Hunting and Fishing News & Blog Articles

The BHN website needs someone who can tell a story and post great pictures.  Byers does both.

Byers is the author of a leading crossbow book.

His Photography illustrates adventures and techniques.

A former school principal, he loves children and promotes their involvement.

Plus, He Has a Hot Wife

Byers Has Been an Outdoor Writer for 30 years.

He Knows the Rocky Mountains as Well as the Back 40.

Adventure Travel and Exciting Hunts are a Specialty.

He Loves DYI Hunting

He’s an Award-Winning Journalist and Photographer

He Hunts Spring and Fall

He’s a Member of the “Hood.”

Africa?  Been there and Done That 25 Times with Amazing Animals

Welcome, Joe.  We Can’t Wait to Share Your Adventures, like, a DYI Crossbow Elk in Idaho.

From Deer and Deerhunting Hotline.

Late-season hunting can be an endurance contest.  Braving winter’s wrath can be a challenge made nearly unbearable if your feet are cold.  Here’s a plan to keep you and your toes toasty on a stand.  I hunted this year with an eager young man in excellent shape.  I dropped him at a mountain saddle an hour before daylight on opening day.  He willingly hiked a quarter mile uphill to his tree stand, where he hoped to bag an early morning buck.  “After an hour, my feet were freezing,” he said later.  “I couldn’t stand it and had someone pick me up.”

Perspiration is a Foot-Freezer

I’ve hunted several times with this young man who is an animal in the mountains.  He’s in excellent shape, yet perspiration was his Achilles’ heel, if you will excuse the pun.  He wore his expensive Western boots, but the brand wouldn’t matter because his climb up the mountain caused his feet to sweat, and his damp socks soon failed to insulate.  Unless your feet are dry, they quickly feel cold.

Pack a Pair of Dry Socks

I believe that our young hunter would have been fine if he had packed a pair of warm, dry socks in his pack and changed them when he reached his stand.  Better yet, wear a light pair of cotton sock for less insulation when walking and then change to a warm pair before climbing into his stand.  I’ve found that allowing my boots to be cold helps as well.  When traveling to a hunting spot in a vehicle, never run the heater on your boots as you build perspiration before you get there.  In short, dry feet will feel much warmer because your insulating socks will be more effective.

Air Insulates

When I first began hunting, I thought that wearing two pairs of socks was better insulation than one.  Logical, right?  However, as I squeezed my feet into my standard size boots, the socks were so compressed that they lost most of their insulation properties.  Today, I wear rubber insulated boots two sizes larger than my shoe size.  In this way, I can wear very thick socks which maintain their loft and maximize insulation.  I’ve experimented with “hand warmer” brands for the bottom of the feet.  They work, but you will generate perspiration so be sure your brand last as long as the hunt.

Insulate the Insulation

I remember the first time that I put my hand on a “Heat Seat,” one of the first insulating pillows designed for hunters to sit on.  The insulating material inside the product reflected the heat from my hand and it felt “warm” even though it was creating no heat on its own.  Later, I carried a piece of carpet padding to place under my feet.  Especially in snow, I unfolded the two-foot square piece of insulation and rested my feet on it, completely eliminating the heat loss by snow.  This heat barrier can be anything from a piece of cardboard to a foam insulation.

Bruce Ryan Has Tips For Bowhunting In Snow

Late-season deer seek food and shelter; a standing cornfield is one of the best protein sources.  Normally, the crop has gone the way of Tony the Tiger and has been processed for human or animal food.  However, heavy rain can prevent the harvest because farmers can’t use the heavy equipment needed to pick the crop.  By January, the corn stalks lose some concealment characteristics, yet the high protein ears are still standing.

Evening over Morning

Most hunting experts recommend afternoon and evening hunts in late season for several reasons.  First, deer are likely to be in a food source at dawn and approaching in the dark can spook game and contaminate the area with scent.  Secondly, weather conditions are usually harsh making it difficult to remain still and focused.  Finally, deer seem to be more active in afternoon and evening as your trail cameras may show.  Plus, by entering in early afternoon, you can scout fresh deer sign and tweak you game plan to match recent deer movements.

