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Entries for 'Gray Loon'
Georgian Gets Second Chance, a Year Later
By Mike Handley
Colby Johnson had only a couple of hours to spare when he drove 30 miles to sit in his ground blind on the morning of Nov. 4, 2020, but that’s all he needed to salve his wounded pride. The experienced deer hunter from Hartsfield, Georgia, flat missed a giant whitetail the previous season. He was shocked when there was neither deer nor sign on... READ MORE
Keep Tabs on Does
By Mike Handley
Derek DeVader learned a valuable lesson this fall. If you’re keeping tabs on a mature Kansas whitetail that keeps disappearing in November, you can bet it’s ladies night somewhere else.
If you want the buck, you’d better find the does.
The 36-year-old farmer and father of three found them by accident in 2020, and he was rewarded... READ MORE
Big Buck Trumps Couples Counseling
By Mike Handley
For a month and a half in 2020, Dillon Feland was not a contender for husband of the year. His life consisted of eating, sleeping, crunching numbers at his father’s company, and social-distancing in a pop-up blind on a lease 30 miles outside of Oklahoma City. While everyone else was obsessing over coronavirus and who would be the country's co... READ MORE
New Runner-up Crossbow Record
By Mike Handley
By almost anyone’s yardstick, the deer Brennan Morris shot this season was a prime candidate to be culled in 2019. Few practitioners of QDM allow a mature buck with four spindly points on one side and two on the other to spread its genes. Yet those who hunt the 3,000 acres in Richland Parish, Louisiana, were content to ignore it, a decision e... READ MORE
Far from Secret
By Mike Handley
Imagine waking up to see your best-kept secret — not just word of it, but actual photos — plastered all over Facebook. That actually happened to Matthew Brunswick, a 35-year-old K9 officer for the Hancock County, Ohio, Sheriff’s Department. Afterward, he could only feign ignorance. The great revelation occurred in late October 202... READ MORE
Ohio’s New Recurve Record
By Mike Handley
Both good and bad news came out of Logan Glassburn’s Oct. 18, 2020, deer hunt. After sharing the good news with his wife, Morgan, which took considerably longer because he could barely speak, Logan called the landowner’s daughter to tell her he’d shot the giant buck she’d been hunting. “Please don’t be mad at me,... READ MORE
No. 19
By Mike Handley
Dillon and Brooke Evans’ home is almost a shrine to whitetails. Inside are 18 deer mounts, and No. 19 will soon join them. The Oklahoma taxidermist tried his best to shoot the deer in 2019, but it gave him the slip. When he retrieved trail camera photographs of it in the summer of 2020, the rack appeared to be at least 30 inches bigger. Altho... READ MORE
Pre-September Giant
By Mike Handley
Nina Rogers jumpstarted her 2020 bow season 47 days before the archery opener in her home state of Alabama. The 24-year-old Prattville resident traveled to Tennessee in late August to take advantage of Ol’ Rocky Top’s early three-day deer hunt, which the locals call “the velvet season.” Nina, a 2nd lieutenant with the Air Fo... READ MORE
Rain Man
By Mike Handley
Pete Alfano isn’t the type to just ring the dinner bell and wait for a shootable buck to appear. Nor does he simply manage the resident whitetails by field-judging deer before squeezing the trigger. If he thinks it’ll help, he’ll climb into the seat of a mini-backhoe and mold the land. For example: No water, or not enough? No prob... READ MORE
How to Christen a Crossbow
By Mike Handley
John Higdon is a quick study. An hour and a half after sighting-in a new crossbow last fall, he was pointing it at a living target and slipping his finger into the trigger guard. Moments later, he revoked the pass he’d given the buck a year earlier. During Kentucky’s late muzzleloader season in 2018, John pegged the deer as a still-gang... READ MORE
The ‘Gawd-awfullest Buck’
By Mike Handley
Kentucky’s 2020 archery season has yielded several great whitetails in and out of velvet, but few can match Joey Craver’s kickstand buck. Joey can thank a coon hunting buddy for allowing him to hunt 300 acres in Bath County, 40% of which are timbered. He gained permission in 2018. The first summer, he retrieved a trail camera photograph... READ MORE
Redefining Dangerous Game
By Mike Handley
If asked how long it takes him to reload his crossbow, Christian Cummins is apt to answer in yards rather than minutes. Fifty yards, to be precise. The Kentucky deer hunter’s only point of reference is the deer he shot last month in Fayette County. He took his second poke at the charging 13-pointer a blink or two after bolt No. 2 hit the weap... READ MORE
Ohio Hunter Gains Fifth Record-book Listing
By Mike Handley
Hunter Quinn first became acquainted with the buck he arrowed in 2019 three years earlier, when it wore seven fewer points. He would’ve taken it then, in 2017, 0r in 2018, given the chance. When Hunter’s trail cameras weren’t yielding any photos of the whitetail beyond the spring of ’19, he worried it was dead or gone. He ne... READ MORE
Fourteen-point Cold Remedy
By Mike Handley
Ohio shotgunner Owen Daniels is the latest member of what has to be a tiny group of deer hunters who have followed blood trails BEFORE launching an arrow or firing a bullet. The buck he shot in 2019, however, left no trail at all. “The first week of gun season, I went almost to the back of the 260-acre farm we hunt,” Owen told Ed Waite,... READ MORE
Westward Ho!
By Mike Handley
It’s a good thing Ricky Fretwell’s boat trailer has a solid axle, leaf springs and well greased wheel bearings. Almost a year ago, the Florida resident and a couple of friends trailered a boat for 40 hours (roundtrip) in order to hunt deer on public ground in Kansas. Ricky and his lifelong pal, Kenny, studied maps of the tract before th... READ MORE