It’s becoming increasingly common to travel beyond the border of home states in pursuit of punching tags on North America’s most popular game animal. Although nearly every state hosts huntable whitetail populations, there are a few that stand above the rest. These states have exceptional public land opportunities, economical tags, good license availability, and trophy potential that should titillate every DIY hunter.
Honorable Mentions
Narrowing...

In my prior life, working at a California-based tech company, my colleagues occasionally mistook my weekend shed hunting trips for two days of storage shed shopping. Upon correcting them, the next question was always the same: “What do you do with those antlers?”
My personal answer to this question is not terribly exciting. I set them on shelves, tables, and dressers. I stare at them on cold rainy days and spin them in my hands...

November deer hunting success is not entirely unlike giving birth to a child (don’t tell my wife about this analogy). If you know what you’re doing, get a little lucky, and put in your work nine months ahead of time, you’re in for a life-long memory.
The most important work predating November success is early spring scouting. It’s during this brief window between snowmelt and green-up that you can see the secrets of last year’s rut laid out like...

MeatEater would like to congratulate Dane Acevedo on winning a whitetail hunt on Back 40 with Steven Rinella and Mark Kenyon in Michigan this November.
“When I found out I won, I didn’t believe it! I was at work and couldn’t wait to get home and tell the wife, so she could share in my excitement,” Acevedo said. “Thank you so much for this amazing opportunity!”

Thank you to everyone who entered the contest and watched Back...

Son of a bitch. That’s typically what runs through my mind when I see a buddy walking towards one of those spots while shed hunting.
Maybe you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve shed hunted long enough, you’ll recognize that those spots almost always hold an antler or two. When this kind of place comes into view, you can feel the energy change in a group of shed hunters. Routes mysteriously converge. The pace picks up. Every shed-savvy...

If you’re thinking this is your year to travel across state lines to hunt whitetails, you’d better start planning right now. It takes months to conduct the necessary due diligence so you don’t end up dropping serious coin on a non-resident license only to have the hunt totally flame out.
Here’s the thing: most people start at the wrong point in the process. They’ll hear about Iowa’s giant bucks or how Kansas has tons of untouched walk-in ground...

Finding shed antlers is fun, but does scooping up a matched set at the end of February mean anything come November? It all depends on the details of a specific antler, whether you have any history with its previous owner, and what you plan to do with the information it gives you.
Mark Kenyon is a devout shed junkie who believes that a cast antler is most valuable when on a multi-season quest for a single deer. “The most important benefit to shed...

This time of year, chasing big whitetails couldn’t possibly feel further away. That doesn’t mean your downtime between deer and turkey season should be wasted though. If you want to capitalize on the long offseason, now is the perfect time to download onX, put your virtual boots on the ground, and start e-scouting. After all, success favors the prepared.
Locating Quality Public Land
When starting from scratch while looking for public land, there...

The best and worst shed hunting advice I ever received was, “just keep walking.” There’s a beautiful simplicity (and truth) to that maxim, but also dangerous deceit.
When I first began searching for shed antlers, I took this approach to heart and simply walked. As most beginning shed hunters do, I blindly traversed every square inch of every property I had access to. On occasion, I’d actually find an antler and it was a great rush. But the...

I still have three buck tags burning a hole in my pocket from last season. For most hunters, unfilled licenses end up in the garbage. These folks curse their bad luck. They wallow in sorrow. They try to move on. But this achieves nothing.
In my mind, the best thing to do with uncut tags is to make tag soup. The trick is a matter of flipping your perspective on the past season and learning from it. Then you’ll be able to turn this winter’s tag...