Narrow the Field

Hunting a cornfield is like fishing a lake.  Certain spots are better than others and you want to analyze deer movements based on tracks, corn waste on the ground, and lingering rut activity.  The primary rut may be over in your area, yet mature bucks will still be searching for any does that didn’t breed in the first estrous cycle and yearlings that will breed for the first time in January.

Dream hunts become a reality by taking action.  Want to hunt out West, bag a big hog in the South, or tackle a new whitetail property for a Kentucky velvet buck like this one by Stan Potts?  All these hunts are within your budget and capability, but you must begin the process, now.  The COVID pandemic forced a lot of people to try hunting because other recreational options were closed.  They loved it, surprise, surprise, and created greater competition for select hunting licenses, the kind we dream about.

Ready, Fire, Aim

This phrase was a marketing strategy for IBM and has great relevance when changing dream hunts into solid plans.  Nike would say “Just Do It, ” essentially the same concept.  Before working out all the details of a dream hunt, just decide to do it.  Once you have made that difficult decision, the path to completing that goal will suddenly become clearer.  You will find ways to raise the money, adjust your work calendar, and get tags for the animal you want to hunt.

Include Your Friends

Many years ago, I convinced my father to hunt mule deer in Colorado.  That led to our first elk hunt with more than a dozen to follow.  It was a cheap, DYI, adventure but we included several of his friends who were serious blue-collar hunters.  Although the hunt lasted only a few days, we discussed, debated, and dreamed about it for the entire year.  Once we learned the section of national forest, we hunted, our success soared.  Several of that group, I saw once a year, yet our dedication to the team was profound and every hunt was one we couldn’t wait to repeat.

Attend Sporting Shows

Once you have narrowed the choice of dream hunts, organize your group and attend a sporting show, like the NRA Great American Outdoor Show in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.  I once shared a campfire with a stranger in the Outback of Australia.  As we got to know each other, I asked how he found this hunt with the answer, “The Harrisburg Show.”  You will see numerous posts from the NRA GAOS in coming weeks, but it and others are the ideal way to meet an outfitter in person, ask the tough questions, and nail down a dream plan.

Happy New Year!  The bulk of the traditional deer season has passed, yet there are still plenty of opportunities to score.  Many people like to begin the New Year with a hike, and that’s the perfect activity to boost your chances for success, this year or next.  Most Eastern state archery seasons extend into January and some early February.  Rather than just watching football, why not re-scout your favorite deer woods?

Many Fawns Breed in January

I live on the East Coast and in my area, about 60 percent of female fawns breed at this time.  Generally, once a whitetail yearling female reaches 60 pounds, it is mature enough to come into estrous and any buck in the area will be searching for the source of that scent.  If you haven’t been in your deer hunting area for a while, you may be surprised to find fresh scrapes and rubs, a sign that there is at least one active buck in the area.

Focus on Food

Deer will focus their activity on food and shelter as winter’s cold challenges their existence.  If you had a heavy acorn crop, there will still be mast in the leaves and the same trees that produced in mid-fall will be visited again.  With snow cover, deer will paw the ground to reach fall mast making these locations easy to identify. Standing corn is a magnet for deer and often bad weather forces farmers to delay the harvest.  Once picked, cornfields contain waste grain that will quickly draw deer.

Consider Baiting Where Legal

Baiting can be very effective in late season but also has its downside.  If you hunt in a CWD zone, bringing deer together can increase the likelihood of this disease transmission, the reason it’s outlawed in some areas.  If you or your neighbors still have pumpkins, deer will eat them but you must bust the pumpkins to allow access to the seeds.  Once deer learn to eat pumpkins, they will eat the outer layer as well.

Reposition a Camera

If you are exploring new territory on your scouting trip, carry a motion sensor camera with you.  If you find an area of high deer traffic, post the camera and consider trees nearby or spots to place a ground blind.  Winter winds frequently flow from the North and West so keep the prevailing wind in mind as you consider a new hunting location.

