.” The story started in 2021 on a property that’s been in his family for nearly 60 years. That said, Marriott focused most of his season on another tract of land. Even so, on November 18, he hunted it, and saw a massive whitetail. Unfortunately, he missed the deer four times in one hunt. He saw the deer several more times that season, but didn’t get another shot…

A BUCK NAMED TOMBSTONE!

MAKING BLINDS SING

It was both the coolest and one of the more dangerous experiences I’ve ever had. Having set the popup blind the afternoon before, I was now watching two shapes approaching through the next AM’s predawn fog. To my thrill, I realized it was a cow moose with her calf. Being apparently curious of this new brush pile, the cow stuck her entire head inside, nostrils less than two inches from my cheek. I held my breath as the cow moose’s every breath was caressing my cheek and literally fogging my own glasses. After what seemed like hours, but was no doubt less than two minutes, she calmly removed her head and resumed feeding. I have taken a bunch of bear, turkey and deer from blinds over the years. Never has there been such…

MAKING BLINDS SING

FEDERAL’S NEXT BIG THING: FUSION TIPPED AMMUNITION

There’s a popular expression out there about Texas. You know the one, claiming that everything is bigger there. Well, in December of 2023 I was lucky enough to find out if that was true. The sunrises were bigger. The racks on the whitetails that passed through my shooting lanes were bigger. The steaks served at the lodge were bigger. Most of all, the greetings from our hosts were bigger. A few of us were lucky enough to spend time with Federal Ammunition, Remington Accessories, and the wonderful people at Premier Ranch. Premier Ranch is located just outside of Mason, in the Texas Hill Country. We were greeted by the Ranch Manager, Jed, and one of his hands, Joby Cook. Jed and Joby were two of the nicest guys you could ever…

FEDERAL’S NEXT BIG THING: FUSION TIPPED AMMUNITION

THE ALL-PURPOSE CAST-IRON SKILLET

If you had to choose one and only one cooking tool to use the rest of your life as a home venison chef, what would you select? The options are extensive indeed. Certainly a grill, of either the charcoal or gas variety, would get plenty of votes. There’s nothing like the juicy flavor of a quick-seared venison chop, sirloin or tenderloin. A grill would also take care of kabobs, burgers, brats and fajitas. But you would have an issue preparing dishes combining liquids with drier cuts of meat such as flanks; shoulder, rump or leg roasts; and briskets and stews. Crockpots would generate some votes, and for good reason: ease of use. There’s nothing better than loading up a crockpot early in the morning, turning it to “low” for an all-day slow-cook,…

THE ALL-PURPOSE CAST-IRON SKILLET

RECIPE OF THE MONTH

Pan-Seared Venison Steak This recipe from Austin Murphy uses cooking techniques that are relatively simple, so it can be easily prepared at home or on the road in a sparse hunting camp. Much of the cooking preparation can be done in advance so the entire meal can be cooked in 20 minutes. This simple meal is designed to provide you with a high-energy fuel source for your next outdoor adventure. Austin Murphy is an accomplished bowhunter and fly fisherman deeply committed to living sustainably and dedicated to hunting, foraging and cooking high-quality wild food. He has worked to promote the ecological benefits of harvesting and eating invasive species such as sika deer, northern snakeheads and blue catfish. Austin enjoys chasing wild game all over North America but he spends most of his…

RECIPE OF THE MONTH

2 EASY WAYS TO EXTEND TARGET LIFE

Archery targets are pricey, and you can shoot a foam type target to pieces in no time. A bag-type target can take thousands of shots, but if you practice with broadheads or, like me, often hunt with small diameter carbon shafts with an outsert whose outer diameter is larger than the shaft diameter, bag targets are not an option. (The outsert will catch on the batting inside the target, making removal difficult if not impossible.) There are two easy, inexpensive ways to extend the life of your foamtype targets. The first is to simply not aim at the target’s center all the time. Many targets have small circles, diamonds, or squares set in different quadrants of the target. At close range, shoot at these. Simple, no? But what about long range,…

2 EASY WAYS TO EXTEND TARGET LIFE

1 CODE OF SILENCE FAREWINDS BASE SYSTEMS Code of Silence unveils Farewinds Base Systems hunting garments. Featuring Merino-LR™ Base fabric, FBS is 240gsm for a lighter weight option or next to skin base layer system for added warmth. Ultimately, this fabric breathes incredibly well, stretches with your every move, insulates when layering and provides all the benefits of high-quality merino against your skin and interior systems. The system includes a ½ zip top and Merino-LR pants. Regardless if you wear the top by itself or as a layering garment in late season, it can’t be beat. The new lightweight Merino-LR™ Base Fabric incorporates breathability and insulating properties making this an ideal first choice for the active hunter and a perfect base layer option for colder sits. These garments are the same…

pursuit Community

PURSUIT CHANNEL HIGHLIGHTS DEER & DEER HUNTING AND MEDIA 360 CONTENT Pursuit Media TV, LLC invites viewers to tune in to catch the great lineup of whitetail content from Media 360’s Deer & Deer Hunting crew. For more than 12 years now, Deer & Deer Hunting has been bringing Pursuit Channel viewers great whitetail programs week in and week out. The shows can be found on a variety of days and times throughout the week on both Pursuit Channel and Pursuit UP. The new seasons of the programs are also wrapped up nicely in a late-night Saturday block called “Saturday Night Deer Camp … brought to you by Deer & Deer Hunting,” exclusively airing on Pursuit Channel. The block starts at 10 p.m. ET with their long running show, “Deer & Deer Hunting…

pursuit Community

OPENING Morning

Sometimes the most sacred moments in life are the little ones that happen so frequently we rarely pause to give them thought or appreciation. One such moment is the dawn of a new day. For many people, it has been far too long since they sat outside and watched the sun rise simply for the sake of its beauty. For most, living through a sunrise, in a state of non-sleep, would be burdensome. It would not be something planned or eagerly awaited. More likely, it would be a period of tiredness and disgruntlement. I credit deer hunting with having immunized me against the condition. So much so, in fact, if I could be granted one wish, it would be that I have a second chance to watch the start to…

OPENING Morning

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