Sport hunting whitetail deer is big business these days. There are many states that have lower human population and lots of open space.

My research indicates that the place where managing wild whitetails for hunting becomes a science is in-fact Texas. I was aware of that, some time ago but never did the homework till I booked this Texas hunt in late October.

Wildlife Biologists and cattle ranchers work together to maximize and coordinate wild game among its beef ranches to include turkey, javelina, whitetail deer, mule deer, and antelope. But the foremost big game in Texas is whitetail deer with an estimated 4 million whitetails roaming wild in the land.

Every business and College/University that can get a monetary slice of that pie is evident. Texans have over 24 million acres to grow healthy deer. Managing deer herds and land among domestic animals requires a science approach to balance plant nutrition and wild carry capacity of the land with growing healthy deer.  Hunt management is needed to cull inferior antlered deer to produce large healthy antlered bucks is preferred. The buck to doe ratio is equally important and is ideal at around 1 or 2 does per buck.

Intensely managed ranches such as the one I will be hunting, supplementally feed deer a high protein and phosphorus rich diet. It is a costly proposition but well worth the effort when there are hunters looking for a mature whitetail with a terrific set of antlers and meat for the freezer that is really tasty.

Of course these deer are wild and hunting them perhaps on a 40 square mile tract of land is not easy when you are after a mature animal that sports a nice rack.

Many truly mature bucks are in fact, nocturnal, and only feed at night. You still have your work cut out for you given your investment to hunt them, often over $4000 to $6000 for the chance to hunt them.

Some mature bucks live and die and have never been seen in daylight only to find the massive antlers after death.

To see a buck with heavy main beams and a wide spread with G2 and G3’s over a foot long is a spectacle to behold for many whitetail hunters including me. The fact that there are plenty of deer growing nice racks gives comfort that there are plenty more where that deer came from…and I can attempt to take one with a bow or rifle.

Who knows, I may come back with stories of the one that got away!

©2018

We all dream of getting that big whitetail buck of our dreams but can you imagine having so many bucks in the field in front of you that you can’t figure which one to shoot? Yea, man I say to myself, “throw me in that brier patch! Right!”

That one on the left is a big 8 point, the other is a 9 point but looks young and perhaps not quite as majestic looking, and the third, you can see the nice rack over his tail as he is faced the other way but not sure. You mumble to your guide that you need help choosing which one to take and then the guide says yes you can take the one on the left, he’s a dandy, but there is a “much” larger one that may come out if you want to wait. The hunter looks at the guide and whispers, “You have got to be kidding me.”

The hunter waits.

The last photons of light fade to purple, all you can see are deer silhouette’s. Shooting light has passed, and with it a chance at that dandy whitetail the guide talked about. You both sneak out of the blind as quiet as possible and boogie out of there with your headlamps turned on. The hunter, upset with the missed opportunity and with his decision.

This scenario often plays out… Back at the cabin it becomes a well earned campfire story of I should’a or could’a. The embers glow red and seem to pulsate when the wind blows on the fire, you look deep into the embers as humans did for a millenia. You recant the story as other hunters listen. “No way”, one hunter says, “you had three bucks in front of you like that!” “Yes,he said sheepishly; “And I let them go hoping for a bigger one!” The guide chimes in, “yes the one that we were waiting for is “much” bigger!”

Another hunter says, ” I would’a waited too… after all, that was only your first night out and more days to hunt.” Tomorrow will renew your spirit…And a smile returns…

And so the story goes, on a Texas Trophy Hunt!

Good Hunting!

© 2018

The impetus that necessitates your ability to read wind speed in Miles Per Hour (MPH) is of course long range shooting/hunting, particularly a rifle and hitting your intended target. The further the distance your bullet has to travel to a target or a game animal, the more time the wind has to push it in a given direction. As a hunter I have had a deer at 300 yards a few years back. It was cold, drizzling rain but the wind was nearly still. I trained some time ago to watch grass, bushes and trees and dust and sand to get a sense of wind speed. I pulled the shot off in part because there was little wind and I created a bullet drop and wind chart and taped it to my rifle. But I should have even been better prepared with a wind meter in hand to train with.  Of course the most recent person to drive home the importance on this ability is Brian Litz of  Applied Ballistics LLC.

Practice by guessing at wind speed then taking a hand held wind meter out to check your guess is a good simple way to determine wind speed and train yourself to see grass,bushes, tree limbs and trees move at say 0 to 5, 5 to10 or even 10 to 20 mph. On a hunt you may have to decide to “shoot or not to shoot” based on distance and wind.