By now most pumpkins have long passed the pumpkin pie stage.  Most are sitting on porches or in back yards where they will eventually rot and their nourishment dissolve into the soil.  Pumpkins make great deer food in late season and you can use it in a number of ways.  First, your local deer may not know what they are and typically you should break them open as in the picture above.  This allows the scent of the fruit to travel farther and be of greater allure.

Pumpkins are Bait so Don’t Break the Law

Feeding deer with pumpkins is a great idea but be mindful of local laws.  Baiting with apples, corn, and pumpkins is legal in Maryland but not so just 10 miles away in Pennsylvania.  I’ve been experimenting with pumpkins as “camera bait” and using their nutrients to access how many big bucks survived in the area of my cameras.  Once deer learn that these orange object keep popping up like mushrooms, they will return.  Expect big bucks at this time of the year to only feed in darkness due to recent hunting pressure.  It’s likely that your neighbors have a batch sitting around so don’t wait too long before asking for them.

Ideal for Late Season Trail Cameras

I get a glimpse of local deer activity each day through my digital trail cameras.  Prior to the opening of gun season, bucks were moving in daylight but after the guns began to crack, they are only active well into the night.  I expect as hunting pressure passes that they will become active in daylight and I’m using a pumpkin patch to keep tabs on which deer survived and their activities.  This isn’t a new idea as this video suggests.

Founded in 1982, Whitetails Unlimited is a national nonprofit conservation organization that has remained true to its mission and has made great strides in the field of conservation. WU has gained the reputation of being the nation’s premier organization dedicating our resources to the betterment of the white-tailed deer and its environment.

Hunters and Deer Benefit

If you love deer hunting, you must embrace deer conservation and no other organization does more for our favorite big game animal than Whitetails Unlimited.  Through an extensive network of hunter banquets, WU raises millions of dollars for wildlife conservation and the support of our national heritage of hunting.  Diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) and Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD), also called blue tongue, threaten to dramatically reduce deer numbers across the USA. If you’ve found the rack and bones of bucks you’ve been growing for years, you know the pain of these dramatic deer loses.  By working together through organizations like WU we can contain, control, and hopefully eventually eliminate these deadly curses to the whitetail population.

Membership: The Perfect Holiday Gift

Would you like to help instill a love for deer hunting in a child or grandchild?  Maybe he or she lives far away and opening day would be glorious with a youngster by your side.  A Youth Membership is the perfect gift. This category of membership is for anyone 15-years and younger. They will receive a member card, decal, as well as a one-year subscription to the quarterly Whitetails Unlimited Magazine.
The annual dues are $10. Join/Renew Now

The same goes for an adult son or daughter.  Why not gift them a meaningful membership they will embrace year round. As a member you will receive a member card, decal, choice of a WTU Cap or WTU Knife, as well as a one-year subscription to the quarterly Whitetails Unlimited Magazine.

The annual dues are $28. Join/Renew Now

Hunting deer in Wisconsin during the cold Winter days takes stamina as well as warm clothing. In this video Ben Schlueter and his father, Jeff, hunt bucks together.

Bowhunters need three types of targets to maximize their chances for success.  Unfortunately, (Or fortunately) the speed of today’s faster compounds and crossbows make traditional targets obsolete.  Archers need a bag-style target designed for target points, a foam target to test broadheads, and a “life-like” 3-D target to maximize arrow placement.  Especially, if you are new to archery, your brain will be fried when that big deer steps into an opening and you need to depend on muscle memory to deliver a lethal shot.

2D and 3D

The Morrell Side-by-Side is one of my favorite targets because I can shoot field points and broadheads into it and it has life-size images of a wild turkey and the kill zone of a whitetail deer.  The crossbows I test launch at speeds usually between 400 and 500 fps.  When arrows fly that fast, the friction created inside the target is often enough to melt foam which makes arrows very difficult to removed.  With very fast bows, it’s best to lubricate the shaft with Pam or other lubricant before shooting.  Foam targets are designed for broadheads and the cutting edges of the head help prevent the melting effect.  The animal imprints on the face of the target provide extra confidence at the moment of truth.  After practicing, you will readily aim at the kill zone of the target which will transfer into a lethal hit at the moment of truth.

