On Wednesday, May 7, North Dakota finalized its 2025 season dates and license quotas. The North Dakota Game and Fish (NDGF) agency notably cut licenses down to 42,300. This is 7,800 tags or 16% fewer than 2024.
The tag reductions apply to most of the state’s deer tags, including both either-species tags and specifically designated whitetail tags. Muzzleloader-only licenses were also slashed. The only tag quotas that weren’t significantly impacted...
Summer is the perfect time for bowhunters to sharpen their skills and ensure they’re ready when hunting season arrives. While shooting a few arrows at a backyard target is better than nothing, structured drills can dramatically improve accuracy, consistency, and confidence.
This past summer, after diving into the saddle-hunting craze, I found myself perched fifteen feet up in one of our backyard trees. The best way to get comfortable with a new...
Every shed hunter knows the feeling: the exhilaration of picking up an antler and the instant curiosity about where the other side might be located. It could be resting a few feet away; it could be hidden in a brushy draw a half mile away, or it could be in the next county. There’s no way of knowing for certain—but new research may offer some clues.
Researchers at the University of Nebraska Kearney recently finished a 13-year study that aimed to...
It doesn’t matter how much post-season scouting I do, I always regret not adding more deer hunting spots to my list. While I think there’s merit in compiling historical data and spending time on a few properties, you can never have too many hunting spots for various reasons. Habitat changes from year to year, properties change hands, and hunting pressure heats up. Even drastic weather conditions might alter the way deer use (or don’t use) the...
I started my trapping career on the game lands of central North Carolina. By that time, I had already spent a decade hunting public-land deer and thought I had a pretty good grasp on the process. I had no idea that my winter trapping adventures would teach me not only all about furbearers but even more about the whitetails they share the land with.
I spent two years learning to trap in my favorite whitetail honey holes but generally viewed...
It’s a near-constant drumbeat in many hunting circles. The public land is just too crowded. It’s a blanket statement tossed around, at least partially, to blame folks like me for promoting public land whitetail hunting too much. It’s also a good statement to use if you want to explain away how you didn’t fill a tag last year.
It’s also, in some areas, true.
At least at certain points of the season, it’s true. But overcrowding is subjective. The...
Texas game wardens announced yesterday that 22 suspects have been charged with 1,200 violations related to illegal whitetail smuggling and black-market wildlife trade.
The smuggling operation encompassed three deer breeding facilities, ten release sites, one deer management pen, and three illegal, unregistered facilities. The smugglers and illegal breeders are accused of poaching wild deer to replace their own, falsifying mandatory CWD tests, and...
Last winter, at least in the Upper Midwest where I live, was dreamy. If you’re not passionate about sledding or building snowmen, it was dreamy anyway. We didn’t get any real snow to speak of, and for me, that meant I had a lot of time to work on my small deer properties.
Every other week, I drove across the river into Wisconsin to work on my ground. I got a lot done, but that opportunity was an outlier and not the rule. This year, real winter...
It doesn’t take long to browse YouTube before you find that there’s an unlimited amount of hunting content. For better or worse, you don’t have to be a pro to upload your hunting adventures. You can watch everything from seasoned hunters, like the Element crew, chase big bucks across the country to weekend warriors shooting their first GoPro hunts.
Regardless of content quality, that endless stream of hunting media has conditioned hunters to have...
Like the UFO poster hanging in agent Fox Mulder’s office states, I want to believe…that maybe the moon and deer movement are connected. Personally, I’ve never considered moon phase when hunting, but I know plenty of hunters who live and die by the moon phase and position.
The theory that moon phase and position somehow affect buck movement has permeated our modern hunting culture for decades. In fact, hunters of all calibers (old school, newbies...
For most hunters, February marks a definitive end to deer season and likely a welcomed break. Unless you plan to post-season scout, take down trail cams, or join the increasingly popular shed hunting community. February, for me at least, serves as a reminder that the work of deer hunting extends beyond the official seasons. For better or worse, my wife has also come to this realization.
As a certified weekend warrior, I already struggle to find...
Post-season reflection isn’t just about missed opportunities, but it’s a great time to evaluate your hunting setup, too. Improving your hunting skills requires learning from your mistakes and making changes next season so you don’t repeat them. This includes your hunting gear. Just like you might drop or add certain hunting techniques and strategies, you’ll also know which gear stays and which gear needs to go to eBay or the dump.
As someone who...
Hunting hill country or mountainous areas presents its own set of challenges. However, the terrain at least provides a starting point that flatlands don’t give up so easily. Saddles, benches, or drainages typically stand out on a map. Subtle terrain features and soft edges don’t.
The lack of terrain and monotonous habitat, especially in the big woods, can be intimidating when you’re e-scouting. Unless you’re working with hard edges, you’ll have...
Trail cameras can be incredibly handy tools for deer hunters. You can learn more about what deer frequent a specific area, how they use the landscape, and whether or not a booner or a forkie has worked that one scrape. But like all technological advancements in the deer woods, they can serve more as a stumbling block than a resource for many hunters.
I like to think of trail camera data as a movie preview. You can infer a lot from a preview, but...
Hunt long enough, and you’ll miss. It’s just part of hunting. Some misses can be comical. All of them make great stories. Others haunt you for the rest of your days. In fact, I’m positive that whoever came up with the cliché saying that “time heals all wounds” never hunted.
I have a few misses that still wake me up in a cold sweat every now and then, including what would have been my biggest buck to date. If there’s any consolation in missing, it...
Hunters like easy, or at least easier. That’s not a knock, it’s just our evolution put into practice. This is evident in whitetail hunting in a variety of ways, not the least of which is the push for crossbow inclusion in various states.
While some folks make the argument that crossbows are really no different from vertical bows, anyone who has shot both knows how that’s just not true. Anyone who has been busted drawing a bow in close proximity...
At this point in the year, most folks have called it quits, and many states’ deer seasons have closed. While many hunters turn their attention to fly tying, ice fishing, or even shed hunting, a lot of hunters, especially down South, are still trying to punch tags.
In fact, most of the Gulf Coast states have prime rutting action this time of year. While some of these states might not seem like prime whitetail destinations, they do offer reasonable...
For bowhunters, saddle hunting rules the current mobile hunting trend. Ultralight lock-on stands come in a close second, but we’re in the heyday of saddles. While this might be the go-to method for archers, it hasn’t gained as much traction with the rifle-hunting crowd. I constantly meet or talk with hunters who are intrigued by saddle hunting, and they always ask the same question: Is it comfortable? The short answer is absolutely. More...
No matter where you hunt, navigating gun hunting pressure presents challenges. In the Midwest, especially straight-wall cartridge states, you might only have to worry about the orange armies for a few weeks every season. In Southern states, gun season might span months.
In my home state of Mississippi, gun season basically runs from the week before Thanksgiving to the end of January. On public lands, six of those weeks might be dedicated gun...
For many reasons, the rut can be the best and most exciting time to kill a buck. Even sage bucks let down their guards this time of year, and there’s always a chance that one could run through your setup. As hopeful as rut hunting might seem, those same chance encounters can make it unpredictable and frustrating. Even if you blanked during the rut, you should still have high hopes for the late season.
By this time of the season the temps, leaves...
