What better way to spend a hot summertime evening than cruising the countryside looking for big velvet whitetails? Grab a cold glass of sweet-tea, binoculars and hit the road! Find Your Target Buck Now This time frame of the summer is an often-overlooked phase of scouting for mature bucks. Bachelor …
Heartland Lodge offers the best all-inclusive deer hunting vacation packages available throughout the Midwest. We offer 100% free range deer hunts that includes everything a hunter needs to make a great deer hunting trip. Our deer hunting vacation packages include all the meals, 5-star lodging, and transportation to and from …
Most serious deer hunters will agree that a small percentage of “luck” has to be on your side in order to bag a trophy buck. Schaffer Dane may have been the luckiest deer hunter in camp this week. With unseasonably warm weather for November, Schaffer’s first few days in camp …
Finding a match set of sheds can be a difficult task to say the least. Bucks can be one sided for multiple days allowing them to drop their antlers literally miles apart. However, the majority of bucks if left undisturbed, will stay within a distinguished late season pattern as long …
Want to find more whitetail sheds? Here are 7 quick tips to help you find more shed antlers this spring… Find the Food Food is the name of the game in finding deer antlers. If you don’t have a quality late season food source you probably won’t find many sheds. …
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 …
Still have to play Santa and need a good idea for the hunter in your family? A gift certificate for a whitetail hunt at Heartland Lodge is a perfect Christmas gift for that special someone on your list! This unique gift will be one that they will never fo
I grew up with a large extended family and a deep hunting tradition. My parents were both from Pike County, Illinois and moved to Quincy where I was born. We visited my grandparents and extended family often. Many of the visits included hunting. The memories that were created will be …
After a long history of being a shotgun only deer hunting state, Illinois is the most recent state to join the movement by allowing straight walled/single shot rifles to be used in the pursuit of whitetail deer. While the ammunition industry has advanced shotgun slug technology significantly in the …
Pre-Rut Whitetail Hunting Using Calls & Deer Decoys Hunting whitetails during the pre-rut can be a great time to get a shot at a mature deer. Cupple the right weather conditions, trail-camera scrape monitoring, a good food source, and you have all the right ingredients for a high-quality pre-rut hunt. …