Bags are Best

For frequent or daily practice, a bag target is difficult to beat.  Not only do today’s premium broadhead targets stop arrows up to 500 fps, but arrows are easily removed often with just a two-finger grip.  Originally, bag targets were hung on an aluminum frame, and I still have one that has lasted for 15 years.  Newer versions are flat on the bottom and designed to absorb the impact of today’s fast arrows.  These targets are effective, yet are very heavy, the only way to absorb kinetic energies that are off the chart.  The fastest crossbows create a kinetic energy of nearly 250 ft. lbs., that’s three times the minimum required for hunting Cape buffalo with a bow in Africa.  The momentum of such fast arrows is so great that I have had arrows stop in the target, yet the 150-grain field point pulls out of the shaft and completely through the target.

Make at Least One Mobile-

A few years ago, I hunted elk in Idaho with a Barnett Hyper Ghost crossbow that shot a slender arrow that I thought would penetrate better than standard crossbows shafts.  Idaho required a non-magnifying sight, so I opted for a Burris Fast Fire red dot enabling the bow to shoot nearly point-of-aim at 40 yards.  Each evening after returning from a punishing day in the mountains, I fired a practice shot to make sure my sight was dead on and took the above photo of a 20 yards off-hand shot.  The beauty of the Morrell High Roller target is its ability to stop a very fast arrow and its portability.  It fits easily in the back of a vehicle or UTV and was light enough to move into real-life practice situations like between trees or through a brush-shrouded window.  The portability is ideal for practicing steep up-hill or down-hills shots, a frequent circumstance when hunting in the West.

Why Multiple Targets?

Buying multiple targets can get pricy, yet the more you practice, the better you will shoot and the more likely you are to score.  The elk shown above was taken at a range greater than 50 yards, yet I knew the ballistics of the arrow and had every confidence in the shot.  I had one opportunity and made the most of it.  Multiple targets allow you to practice frequently with a bag target.  You can practice angles, shooting offhand, and with a rest.  More importantly, having a good foam target allows you to make sure that your broadheads fly true.  You can experiment with differing grain weights to see how mass affects arrow drop.  A quality foam target will have little impact on broadhead sharpness with a single test and knowing that you arrow will hit exactly where you aim is a huge confidence builder.  Targets like these from Morrell are sold in nearly all hunting supply stores and can be found online at www.MorrellTargets.comhttps://MorrellTargets.com

Young hunters need to be motivated, enticed, and most of all INCLUDED.  Thanksgiving is the most family-oriented holiday of the year and there is no better time to introduce a youngster to outdoor hunting adventure than now.  My daughter and three grandsons annually visit over the Thanksgiving holidays and the “middle boy” was bucking to take his first deer, so he flew in three days ahead of his family.

Gearing For Success

Maryland opens its general firearms season the Saturday after Thanksgiving day and the week prior to the holiday usually finds the deer woods strangely vacant as hunters switch from archery to centerfire gear.  This has always been one of my favorite times to hunt since the rut is winding down and there are plenty of antlered deer to hunt.  K.I.S.S. is the formula for youth hunting- Keep It Simple Silly.  All three of my grandsons have practiced with an Excalibur AXE 340 crossbow topped with a Burris FastFire IV red-dot scope.  Lately, I’ve added a Final Rest tripod that allows a young hunter to concentrate on aiming and takes some of the wiggles out of the quest.

Accommodate their Attention Span

Hunting conditions can be brutal, but that’s not the best way to introduce young hunters.  Kids are constantly hungry and crave motion instead of stoic stillness.  I asked a friend if we could hunt his small farm which had a partially constructed ground blind.  This allowed us to pack plenty of warm clothes and all of our gear to make the waiting game more tolerable.

