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Reader Features
The Fall of Big Boy | By Brian Hill
-- It was my second year of hunting with a new club, and all the members and I were after a buck they had named Big Boy. Some of the guys told me they had been hunting him three years before I joined, so it was a smart, old buck. He te...
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The Memorial Buck | By Michael Ruffing
-- It was the 2006 deer season in Pennsylvania. I was hunting with my dad, who’d I’d convinced to use a crossbow for the first time. I was carrying a muzzleloader, a flintlock.
When I met up with my father on the first evening of...
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So That’s Buck Fever? | By Thomas Carson
-- This isn’t your average hunting story of how I bagged a 13-point buck. To me, it is unbelievably funny. The average hunter might have a hard time believing the story, but I assure you that every word is true. While you read, keep...
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Two Shooters, One Buck of a Lifetime | By Randall Lamb
-- It was a cold, dry morning in 1986. Leaves crunched under my boots as I walked through the dark woods, bow on my shoulder.
I was 24 years old, and it was just my second year of deer hunting.
In the distance a screech owl announc...
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Desert Big Horn Sheep Two Miles High | By Bob Burgess
-- The month of November arrived to find me preparing to head for Nevada and my chance to hunt for a desert big horn sheep. The permit to hunt for these sheep is one of the most difficult of all the big game permits to obtain. Each ye...
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Dad’s Dream Buck | By Brian Mecouch
-- Ever since I was a boy, I’ve enjoyed spending time outdoors. Some might call it an addiction. I’d have to agree; it is. Hunting turkeys, deer and the occasional waterfowl always has been an adventure. My dad was constantly showin...
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Hillary’s First Buck | By George Cayer
-- I once read: “Few things can bring you more joy than to pursue two of your passions at the same time.”
For me, that means hunting and fishing in Maine with my daughters Larissa and Hillary – just as I did with my father.
I have ...
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Too Much Noise Is Sometimes Just Enough | By Scott Semingson
-- I am 51 years old and have been deer hunting for the past 39 years. I have had many learning experiences in the Wisconsin woods while trying to harvest mature bucks. I am very fortunate to live in an area of Wisconsin where buc...
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Gifts for Deer Hunters | By Tracy Breen
-- Times are tough, and most of us have at least one or two hunting items on our Christmas lists. If you’re like me, however, you don’t want to let a whole lot of room for guesswork when it comes to other folks shopping for your hunti...
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Broken Trail | By Jason Hubert
-- Sitting in the middle of a 60-acre CRP field, getting pelted by rain and snow at 6:30 a.m. makes a person wonder what they are doing. Then, I reminded myself it was Nov. 15, Michigan’s opening day of firearm deer season.
This was...
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The 1-Minute Season Transformation | By Jason J. Venti
5:00 a.m. — My alarm goes off. I can’t believe I put myself through this. I wake up each morning to get dressed and go into the woods to freeze for 4 hours. Then I come out of the woods to go home relax for an hour or so and g...
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Ten-Year Old’s First Deer | By Wade Detrick
-- Cold toes, numb nose, frozen fingers and the thrill of the hunt are all part of the experience of deer hunting. Rylee Detrick, age 10, has been hunting with her dad for several years now, and has experienced all those things...
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An Unexpected Recovery | By Jeremy Wead
-- In October 2004, I received a call from a friend who had arrowed a buck on private property but was unable to recover it. Another friend and I set out to find the buck for him.
All blood signs were good and heavy, and then we came...
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Can’t Touch This | By Nick Sanchez
-- It was my son’s first hunt of the 2007 season. I’d taken him hunting the previous year, but we didn’t see anything.
Jacob, then 5, was so excited about the next day’s hunt that he wanted to go the night before and sleep in the st...
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Illinois Dream Come True | By Hubert Parker
-- It was the day after Thanksgiving when my friend Danny (Bubba) Glenn and I left for our much-anticipated whitetail bowhunting trip to Illinois.
It was the week before the second gun season and the rut was still going strong. We...
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Just Gotta Brag | By Chris Gaines
-- My son Kevin Gaines completed his hunter safety course last year and wanted to hunt in 2009.
He got drawn for an either sex elk and an off-range oryx here in New Mexico. I am so proud of him.
On Oct. 5 we stalked a herd of elk i...
