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Scout
What I Learned about Whitetails from Year-Round Trail Camera Use
It wasn’t intentional, but I’m glad I did it. Over the last couple of seasons, I put out my usual summer trail cameras to gather pre-season intel. Some, I re-upped on batteries, while others just ran until they couldn’t. A few, built with solar panels, kept a charge through the North Country winter...
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Scout
Is Summer Scouting Overrated?
After hauling my two daughters through spider webs, oppressive heat, and a few meltdowns to drop a new trail camera at one of my hunting spots, I started reconsidering whether or not my summer scouting efforts were worth it.
While summer scouting might benefit you come October, do you really need to...
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5 onX Hunt Tools Every Deer Hunter Should Know
My son and I were nervous as we made our way from the truck to the front door of a local landowner in hopes of securing hunting permission. The sign by the road said, “Beware of Dog,” but with 100 acres of prime hunting land on the line, we took our chances and headed for the front porch.
After a...
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In-Season
Scout
3 Lessons You Can Learn from Whitetail Rubs
I can clearly remember the excitement I felt following in my grandfather’s footsteps some 30 years ago as he pointed out whitetail rubs strewn across the forest surrounding our family deer camp. The bright orange slashes stood out among the trees like red lights in the distance screaming, “STOP! A...
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Scout
How to Find Buck Bedding on Aerial Imagery
You’ve graduated whitetail pre-school if you’re using satellite imagery to identify a buck’s destination food source. E-scouting for and successfully finding a mature buck’s bedding area is a different story. This is higher education stuff and starts with a 30,000-foot view of your hunting grounds...
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Scout
How to Identify a Big Buck Track in Snow
When there’s snow in the forecast during hunting season, you can bet I’ll be heading to the whitetail woods. That’s for one simple reason: Snow shows deer patterns like a black light exposes invisible ink. Tracks are what tell the story.
Whether it be to follow a buck on foot or verify the presence...
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Whitetail
The Struggle of a Colorblind Outdoorsman
I’m a hunter and I’m colorblind. For a guy who has to follow a lot of blood trails, this is not a good combination. But I’m not alone.
According to reports from San Francisco State University, about 5% of females and 8% of males have some form of colorblindness. This means there are likely hundreds...
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Scout
Video: How to Identify Oak Trees
Anyone planning to be an all-around woodsman needs to be able to identify oaks. In this video, I’ll go through the main ways to distinguish white oaks from red oaks and why it matters. Both have unique properties that cause wildlife to interact with them differently. This is an important skill to...
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Scout
The Best Public Land Food Sources for Whitetails
Whitetail hunters often think of food sources in a way that doesn’t do the deer’s adaptability justice. More often than not, this involves a serious focus on agricultural fields or food plots. Everyone knows deer love a picked cornfield or lush food plot full of clover, but what if you don’t have...
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Offseason
Scout
3 Ways Mature Buck Hunters Sabotage Their Season Before It Starts
This is a weird time of year to be thinking about deer.
It’s turkey season, the fishing is getting really good across the country, and we are at about the exact midpoint between the deer season’s end and its beginning. The default setting right now, with a lot of us, is that there is more than...
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How to Avoid Bites and Stings While Scouting in Warm Weather
Spring means gobbling turkeys, pleasant temps, and more daylight. It’s also the start of a long offseason of whitetail scouting that spans the summer months and into fall openers. Unfortunately, it’s also the time that insects, spiders, snakes, and a host of other critters resurface.
Depending on...
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4 Tips to Locate Mature Buck Home Ranges in the Offseason
Hunters have an undeniable fascination with giant antlered, big-bodied bucks. If you've decided to take on the challenge of understanding mature bucks, you're in danger of becoming addicted and obsessed. However, studying mature bucks can also increase your fun in the woods.
Mature bucks are king in...
