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Entries for 'Gray Loon'
Fringe Benefits
By Mike Handley
Nolan Johnson can thank his buddy and fellow weed-killing, crop-fertilizing co-worker, Earl, for telling him about the monstrous whitetail he wound up arrowing in 2018. He can also tip his hat to a farmer who gave him a key to a seldom-used gate. “Earl jumped a really big buck while spraying soybeans in the spring,” Nolan told John Phil... READ MORE
Yellow is the New Camo
By Mike Handley
Hunter Hastings has not disclosed whether having a backyard playhouse that doubles as a deer stand affects the value of real estate in Chanute, Kansas. The 46-year-old manager of a specialty welding company used to lay his hat in a home with 10 huntable acres. He could see his stand from the kitchen window. The 2018 season was his last to hunt deer... READ MORE
What Noise?
By Mike Handley
Some outdoorsmen think their hunts are ruined if they inadvertently step on a stick or fail to stifle a sneeze or cough. In their minds, such are the noises that send deer packing. Chris Flanders isn’t wound that tight. Less than four hours after he and his brother, Alan, wrestled a 20-foot-tall ladder stand into place and cut virgin shooting... READ MORE
Déjà vu with a Different Ending
By Mike Handley
Eighteen-year-old Brooks Jacobsen hopes he’ll one day be a veterinarian capable of stanching wounds. For now, the student at Wayne Community School is happy to inflict them. In 2016, the kid from Corydon and his mentor, Jeremy McCarty, gained hunting rights to acreage in south-central Iowa. They scouted, hung stands and put out trail cameras ... READ MORE
Coming Attraction
By Mike Handley
Taylor Drury has been deflating whitetails since she was 12 years old. Last season, the 23-year-old arrowed her biggest ever, an Iowa buck wearing nearly 190 inches of bone. Taylor might be best known as the social media face of Drury Outdoors, the company her father, Mark, and Uncle Terry founded in the late 1980s. She was hunting the family farm ... READ MORE
How to Kick Off Deer Season
By Mike Handley
Jeff Thieman pays attention to the moon phases. When Ohio’s bow season opened Sept. 29, five days following the harvest moon, he was brimming with anticipation. The hunter from Waterford couldn’t wait to spend the afternoon in a deer stand overlooking a bench in the timber where his trail cameras were working overtime. By 3:45 that day,... READ MORE
Opening Day to Remember
By Mike Handley
Knowing whitetails will walk over corn to Hoover up acorns, Dylan Martin figured he had two weeks before the unusual buck on his Most Wanted list went AWOL. Once the family farm’s oaks started dropping, his bait pile would get as much attention as a granola bar at a pizza buffet. The 22-year-old hunter from Stoneville, North Carolina, became ... READ MORE
Buck No. 4 will be Hard to Top
By Mike Handley
Wade Tiemann worried his daughter, McKenzie, would suffer a severe case of buck fever if she ever got an opportunity to shoot at the whitetail wearing the dark, aloe vera-like rack roaming their ground. But he should’ve given the 9-year-old more credit. When the two saw the deer on Oct. 26, 2017, thoughts of shooting anything less were banish... READ MORE
Why a Maine Hunter Keeps Staring at His Phone
By Mike Handley
Gene Doughty spent a lot of money in 2017. The fork lift technician had no choice but to buy a new freezer after landing a giant tuna and shooting a moose. And before the year was out, he added venison to his larder. He was lucky on many counts that year, particularly with regard to the moose permit. Thousands of people apply, but very few get one.... READ MORE
One Less Legend
By Mike Handley
The move from Delaware, Ohio, to Mansfield in 2013 put Dan Aquino 50 miles and two counties north of his usual hunting ground. With nowhere to go close to his new home, Dan began knocking on doors, which gained him access to two tracts. His first order of business was to erect a two-person ladder stand, lay down a mock scrape and hang a trail camer... READ MORE
Ohio Buck’s Luck Runs Out
By Mike Handley
Justin Bates took two shots, two months apart, at the massive mainframe 8-pointer he tagged in 2017. He was bowhunting from a blind the first time his and the deer’s paths crossed. The bow’s limbs must have smacked the interior wall, because the arrow flew well over the buck’s back before sticking in the ground 8 feet beyond it. T... READ MORE
There’s No Place Like Home. Wait …
By Mike Handley
John Hatt always thought the grass was greener in Kansas. Not only is the Sunflower State one of the top yielders of monstrous whitetails, but the archery licenses and tags also are virtually guaranteed (for those who apply in April). The bowhunter came close to tying his non-resident tag on his career-best deer in 2017, but the estimated 170-inche... READ MORE
Destination: Deer
By Mike Handley
Contrary to popular belief, people who book hunts with outfitters rarely take home 200-inch bucks. Not wild ones anyway. Lodge owners can manage only for mature bucks, whether their holdings are large or small, in Alabama or Ohio. Yet the older these deer become, the less likely they’ll abide the stepped-up pressure of a string of pay-to-play... READ MORE
When a Tree isn’t a Tree
By Mike Handley
Darrin Dawes’s back yard in Arnaudville, Louisiana, is 2 miles long and 60 yards wide. Deer cross through those 25 acres all the time, but he almost never sees high-caliber bucks. In December 2016, however, a trail camera photographed a 150-incher, which is like finding a 10-pound bass in your bathtub. Darrin pegged the deer as a 4 ½-y... READ MORE
Worthy of a Four-year Wait
By Mike Handley
An impromptu walkabout and a buddy’s what-do-you-have-to-lose advice set Wisconsin bowhunter Greg Widiker on a collision course with the buck of his dreams in 2017. Greg watched his wish-list whitetail come of age over four seasons. When he first saw it in 2014, it was a 5x5 with above-average brow tines. It hit the 150-inch mark the followin... READ MORE