Equally Important is what angle the wind is coming from in relation to your bullet. Milletsights.com has  a web article that does justice to your knowledge of wind and direction et al.

 http://www.millettsights.com/resources/shooting-tips/shooting-in-the-wind/

There are lots of wind meters on the market so just type hand held wind meters for sale and you can see a full range of them for 20 dollars to over $100 depending on what you need. So check around for cost and quality.

Some of best in class are the Kestrel Meters. https://kestrelmeters.com/

Since I may be faced again this fall with a longer shot at a deer on a windy day.  Make that shot count by training in advance of the hunt.

Good Hunting!

I remember a nearby patch of woods never looked so good with pre-season deer sign.  So did lots of other bowhunters. In fact it seemed that they were competing for the same darn tree. Of course deer are stupid y’know. They don’t look up and never mind the lingering smell of humans shuffling through the autumn leaves. Of course they look up! We taught them that! Of course you are there opening morning to shoot a big’un and may be you saw a deer or two. In fact maybe a deer or two were harvested but no big bucks. I admit to being among those folks before. After the deer find out that hunting season has begun they shift to new territory in daylight and come back only at night. Yep, you made them nocturnal…

It is better to hunt where the deer aren’t readily apparent so to speak so as not to tip off the other bowhunters competing for the same space. Look for out of the way funnels and thickets and the nasty stuff and you will see more uspooked deer. Have you ever seen a deer walk as if on glass? I have. The deer knows you are there and is trying to locate you and seems nervous and jumpy. These are deer that will jump the string so to speak as the arrow sails over its back.

So be aware too many bowhunters in a really small area will surely educate the deer. And you will never find a big buck there…except at midnight. Yes the lessons we learn…

Good Hunting!

A bowhunting acquaintance once said of my fondness of archery, you’ve been around archery since dirt.

Ever since Robin Hood came out as a TV show in the late 1950 and early 1960’s I had found my hero, to fight for truth and justice and to live off the game and fish in the field and streams of Sherwood Forest. Millions of young boys like me took to the field and forest with makeshift longbows made of a maple or hickory sapling. There were  no video games back then. My mother who was a home maker said to my brother and I during the summer, lunch is at 12 and dinner is at 5 pm. Go play till then, and get out of the house.

Even back then I absorbed the honorable nature of Robin Hood played by Richard Greene to fight for rights of the people and the rule of law by a just leader and not the tyrant that Prince John portrayed on TV in the early 1960’s. 

I built my first long bow at the age of 6 from a maple sapling and string from the kitchen drawer. I used whatever I could get to shoot as an arrow, often it was a shaft of goldenrod. Later at 10 years old I bugged my mother to use her S&H Green Stamps to purchase my first recurve bow. I was on  my way to becoming a hunter back then. My father worked building nuclear submarines but in his spare time when he was not gardening, he had a long bow he would sometimes shoot in the back yard.

Enter the Rifle – My dad taught my brother and I to shoot a single shot 22 rifle and worked us up to a 30-30 and 38-55 Winchester for deer hunting. I killed my first deer, a doe, with the 38-55 Winchester and loved that lever action.

My love of hunting was equal to my love of shooting and hunting with both gun and bow, it is a life long passion I cherish. 

Back to the Bow – I shot instinctive for years thanks to Fred Bear, who I personally met at Kittery Trading Post in the 1960’s. I was good at it on targets. But then I tried the first compound bows and they gave me a huge edge in hunting, though I still had a nostalgic love of recurves and long bows.

Back in the 1970’s, my first new compound bow was a Herter’s Power Magnum.  Today it is a museum piece, one of the first production compound bows.  It had a set of timing cams that you could adjust with an Allen wrench. Timing cam’s? What the heck is that! The second bow was a Martin Cougar magnum 50% let off. I ran the 3D archery program at a local club for many years with great satisfaction.  I have endeavored to study bow-building long bows and recurves for a time and made a  dozen Self Bows of hickory and maple but it did not hold my interest as a life long endeavor as I still loved to hunt first and foremost.

The third compound bow was a High Country Sniper I won in a raffle w/65% let off which I took to Africa with great success. I competed with it at 3D archery and at indoor league where I won my share of trophies. I was pleased to often be top shot in my archery league.

My fourth bow is a Hoyt X-Tec (a 10 year old bow) which I shot at 70 lbs for quite some time. Of late I have a pinched neck nerve but am trying to get my bow arm back in shape for some whitetail action using much less poundage.

Good Hunting!

