Category: Photo Gallery & Stories

Not many hunters are fortunate enough to get a photo of a big, free-ranging white-tailed buck taken in close proximity to their deer lease just days before the hunting season. But if you were that fortunate, can you imagine the excitement leading up to opening day? Now, imagine if that big buck photo was published in the local paper. Buzzkill. That would ensure that LOTS of hunters would be taking to the field for a once-in-a-lifetime kind of buck. That kind of competition did not deter 15-year old deer hunter Makayla Hay.

She had her eye on the deer leading up to the gun season, like every other deer hunter in Madison County, Texas. In October, a photo in the local newspaper (above) featured the nontypical buck swimming across the Trinity River. Makayla and her father, Jim, knew the photograph was taken near their 1,600 acre deer lease, and they joked about the possibility of seeing the buck. Little did they know that opening day of the 2013 gun season would be one for the books, literally! Continue reading “Deer Hunting: Big Nontypical Buck, State Record Tagged in Madison County”

Interest in white-tailed deer hunting and management has increased significantly over the past 25 years. Most hunters realize that age, genetics and nutrition are they management trifecta when it comes to growing big, healthy whitetail deer. Genetics get a lot of attention in today’s world because of the prevalence of commercial deer breeding operations. As such, genes are most often mentioned when talking about the antler characteristics of bucks, but genes also determine a lot of other things too, such as a deer’s coat color.

Every hunter gets a little dreamy-eyed thinking about harvesting his or her ideal monster buck, but I suspect most hunters have also thought about harvesting an albino deer, and specifically, an albino buck. Albino deer are much more rare than big whitetail bucks, so it would be an awesome experience for most deer hunters to even see one in the field, let alone have the opportunity to shoot one. Most probably do not even consider it a possibility, but shooting an albino buck is exactly what one fortunate hunter, Donald Goodrich, did while deer hunting in Kentucky this past season. Continue reading “Kentucky Hunter Bags Albino Buck”

Many hunters and landowners believe that predators are a major threat to deer management on their properties. Over most of the white-tailed deer’s range the primary predator of concern is the coyote. It’s true, coyotes do kill and eat deer. The real question is, “How many deer do coyotes kill each year?” That is a hard one to nail down because it depends on many local variables, but it is a question that many hunters and deer managers would like to have answered.

There are other animals that will also kill deer, such as bobcats, bears, feral hogs and mountain lions, but because of a hosts of variables, these species are typically believed to have little impact on local deer populations. But coyotes, well, that is one animal where most deer hunters will say predator control for the benefit for a whitetail deer herd should take place. It’s a rather simplistic view, but in a few cases it could be exactly what the doctor ordered.

Continue reading “On Predator Control: Coyotes and Whitetail”