The largest area of growth within the bowhunting community is the female contingent. Lady archers are coming on strong. That’s no surprise to me. As a fan of competitive archery, I’ve seen some impressive scores laid down by women over the years. If you happen to know a woman who has shown interest [...]
This past deer season was extremely successful for me for a variety of reasons. One, I managed to shoot a big doe with my recurve and have my baby daughter along. Two, I hadn’t got a deer the previous year, thus our freezer was feeling pretty empty when it came to red meat. [...]
I have no idea how many nights I’ve spent camped out in the field, but it’s a lot. Most of them were pleasant and highly enjoyable, either because I was engaged in exciting hunting or fishing nearby or simply because my surroundings were free of the noise and clutter of daily life closer [...]
"Why do we keep driving to the top of the mountain?” my husband and hunting buddy Bob asked. “I don’t know,” I answered. “Look at all these muddy deer trails coming off the bank right along the hard road.” Our drives every day from our campground in north-central Pennsylvania’s Little Pine Creek valley, [...]
During winter months the deep snows at higher elevations trigger the seasonal migration of mule deer. It is during these times that mule deer move in large herds down along ancestral travel corridors to their wintering grounds at lower elevations. It is essential for deer to travel in order to access seasonal habitats. [...]
As deer season faded away and winter settled in, I started to get excited about wild pigs. I live in an area with a large population of feral pigs, but there is little public land that offers a good chance of hunting success. So, it is best to know someone with a hog [...]
I’ve spent a lot of time bowhunting mountain goats but my most memorable hunt was in 2018 when I flew into a remote lake using a friend’s floatplane service. I’ve done many solo fly-in hunts and I find that the stresses of the world melt away when the floats [...]
“Dennis,” my guide whispered in my ear, “I think you’re going to have to go in on him on your own. He doesn’t seem to want to budge, and none of my grunting, cow-calling, or brush-raking has succeeded in getting any response from him at all.” I could hear the frustration in Eric’s [...]
The blacktail doe appeared from below and behind my stand, a new approach. It was the last day of the season and does are legal in the deer de-emphasis unit where I live in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. I dropped the string! Such was the season a year earlier. By the end of August [...]
I heard the moist-sounding “thunk” and knew what would come next. Yep, there it was, the frustrated exclamation, “Poppa, I missed again!” I was trying to teach my grandson, Jake, how to shoot carp with a bow. He was a pretty good shot with his Bear Super Mag, but the carp were getting [...]