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Scout
The Underappreciated Art of Trimming Shooting Lanes
Shooting lanes are not sexy. Whitetail fanatics don’t binge-watch shooting lane videos on YouTube or drool over artsy tree trimming pics on Instagram. Wow factor be damned—the art of trimming shooting lanes is crucial to deer hunting success.
Yes, it is an art. Determining just the right time to cut...
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The Fool's Gold of Deer Scouting
Summer is the whitetailer’s season of anticipation. At no point during the year does the excitement rise more rapidly or to such a fever pitch than those last months leading up to opening day. For that reason, we deer hunters exert a whole lot of energy each summer seeking out, watching, and...
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Trail Cams
Hunt
Historical Data Can Help You Kill Bucks During the Rut
There’s a small section on a particular piece of public I look forward to hunting every year during the peak rut. There’s about a three- or four-day stretch that I know I’ll see bucks chasing in this specific stretch of woods. The first year I hunted this spot, I was nearly trampled by a group of...
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3 In-Season Trail Camera Mistakes That Will Cost You a Buck
I have never had more trail cameras out in any given season than I do this year. It’s weird. While they are all out on private land, my season is split up pretty evenly between hunting those parcels and setting out on public where I have zero digital intel going.
The difference between planning a...
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Gear
How Trail Cameras Made Me A More Patient Buck Hunter
I can’t run trail cameras in a lot of the places I hunt. I love that, but I also love running a whole bunch of cameras to try to decipher deer movement from year to year on specific properties. This latter tactic was a big part of my fall this year, and I noticed something that has led me to more...
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How to Scout Deer from 1,200 Miles Away
I know it seems a bit crazy for a dude living in Montana to expend so much energy on hunting white-tailed deer in Wisconsin. All I can say is, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”
But I have more reasons than that. I’ve been hunting there since I was 11. I have an incredible...
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Time is a Whitetail Hunter’s Best Friend When it Comes to Trail Cameras
I recently mentioned to a hunting buddy of mine that I already have some cameras out, along with one really good rut setup ready to go. He was a little surprised since our conversation happened before turkey season was fully played out.
His mindset is a common one, and there’s nothing wrong with it...
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Sheds
Scout
The Truth About Shed Dogs
A few years ago, shed dogs were all the rage. A lot of the big whitetail names were running retrievers, that by social media standards, appeared to be antler finding machines. Average Joes were getting in on the game, too. And just like with a lot of outdoor fads that burn hot, it appeared that if...
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3 Things You Can Learn from Whitetail Sheds
Shed hunting is a dang good time. Let’s be clear about that right out of the gate.
But there’s more to it than just scooping up antlers. Whitetail sheds can hold a treasure trove of information if you know what to look for. Here are three valuable pieces of intel you can glean from the antlers you...
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4 Tricks for Finding More Whitetail Sheds
The basics of shed hunting are well known, but the devil is in the details.
Efficient use of time is the golden rule of shed hunting, so let’s not beat around the bush. Here are four simple tricks that will help you gain shed hunting success.
Scout Like it’s Hunting Season
The best DIY whitetail...
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Scout
How to E-Scout for Shed Hunting
Shed hunting, from the outside looking in, can seem quite simple: walk a lot, look on the ground, and find antlers. But the search for whitetail sheds is rarely this straightforward.
Consistent shed hunting success requires both an understanding of deer habitat and behavior, and a smart strategy...
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Scout
3 Reasons You Suck at Shed Hunting
Shed hunting is one of those outdoor pursuits that sounds easy: Walk some trails, check some fence crossings, and fill up your backpack with antler. If you’ve got primo spots and plenty of time, this is probably true (and you likely don’t need to read an article about why you suck at shed hunting...
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Scout
3 Guaranteed Places to Find Whitetail Sheds
Son of a bitch. That’s typically what runs through my mind when I see a buddy walking towards one of those spots while shed hunting.
Maybe you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve shed hunted long enough, you’ll recognize that those spots almost always hold an antler or two. When this kind of...
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