For the past 3 days I have been running a chainsaw on my farm in an effort to improve the bedding cover. I prefer to do my habitat work a month or two earlier than this but my consulting business has exploded to the point where I don’t have a free minute during the winter […]
I am currently knee-deep in my busiest season of the year. Since mid-December I have been on the road every week to numerous states doing seminars, attending trade shows and doing consulting visits to client’s properties. This puts me in contact with hundreds of deer hunters every week and some weeks it is thousands. The […]
“Did you kill a nice buck this year?” That’s a question that I get asked dozens of times at every outdoor show I attend every winter. A year ago everyone already knew the answer as I had just killed 2 world-class bucks that I had named Smokey and Trump on back-to-back hunts. The fact that […]
In the last two weeks I have been getting tagged daily in social-media posts regarding CWD. It seems that many in the hunting community have recognized and appreciate my outspoken position on this topic. This is probably due to the fact that very few within the hunting industry will speak out about the way some […]
The debate rages on among some deer hunters about whether coyotes are a threat to deer and whether having coyotes on a property has a negative impact on the deer hunting there. When it comes to all things whitetail I always try to keep an open mind and not jump to conclusions. It is the […]
Alright! Alright! I hear you!!!! A lot of you have been asking about an update to the blog series “The Chase 2018” so here it is! To be honest I have not had much to talk about so that’s the reason for the delay in writing this latest blog entry. I had located some really […]
Last week I was scouting some new property that I had just gotten permission to hunt when I stumbled upon one of those spots that just screams “BIG BUCK HONEY-HOLE!”. I didn’t need to stomp up the place looking for sign, I immediately knew this place had the “it” factor. I quickly found a place […]
Over the years I have avidly expressed my disdain for the whitetail biologist at Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Often times I loosely used the terms “DNR” or “IDNR” but in reality I was always referring to the states deer biologists. I recognize and appreciate that most IDNR employees are high-character people who care about […]
Mark my words, there are going to be more giant bucks killed in Illinois this season than we have seen for many years. This might even be the year that Mel Johnson’s world record archery typical is dethroned, although it might not be an Illinois buck that does it. There is good reason for my […]
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has become a hot topic within the deer hunting community in recent months and especially in Illinois. Earlier this year Senate bill SB-2493 was introduced which would make it legal to supplemental feed wild deer in Illinois outside of hunting season on private lands only. After a series of changes the […]
