Food plots have taken all the luster of today’s whitetail hunting era. Food plots undoubtedly help in attracting and holding deer, but few people realize the potential a small thicket can create for a phenomenal treestand location. The cover and food that a thicket creates will hold and attract mature whitetails season after season. Advantages
Tips for Using Trail Cameras for Whitetail Hunting Who doesn’t love trail cameras? They are relatively easy to operate, place, and check. They “scout” for you and keep your confidence up in your otherwise slow tree stand locations. Every one of the bucks that I’ve killed in the last 5 years has been captured on
Thickets provide quality food and security for mature bucks. Especially in the Midwest, thickets consist of quality browse food sources such as dogwood, honeysuckle, and green briar. Hunting a thicket, commonly used as a bedding area can be challenging for a few reasons- finding a clear shooting lane through the thicket and a tree big
Shed season to the most avid shed hunters has an early, middle, and late season. And each has its own unique strategy. Unfortunately, we are entering the latter end of the season here in Illinois. We’re at our peak hiking levels; most of us are probably in the best shape we will be in all
Compared to last year’s mild winter with several days of above average temperatures and hardly any snow accumulation in West-Central Illinois, this year has been a different story. The biggest advantage to having a hard winter for shed hunting purposes is that the sheds will be more concentrated. When the weather is milder and little
Ask any bowhunter about their favorite treestand location and they’ll probably have a name for it; “A” stand, honey hole, assassin, death valley, etc. There’s a special stand location in every whitetail hunter’s head that they think about year-around. Waiting for that special week or even day that they can slip into their “A” stand
It was day 5, and after a long week of bowhunting hard, Dennis and I were making our long, uphill trek to a secluded beanfield where Dennis had already made three long sits without any sightings of the buck he was after. A mature, main frame eight point nicknamed “Hank”. Hank was consistently popping up
The weather forecast for the last week of October is looking promising for deer hunters across West-Central Illinois. After a cold front moves through on Tuesday, it looks like we will be back to more “normal” temperatures for this time of year. With the daytime highs in the 60’s and lows in the 40’s, the
Purchasing Illinois Deer Hunting Land Specifically for Upper-Age Class Whitetails There are hundreds of farms for sale right now in Illinois being marketed as Illinois deer hunting land. How do you choose one from another when the ads all say something like- “big buck factory, whitetail paradise, dream deer hunting farm, the perfect deer hunting
Bowhunting mature whitetails in Mid-October can be challenging, yet very rewarding when the weather conditions cooperate. Deer movement can seem to be idle at best during the “Indian Summers” the Midwest typically experiences sometime during the first 2-3 weeks of October. Many whitetail hunters refer to this time of year as the “October Lull”. However,