The first two hours were typical November weather- cold, blustery, and spitting rain.  I noticed that his comfort level was waning and suggested we make a quick exit for some hot chocolate and a hot sandwich.  Luckily, a Burger King was just around the corner and we were gone about 20 minutes.

Grim Reaper Broadheads are 100% made in the USA and built by Jay Liechty on his machines and under his watchful eye.  Who built your broadhead? Were they made with slave labor or from technology stolen from American companies? Many Americans want to distance themselves from Chinese products and choosing Grim Reapers is an easy and effective choice.  Each make and model of broadhead is designed and extensively tested by Leichty, assuring they are reliable and incredibly lethal.

A Savvy and Innovative Hunter

Years ago, I met Jay Liechty on an early season antelope hunt in Montana.  After a long day of flying and driving, I turned in early and on the way to my bunkhouse passed an open garage where Liechty was building an angus cow decoy out of scrap material he found there.  “It’s going to be big enough for two people,” he said as I asked what he was building.  The next morning, I headed to breakfast and found the acetylene torch still sparking as Liechty had worked the entire night.  “I’ll have it finished by the afternoon hunt,” he said as I passed by.  The next day a large black angus “cow” with four camouflaged legs and hunting boots for hooves got Leichty close enough to outsmart a wily Big Sky pronghorn. He is also an avid elk hunter as the picture below indicates, although not with an angus decoy.

Building a Better Broadhead

Many broadhead brands are made in China where the production process meets many challenges.  Language is the primary obstacle and it’s not uncommon for products to be built sloppily or not work because the American buyer and the Chinese production company couldn’t communicate effectively.

I met a seller of inflatable turkey decoys at the SHOT Show who told me, “I had to fire six artists, before they (The Chinese) could get it right,” he lamented.  Honestly, it still wasn’t right.  What type of steel and aluminum go into the product.  How sharp are they? Leichty controls all of these details, personally.

A Thriving Company in Utah

Grim Reaper is a family-owned company, not some conglomerate that is bought and sold on Wall Street.  Amy, Jay’s wife handles most of the business affairs like marketing, ordering raw materials, and paying bills.  There is a face and a family behind every pack of Grim Reaper Broadheads, and they make their money the old-fashioned way- earning it through hard work and producing a quality product.

Wilderness Athlete is now offering The 28-Day Reboot. This system is formulated with the hunter who needs to shed a few pounds in mind. The system comes with some of Wilderness Athletes most popular nutritional products including Energy and Focus, Hydrate and Recover and Meal Replacement. It comes with a variety of supplements including a Multi-Vitamin, Omega-3 Fish Oil and Lean Life.

The program comes with a guide for daily workouts, a meal plan and a guide & tracker to help those trying to lose weight, get in shape, and stay on track.

The daily workout program comes with a uniquely designed program to help hunters quickly burn fat and build muscle. The program comes with a gym and home routine.

Bowhunters in the Midwest and out East often struggle getting in shape for an elk or sheep hunt. The 28-day Reboot will give them the guidance and nutrition they need to reach their goals in time for their hunt.
The 28-day Reboot comes with the following Wilderness Athlete Products:

Meal Replacement
Energy & Focus
Hydrate & Recover
Green Infusion
Probiotic
Lean Life
Omega-3 Fish Oil
Multi-vitamin
To learn more about Wilderness Athlete nutritional products, visit www.wildernessathlete.com

Late season big buck hotspots are easy to locate if you know what to look for. Lots of sign, big deer numbers and shrinking amounts of quality late season deer habitat create predictable private and public land deer hunting. Here is how to find whitetails to hunt when the conditions turn cold.

  Whitetail Habitat Solutions

“Scent Elimination” products have been around for decades.  Over the years, I have hunted with Scentlok, ScentBlocker, and other products that are designed to eliminate human scent. Sprays and washes reduce scent on clothes and gear, but the scent game must be seen as a total program.  You can have the best scent reduction program in the world, yet if you stop to buy gas on the way to your stand, all your efforts are in vain.

