Hunter Weber of Buckley, Illinois, makes the rounds scouting for deer almost every day in November. Despite spending tons of time observing whitetails during the rut, he witnessed something last weekend that he’s never seen before. In an encounter that lasts just over a minute, a young whitetail buck squares up to a crossbred bull and charges. They exchange a couple blows and do a lot of posturing before both going their separate ways. It’s...
Whenever pictures of dead megabucks circulate social media, commenters are always quick to ask: “Was it a high fence deer?” It happened when Guner Womack killed one of the most perfectly symmetrical whitetails in Oklahoma’s history, and again when Jason Kline found the deadhead of one of the biggest non-typicals in Ohio’s history. Both bucks were 100% free-range, but the answer is a bit more complicated for this next whitetail. On September 1...
Most hunters probably learned how to make deer vocalizations from fellow hunters—and that’s a damn shame. To truly mimic a rutting whitetail, you want to listen to the real thing. “What I’m hearing is a series of vocalizations that are typically produced by bucks during the rut—that being a snort wheeze and tending grunt,” Mark Kenyon said. “I’ve heard both in the field and it’s always a treat. The snort wheeze is an aggressive sound made by...