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Michigan Deer Harvest Down | From the Michigan DNR
-- Initial estimates indicate Michigan firearm deer hunters killed 10 to 20 percent fewer deer this year than in 2008, according to the Department of Natural Resources. Decreased harvests were most noticeable in the Upper Penin...
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A Hunt I’ll Never Forget | By Jay Neumann
-- I have a disability from an accident that happened on January 1, 1987. My neck was broken, which left me a quadriplegic. I use a gun rest with a sip mechanism to pull the trigger.
It had been more than 20 years since I’d b...
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30 Acres, Three Years, Three Minutes | By Tim Albrecht
-- November 16, 2007--When I left my truck, I watched two falling stars descend the western sky. Perhaps they would bring me luck. I wished for one of the "legend" bucks in the area to walk past my tree stand. Two neighboring farmers...
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Determination changes things | By Stephen Ferguson
-- Although I have been hunting for several years, I’ve never taken a really good buck that I’ve been happy with, so last year my son and I were determined to change that.
We’d been scouting for a week and knew where we we...
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Blind Ambitions | With a small pile of lumber, some leftover vinyl siding and a few days off from work, I decided to build a box blind to use on a 200-acre lease my buddies and I had just acquired.
I built the blind on a 4’x4’ postal pallet, using 2x4s for the frame...
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Hog Schoolin’ | By Kevin Broadus
-- After losing access to prime deer hunting land in my home state of Alabama, I was left with only public land to hunt. My best friend had been telling me how much fun it was to hunt hogs, and had put a touch of hog fever in me. So...
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'Lock, Stock & Barrel: Understanding the Firearms Industry' | From the National Shooting Sports Foundation
-- "For more than 200 years a unique industry in America has made products that have been part of our country's great tradition of freedom, self-reliance and enjoyment of the outdoors." So begins a new vi...
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One Big Mistake | By Adam Hayden
-- I want to thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to do what I do and then still bless me with an animal like this. It’s very humbling. He definitely guided that arrow for me, because it wasn’t the best "form" shot I have ever...
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Second Shot’s a Charm | By Tyler Ramey
-- I had bowhunted with my Dad several times in the 2009 deer season, but I had yet to get close to a buck. I’ve taken several does since I started hunting, and I really had my heart set on getting a buck this year.
On Sunday afterno...
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The Grey Ghost | By Clint Anderson
-- It was the second night at deer camp. We gathered around the fireplace, allowing its warmth to embrace us as we shared stories of the previous day. My uncle had harvested a nice 10-point whitetail, which was still in the back of...
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Smooth as Velvet | By Rick Garrett
-- One of my longtime goals as a hunter has been to arrow a nice buck still in velvet. Here in Kentucky, it’s very unusual for one of our bucks to carry velvet past the 12th of September, giving us a week – maybe ...
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Man’s Best Friend? | By Michael Stewart
-- Bowhunting in my home state of Mississippi means swatting mosquitoes, keeping a keen eye out for snakes and hoping you don’t dehydrate before you make it back from your deer stand. Needless to say, my first bowhunt in Ohio foun...
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Beginners Luck | By Matt Sloan
-- Beads of sweat rolled down my face as I hoisted my bow up the tree. The warm September afternoon made my hike up the hill and into my stand less than pleasant. I had started to wonder if my friends were right when they told me I was...
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Vintage Year | By Bennie L. Wynkoop
-- On Dec. 5, 2005 – two days before my 52nd birthday – the alarm woke me at 4 a.m. After checking the weather outside in Virginia Beach, Va., I got dressed and started packing my hunting gear in the truck. My son’s friend...
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Almost Déjà vu | By David W. Smith
-- When I struck out on opening day of Texas’ 2008 deer season with my new bottle of doe urine, I headed for the spot where I’d taken my first buck. I’d shot the 9-pointer during the last hour of another opening day, and I ...
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Lesson Learned | By Michael Dalton
-- My 7-year-old son came to me one day and asked, “Dad, what is it like to go deer hunting?”
I explained, “Deer hunting is funny. The only thing you know for certain is: nothing is for certain. It’s not just about killing deer,...
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The Power of … um … Love | By Larry Robertson
-- I have a friend who doesn’t hunt, but he loves venison. He’d asked me several times to hunt his 10-acre tract if I’d split the meat with him.
I didn’t put much stock in a place so small, but I finally got around to visiting hi...