The Ozone Factor

The advent of the ozone generator has greatly changed the scent elimination process.  Ozone doesn’t cover or contain scent, it destroys it.  Many hunters use Ozonics generators that are designed to purify the human scent stream of odor.  These are ideal for ground blinds and enclosed structures and can be effective from a tree stand, especially if you have a consistent and moderate wind flow which keeps the human scent stream aligned with the Ozonics unit.

Scent Crusher- How It Works

Rather than creating a continuous stream of ozone, the Scent Crusher program works by using a small ozone generator to pump ozone into a containing bag the size of a medium duffle.  The beauty of this program is the ability to place most of your gear, possibly all of your gear if you shoot a short bow or crossbow inside the bag.  Since we handle our bows and arrows frequently, they are contaminated with human scent, an often overlooked part of scent elimination.  After securing all of your gear inside the bag, turn on the generator in units of five-minutes up to half an hour.  I usually run the unit once the night before hunting and once again before I leave in the morning.

The Scent that Doesn’t Smell

When you open the bag, you will a very noticeable smell of ozone.  Even when you dress, you will smell the odor which I’m sure animals can as well.  To deer this must seem like “white noise” and does not alarm them.  Showering with hunter’s soap prior to the hunt is always a good idea and will prolong the duration of the ozone treatment.

Was I Invisible?

On a recent hunt in South Dakota, I maxed out in airline weight and only had room for the Scent Crusher generator.  The night before hunting I put all of my gear in a large suitcase and ran the generator for an hour.  After a quick shower, I put the suitcase in the back of my SUV and dressed in the field, a short walk from my hunting spot.  This is my favorite “stand” in the country, even though I sit on the ground against a tree.  About an hour after daylight, I spotted a doe that walked toward me and bedded down at five yards.  At first, I wondered if I had died.  This just doesn’t happen!  The doe never looked at me but lay on the ground for several minutes until a small buck came following its trail.  The doe left and the buck passed within five yards with narry a glance.  Next, I saw movement as a female bobcat and kitten passed by at 15 yards.  The cat crawled up a log, searched the area and then went on her way without noticing me.  Twenty minutes later a mature buck followed a nearby trail, and I shot it at eight steps.

Robert Hoague, Webmaster of Bowhunting.net

Over the years I’ve met lots of deerhunters who had plenty of advice and information. And as time passed I saw things happening in the deer woods that were different than I’d heard about. And, noticing that, I started playing off what I saw and learned, more often than what I’d been told or read.

In the mid 80’s I felt I’d put things together pretty good and was a knowledgeable deer hunter (that hunted exclusively with my bow and arrow). Then, in 1987 I made a casual decision that turned out to be pivotal for what I knew about deer and deerhunting with a bow. I decided to bowhunt for the next 3 years for all of October, November and December. Every day.

I learned a lot about deer and their behavior, but the thing that struck me most was that much of the information hunters had shared with me, to help me out, was kind of like “old wives tales” sort of things. Their info was mostly incomplete snap-shots of somrthing they saw deer doing. And, also, so was much of what I had believed before hunting the first entire season.

So, to sum it up, after hunting deer every day for 3 months, for 3 years, I was reading out of a very different book of deer  knowledge. And what I’m gonna talk about today is my discovery of the 2nd rut.

Do you use Deer Dcoys?

Using Der Decoys began after the first companies printed full sized deer pictures on paper targets. And they made a big jump when full-sized 3D targets came along. Today’s video will bring you up to dats on deer decoys.

Five years ago the Whitetail World received the news of a new Official World Record. On November 2, 2018 , Luke Brewster sent a Grim Reaper broadhead through the biggest buck ever killed by any weapon in America. The buck is known ‘The Mufasa Buck’, and was aged at 7 1/2 years old and netted 327 7/8 inches by official scorers of P&Y and B&C record keeping.

Jay Liechty, the President of Grim Reaper Broadheads met Luke Brewster at the annual Archery Trade Show and sat down with them to bring us a little of this amazing story.

New Worlds Record Brewster Buck Interview

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