© 2018

Chronic Wasting Disease has been found in several states and 2 provinces. It slowly kills deer, moose, and elk. When contracted, it is fatal in all cases says Center of Disease Control. https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cwd/cwd-animals.html

CWD is caused by a protein called a “prion” the deer “cervid” manufactures. When manufactured incorrectly by the deer, the protein, then will eventually kill it. The deer will become sick and die. Humans thus far have not been affected for consuming CWD game meat but if meat tests positive from a “CWD Management Zone”, meat should be buried in a land fill.

It is passed on to other deer “cervids” by making contact with saliva,urine, and feces. The higher the density of deer the faster it can travel. The most susceptible are whitetails due to the large numbers in some areas, especially deer farms and ranches who raise deer to hunt, for harvest for food,  or to create better genetics.

In the case of captive deer farms, they have been at the center of the CWD issue because it is found there often first and then it is passed to surrounding wild populations.

The map below makes my point. It was updated in July of 2018.

Where there are yellow dots, these were captive deer facilities where, when CWD was discovered, all the deer were euthanized to prevent the spread.

A red dot means it was recently found but the deer have not been euthanized at this time.

Grey and dark grey areas are wild populations surrounding the captive deer that have contracted the disease and the areas are designated as CWD Management Zones

Some of these captive deer farms raised deer to be relocated to areas that perhaps had poor deer genetics thus unknowingly possibly spreading the disease to wild populations.

The hard part is that there is no test at this time for live deer according to officials. The deer’s head, brain and tissue are tested in a lab for the errant “prion”. Once found, the land area of concern is identified and managed as a CWD Management Area at both the National and State level.

Early mapping techniques highlighted and indicted the whole state thus making much of the center of the USA all black and obscuring and masking the real focal points of the disease.

In New York you can see the yellow former captive deer facility and the surrounding wild population which was (i believe) secondarily infected now termed CWD Management Zones. The same can be seen in Texas at a captive deer facility and the secondary wild deer infection CWD Management Zone.  In Saskatchewan and Alberta there were dozens of captive deer, breeding, farming and ranching facilities that had to be euthanized. That is a lot of dead deer and the surrounding secondary infection which resulted.

https://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/chronic_wasting_disease/

Concentrating high density populations of wildlife is risky as it allows disease to move rapidly though them. Wildlife that feed in a concentrated area like a feeder are more susceptible to spread of disease that those wild animals who forage separately. In the case of CWD at farms, deer are fed supplements at feeders allowing the CWD to spread via saliva and move deep into large numbers of deer. Euthanizing was the only solution.

In grey areas were CWD Management Zones exist, all deer harvested are recommended to be tested for CWD prior to consuming the meat.

Accordingly, states must test road killed deer or deer the state has euthanized to test to ensure that the disease has not spread.

In Summary, my investigations have revealed excellent teamwork at the state and national level to define and isolate CWD. I am encouraged that CWD Management areas are on the road to recovery and that management lessons have been learned.

New Laws and rules should be forthcoming.

What this tells me as a hunter is that wildlife agencies are on top of this and that we should look forward to the deer hunt and eat some of the finest venison on the planet!

Good Hunting!

The New Hampshire Fish and Game department has over the years created a very helpful website. Below is a very well written summary of how New Hampshire manages its whitetail deer population by NH Deer Biologist Dan Bergeron. The chart is also found in this article. As you can see since 1982 to 2016, the total deer harvest has tripled state wide from around three thousand to nearly ten thousand.

https://wildlife.state.nh.us/hunting/deer-mgt.html

In addition to this deer harvest information there is a mountain of data found in the 2017 Wildlife Harvest Summary.

https://wildlife.state.nh.us/hunting/documents/2017-harvest-summary.pdf 

From a hunter perspective here in Southern NH, Posted Land is a fact of life. Some hunters can gain written landowner permission to hunt in these posted areas. Do your research! It may pay off!

Other hunters seek out New Hampshire’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMA) where hunting on state owned land is encouraged. See maps below

https://wildlife.state.nh.us/maps/wma.html

Way up north near Errol and further to Pittsburg, NH there are miles of open land provided by lumber companies and miles of dirt roads to get you far off the beaten path if you desire. Deer densities are lower but there are fields, deep coniferous woods and waters are simply wild. A marvelous opportunity to get away from it all.

What is so terrific about the NH Fish and Game website is that it is comprehensive provides a rich resource for information on New Hampshire Wildlife, Licensing,  the Department itself etc. A great source of educational information.

For those of you who spend time with the Harvest Survey, there is enough information by town to see where you may want to set foot this fall to deer hunt. New is good!

NH Antler and Trophy Club host a yearly gathering of Trophy Deer. See this facebook page for big bucks of New Hampshire.

Good Researching and Good Hunting!