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Dinging and Coughing Fool 20-pointer | By Josh Spencer
-- On Friday, Nov. 14, 2008, I woke up at 5 a.m. and went outside to see what the weather was like in Mt. Sterling, Ky. It was cold, there was only a slight breeze, and it was pitch black. Conditions couldn’t have been more p...
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Redemption Wore Eight Points | By Bill LeConey
-- Hunting state woods in southern New Jersey isn’t the “ideal” hunting conditions. The whitetails receive a lot of pressure. There aren’t vast corn and soybean fields for them to eat. And without antler restrictions, many young de...
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Driving in the Thick Stuff | By Caleb Lyon
-- During the late muzzleloader season in central Iowa, Pete Lyon took this 141 5/8-inch 11-point buck on a deer drive. We were pushing a small section of timber towards Rob, a stander, when I jumped the buck and a couple of does. The ...
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A Trophy Forgotten | By Robert Gratson
-- We’ve all heard tales of a hunter shooting a deer and then someone taking it from them. This is one of those stories. It happened to me in Fayette County back in the 1992 archery season.
I was hunting with a very close friend ...
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I Wish He Had a Doe With Him | By John Fritz
-- We have a relatively short firearms season here in Indiana (it's 15 days beginning Nov. 15) so the anticipation really starts to build around the first of November. My home and property are adjacent to a heavily wooded coal mine re...
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My Buck of a Lifetime | By Paul Daman
-- It was a cold, crisp November morning in Aberdeen, Ohio, the peak of the rut during the archery season. I had been on the stand for what seemed like all day, but it was only 10:30a.m. A cold front had moved out heavy rain the night ...
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My Unbelievable Dream Season | By Dr. Michael Tveraas
-- It was early October 2006 when my unbelievable dream season began. My 81-year-old friend Walter Senn had helped me build a blind near my clubhouse camp in the remote high peaks of the Adirondack State Forest...
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If You Can’t Beat ’Em ... | By Carey M. Hibbs
-- My husband has been hunting throughout the 10 years we’ve been married, but he really got serious about it over the last four years.
This caused many fights in our house. We own two businesses and have three children, and his ...
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Homework Pays Off With an A+ Trophy | By Steve Lamb
-- August 2006 was slow in arriving, and the September archery elk season was just handful of days away. Haunted by the mental images of the elk herd I stumbled across while bow hunting for mule deer in the fall of 2005, I could think ...
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At the Center of the Action | By Mark Gregor
-- It was Oct. 30, 2008, and the rut was just starting where I hunt in Wisconsin. It was a warm and windy day, so I was not too excited about heading afield. But if I didn’t go, I was guaranteed not to see or shoot anything!
I was in...
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Making Up for Lost Time | By Marty Plunk
-- My 2004 bow season was cut short following a doctor’s visit. A blood clot had settled on my artificial heart valve, requiring immediate surgery. I missed the following year as well.
On Nov. 24, 2006, after not being able to hunt f...
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The Worst of Times, the Best of Bucks | By Bill Hoffman
-- Oct. 26, 2008, was a very blustery day in the middle of the South Dakota archery season. With wind gusts of up to 50 mph, I was very hesitant to go out that evening. My wife commented on how crazy I was, but I justified it by say...
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Setting Goals and Shooting Bucks | By Sue Griffin
-- My father taught me to hunt and fish when I was really young, which cemented the bond between us. Being a girl was never an obstacle.
He passed away when I was 18, but he left me with a spirit of independence.
Twenty years later,...
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Long Wait for His First Buck | By John Everett
-- My grandfather, Hubert Myers, passed away on May 16, 2006.
He was my best friend, hunting partner and mentor – the coolest 89-year-old kid you ever saw. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t try.
I accompanied him in a deer...
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Mosquitoes Stole My Blood Trail | By Darin Wiley
-- Kansas bowhunters got an early start in 2008, but the price was having to deal with the heat and bugs. I was out there on Sept. 25, sweating and swatting mosquitoes.
When I’d finally had enough about 6:50 p.m., I dug out the repel...
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Easter Eggs for Adults | By Jennifer Bilott
-- My husband, Jim, introduced me to hunting shed antlers before we married. When I tell my friends I’m going shed hunting, they look at me in a puzzled way and say, “You have three garages. What do you need a shed for?” So I mu...
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