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Entries for 'Gray Loon'
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
No Time for Buck Fever
By Mike Handley
It took 17 days for Joe Blugerman to stop kicking himself for missing a bow shot at a mature 8-pointer in 2017. Thirty-five years of hunting deer hasn’t made the man from Munith, Michigan, immune to buck fever, and he got a bad case of it on Nov. 8. Joe says it’s because the 4x4 took so long to travel the 80 yards between where he first... READ MORE
Public Land Yields One of Kentucky’s Finest in 2014
By Mike Handley
Twenty-one-year-old Cody Likin smoked a 150-class buck in 2013, the first year he hunted the Nicholas County wildlife management area his uncle had recommended. When he scored the following year, he was carrying his bow instead of a blackpowder rifle. Cody is a student at Eastern Kentucky University. He lives in Laurel County, about two hours south... READ MORE
Kentucky’s best Perfect from 2017
By Mike Handley
You’d think a sustained, countywide effort to wipe out feral hogs might push resident whitetails – particularly mature bucks – into another zip code. You just can’t put that kind of pressure on a deer that’s survived four or more hunting seasons, right? That’s what Jim Thompson of Frankfort, Kentucky, thought. Wh... READ MORE
Fool Me Once …
By Mike Handley
Going into Louisiana’s 2017 deer season, Charles Brossette knew at least one decent buck was living in the 600 acres he hunts in Natchitoches Parish. A trail camera had snapped one photograph of it, a sideways view that, while impressive, did little justice to the 180-plus-inch rack. Charles got a much better look at the animal when he actual... READ MORE
On Their Own, Until Afterward
By Mike Handley
Sixteen-year-olds Jackson Hicks and Chase Sollis hunted together, by themselves, on Sept. 24, 2017, which is rare. Their fathers are not completely sold on the idea of the boys hunting steep, rattlesnake-strewn hills an hour’s drive from home. This isn’t to say the teenagers weren’t experienced enough, however. Both have been tagg... READ MORE
The Do-over
By Mike Handley
Adam Cartright heard about the top-heavy Illinois deer he wound up shooting in 2017 long before he saw it. In addition to grapevine gossip, a friend photographed the deer from a parked combine, pictures of the buck in a Clay County soybean field were shared on Facebook, and one of Adam’s trail cameras captured several images. He named the dee... READ MORE
From Bust to Boom
By Mike Handley
Brandon Myers slipped an arrow through this drop-tined buck just nine hours after it walked past his trail camera. The Ohio bowhunter had dedicated most of his 2017 season to hunting another buck on another property where he’d seen it cross the road. He wound up getting a 35-yard shot at the deer, but the arrow flew high and only shaved hair ... READ MORE
The Bean Field Buck
By Mike Handley
Mel Johnson, the Illinois bowhunter whose 1965 buck remains one of the longest-reigning world records in the BTR, died in May at the age of 84. Mel arrowed the deer while hunting next to a soybean field near his home near Peoria. He’d stopped there after work at the Caterpillar plant on Friday, Oct. 29. He originally planned to hunt from a tr... READ MORE
Poster Buck for Trigger Restraint
By Mike Handley
Need more than a wildlife biologist’s suggestion to let young bucks walk (if you’re interested in high-octane antlers)? Consider Brandon Ramirez’s story from January. Brandon collected a trail camera photograph of an 8-pointer in 2014. Recognizing it was an immature deer, he never considered shooting it. He also passed it up... READ MORE
Making the Best of 45 Minutes
By Mike Handley
Prior to 2017, Tyler Stull felt like he was pouring money in a hole and wasting his time trying to shoot a really big deer off the land he was hunting. So when a customer offered to let him hunt her 40 acres in Meade County, Kentucky, the young carpenter was thrilled over the prospects of a change of scenery and better chances to connect with a dre... READ MORE
Oh Wow
By Mike Handley
An emergency medical technician in Brookhaven, Mississippi, carried his own personal defibrillator during the fall of 2017, and it required no electricity. If Tyler Blalock needed to jumpstart his own heart, he had only to pull out a photo of an incredible whitetail that had walked in front of his trail camera for three years in a row. For obvious ... READ MORE
‘Doctor’s Office Smell’ Spices Up Tink’s
By Mike Handley
The faint aromas of disinfectant, alcohol and hand-wash apparently do not hinder the effectiveness of doe drops. Raquel Dominico didn’t have time to go home and shower off the doctor’s office smell before joining her father, Rick, for a deer hunt last Ohio. She carried her hunting clothes to the office, and then went to the woods straig... READ MORE
Three Clicks and a Boom
By Mike Handley
The very year Matt Kelly joined a renowned deer hunting club an hour and a half from home, he shot a bruiser whitetail on property that didn’t cost him a dime. Matt manages his family’s 5,000-plus acres near Carlisle, Arkansas. He hunts those, another piece of ground nearby, and he has a deal with some college buddies to swap duck hunts... READ MORE