Gear
3 Things That Can Suck About Mobile Hunting for Whitetails
Two years ago, I was ready to throw hands at the next person to tell me to go mobile. I had only recently ditched ladder stands for climbing stands, which I considered mobile enough. The last thing I wanted to do was learn a new hunting system. I put up a brave fight against peer pressure, but...
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Gear
How Trail Cameras Made Me A More Patient Buck Hunter
I can’t run trail cameras in a lot of the places I hunt. I love that, but I also love running a whole bunch of cameras to try to decipher deer movement from year to year on specific properties. This latter tactic was a big part of my fall this year, and I noticed something that has led me to more...
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Gear
How to Take Better Grip & Grin Photos with Your Phone
I’m old enough to remember shooting photos with film. In fact, one of the duties I had for my first editing gig at a bowhunting magazine was to scour slides for perfect cover and lead images. Every photo you took back then had to have some intention behind it, because you knew you had limited film...
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Archery
Gear
Summer Archery Drills Every Bowhunter Should Do
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...
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Gear
Archery Tuning Basics Every Bowhunter Should Know
As bowhunters, we strive to be ethical, lethal, and humane. To accomplish this, our bows need to be tuned to ensure accurate and repeatable arrow flight. Unfortunately, this tends to be an intimidating hurdle for novice bowhunters. When you begin your tuning journey, you may become frustrated, view...
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Gear
Everything I Use on DIY, Out-of-State Deer Hunts
I’ve traveled across the country to hunt whitetails everywhere from Ohio to Montana, Idaho to Indiana, and most points in between. Every time I embark on one of these trips, I receive dozens of messages asking about what clothing, gear, or camping equipment I’m taking with me. About five years ago...
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Gear
3 Common Reasons Broadheads Fail
I quit drinking eight years ago. Since then, I’ve discovered a special kind of hell that occurs when someone is hammered and tries to have a deep conversation with me. This only gets worse when that someone is a stranger and the topic is bowhunting. This past turkey season, while eating a burger in...
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Gear
How to Select the Best Hunting Arrows for Deer
Deer hunters love to debate. We argue over broadhead styles. We fight over who makes the best bow. We will nearly come to blows over baiting versus food plots versus hunting natural movement. What we don’t get overly passionate about is choosing the best hunting arrows. I talk to a pile of whitetail...
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Gear
How to Make Trail Camera Batteries Last Longer
Here’s a controversial statement: Trail cameras can be absolutely worthless. Here’s a less controversial statement: Trail cameras are worthless when their batteries are dead. This might seem obvious, but every year hunters stick hundreds of dollars-worth of trail cams in the woods and then return...
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Scout
Are Trail Cameras Making You a Worse Hunter?
Scouting deer used to involve glassing, looking for sign, and getting in where the deer live to suss out their patterns. Now, for a lot of us, it just involves hanging a trail camera. This might be a necessity and the best way to figure out a buck, or it can be a crutch and steer us into poor...
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Gear
The Single Best Way to Get Bucks on Trail Cam (Without Bait)
Hang a trail camera in front of a pile of corn or a mineral block and you’re almost guaranteed to get an SD card full of deer photos. It used to be that simple. But with increasing concerns over disease in recent years, more and more states are outlawing the use of bait at trail camera sites. For...
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Gear
Back 40 Extras: How to Set Up a Trail Camera
Trail cameras are some of the greatest modern tools that hunters have at their disposal. If you hunt in an area that allows them, then you need to take advantage of it. Here’s what you need to know about setting up a camera to get pictures of whitetails.
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Gear
Ask Wired To Hunt: Where Should I Place Trail Cams?
It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that trail cameras have led to a lot of whitetail bucks ending up in freezers. But the inverse is true too: Cameras have saved a lot of deer lives as well. Mostly this is because well-intentioned hunters place their cameras in the wrong locations and check...
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Gear
Ask Wired To Hunt: Are Wireless Trail Cameras Fair Chase?
At the risk of igniting “another classic ethics debate fueled by none other than MeatEater,” as one social media commenter recently lamented, I’d like to talk about the fair chase ramifications of wireless trail cameras. What is ethical? What is moral? What is fair chase? This is a set of questions...
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Gear
Video: How to Carry a Deer On Your Back
We all know that once a deer hits the ground the real work begins. Typically, our options for a getting our venison back to the truck are pretty simple—drag it out or quarter it up and haul it out piece by piece. However, there is a third option. You can carry the deer on your back. I learned this...
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Gear
The Best Straight-Wall Cartridge for Whitetail Hunting
Straight-wall cartridges are surging in the whitetail world. The best evidence of this is recent legislation. Several big deer states—including Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana—have passed laws in the last five years allowing straight-wall cartridges in zones previously designated as shotgun- or...
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Gear
Video: Which Rattling Call is Loudest?
Mimicking the sound of bucks fighting can be an effective way to draw a buck in during any phase of the rut. In this video, I compare the volume of five different rattle calls to see which is loudest. Admittedly, volume isn’t the only thing that matters when it comes to rattling—realism is equally...
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Gear
Scent Control for Dummies
If there’s any one thing that connects the most consistently successful whitetail hunters I know, it’s a strong focus on scent control. A whitetail’s nose is its best defense mechanism. For that reason, the smart hunter will do everything possible to control the scent he brings into the woods. Can...
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Gear
How to Pick a Good Deer Taxidermist
Taxidermists are like referees. When they do their job well, you hardly notice them. But when the job is done poorly, it commands attention in a bad way. In many cases, exceptional taxidermy contains details that the average person won’t pick up on. I reached out to some taxidermists to ask what...
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