Wired to Hunt

I was nine years into my public land hunting career when I first dipped my toe in the target-buck pool. The North Carolina hitlister showed up on my trail cameras just before Halloween, with pre-rut in full swing, and a gnarly heat wave set to roll in a week later. With nearly a decade of experience...

Rifle hunting, specifically for whitetails, tends to get side-eyed compared to bowhunting. There’s an obvious level of skill, dedication, and a learning curve when it comes to bowhunting. The level of detail and minutiae required to locate, hunt, and fling an arrow often takes a bit of the surprise...

On a recent ride to the grocery store, I pointed out a flock of geese to my daughters. My five-year-old piped up and told me she wanted to shoot one of them with her bow. I didn’t point out the legal or logistical barriers to her endeavor, but I did feel a huge sense of pride welling up. I knew it...

When most people think of New York, deer hunting might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But this fall, roughly 500,000 resident hunters and another 40,000 nonresidents will take to the state's woods in pursuit of whitetails. This year, however, they'll have a few new regulations to follow...

For the first time ever, a captive-raised deer has been released into the wild whitetail population to slow the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The historic move is part of a program instituted by the Oklahoma state legislature in 2024. The Chronic Wasting Disease Genetic Improvement...

Trail cameras have become a staple for whitetail hunters, especially over the past decade. Where legal, they can be handy tools for locating and hunting deer or other game animals. They’re especially effective if you’re interested in targeting a specific size or age structure of deer (i.e. a target...

You might be familiar with some of the biggest bucks ever killed, named after hunters that bagged them. The Hanson Buck, the largest typical whitetail that still sits atop the record books. Or the Butcher Buck, the second biggest non-typical ever taken, with a rack that looks more like a geological...

Wild hogs and deer don’t exactly mix. At least, that’s what any number of deer hunters or landowners in pig country will tell you. If you have experience hunting around wild hogs, then you probably have surmised as much. While anecdotal evidence might seem to support certain theories in the hunting...