As Karen and I chatted about the 1999 bowhunting season, I was struck with a profound realization that changed the course for the rest of my bowhunting career. On the opening day of the second shotgun season, I called in a 5-point buck using a doe in heat bleat. My arrow hammered the young whitetail at fifteen yards while it scanned the landscape looking for the needy female who had becko ...
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Bowhunting a big, black bear from a treestand, 15-yards from its dining area, can be a tremendous thrill. Now, move the bowhunter to the ground, and just to spice it up a bit, put him in a wheelchair. Throw in a 300-pound Pope and Young class bear that seems to have no fear of danger and you have one thrilling scenario. Set that hunt in the far reaches of pristine northern Manitoba, just ...
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Since the theme of my wildlife
consulting business is to work with, not for, people, I have a rather
large number of friends associated with my business. One of my good friends is Dwight Belicek,
ranch manager for the McCall 501 Ranch located south of Uvalde. Dwight’s objective is to develop high quality
bucks on the expansive landholding he manages, so I spend ...
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A couple weekends back, I hosted the first ever White Knuckle Video School here in Iowa . After it was all said and done, I’m exhausted – but it was so worth it! We had a mix of current team members, new team members, and guys who were just interested in learning more about the world of video. Overall, judging from the feedback I’ve received, it was a big success; and ...
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With the heat of summer upon us many people forget about the
importance of scouting for the upcoming fall.
This is the time of year when the bucks in your area are the most
relaxed and the most visible. Often
times hunters will wait until September to glass fields looking for bucks. By the time September rolls around, most of the
bucks have shed their velvet and have ...
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It was 104 degrees in Jacksonville Florida during the Southern Trophy Hunters Big Buck Expo but that didn't keep folks from coming to the event. Lee and Tiffany Lakosky and Stan Potts were headliners in the Muzzy Hunting Camps and OEI Properties Land Camps.
Mike DiSario put together a panel of experts for the OEI Properties' Land Camps to discuss everything fr ...
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It’s the time of year again.
Bowhunters are starting to tinker with their gear to prepare for fall. I tweak my arrows on a regular basis. After all, it’s the arrow that gets the job
done. Building and tuning arrows has become
easier than it was ten or twenty years ago.
Small broadheads combined with a fall away rest on a bow us ...
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Turkey
season has come and gone, but I decided to do a journal entry on one of my late
season turkey hunts. In Michigan and much of the Midwest ,
the turkey season is open until the end of May.
While many Michiganders and Midwest
turkey hunters prefer hunting turkeys during the early season (usually the last
two weeks of April), I enjoy hunting t ...
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Sporting clays has started and we have been getting good turn-outs. We have replaced 6 of the throwers with new ones and gravel has been placed down around the shooting area!
Sporting Clays is every wednesday night from 4pm until dark. We have been grilling food having great time!
We have been working with Pheasants Forver on a native grass restoration area. We planted 30 a ...
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It’s been fourteen yeas since it happened and you think they would forget. Yet just this morning, I answered the phone and one of the very first things out of the callers mouth was a series of digs about the "hunt to forget." After all this time I was gleefully rode like a dying nag about a simple mistake that happened nearly a decade and a half ago. What inspires people to have such a sh ...
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A colossal Boone & Crocket posturing like a strutting
gobbler motions his way toward your decoy, bracing himself for a head-on
collision would make breathtaking video footage, but
the chances of that come slim. There is hundreds
of hopeful hunter and cameraman teams from the upper Midwest
to the southern part of the country wishing for an incredible seaso ...
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This past May, I went on a bear
hunt in Quebec . Before I left, I was informed that I would
see lots of bears and be able to take my pick from many bears which sounded
great to me. I have seen very few black
bears in the wild and was relieved to hear I would see lots of bears. It would give me an opportunity to see a few
small bears and a few large ones so I wou ...
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It's not too often that new products hit the market that are specifically designed for disabled hunters, most target the general able-bodied population and only by chance offer some benefit to chairbound outdoorsmen. So whenever I find them, I feel obliged to help get the word out.
The first product, a cap with mask combination, I discovered at the Shot Show in Las Vegas this past ...
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The last few weeks have found much of the Midwest in a state of emergency. I’ve seen first-hand what mother-nature is capable of doing, and it’s been a real eye-opener for me. Last Sunday when heading back to Iowa from a weekend in Michigan, I was stopped on I-80 (the major artery of the Midwest) because the Cedar River was flowing over the road. I was forced to detour through Illinois, trying to ...
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The bright, evening sunlight illuminated the rugged landscape around the bait barrel with its warm, rich color-tones that appear only at the beginning and at the end of the day. Originally this particular bait (nicknamed "Frank’s Bait") had been nestled amid a thick stand of jack pines, which completely sheltered it from the sun’s prying rays. Several years earlier, a brutal storm had levele ...
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There’s just some magic feeling witnessing the progression of a tiny seed transform into an antler blooming plant. The core understanding of being a farmer, wildlife manager, and patron of the forest is what I consider to be a true hunter.
Planting food plots is a vital step in response to a whitetails health, and nutrition. Implementing a seasonal mix of perennial and annual plots insures no ...
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Since 1994 the month of February has been the month for two very special events in my life. Number one is Valentine’s Day and that means I must not forget to let the Redhead know just how special she is to me and all of the little four-legged Hendricks’. The "kids", we refer to them, always put me in charge of getting our queen-bee something really nice to demonstrate our love and devotion ...
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The infatuation of two simple bone protrusions upon a deer’s head has captivated hunters from around the world in pursuit of goliath-racked bucks! Although, this isn’t your average type of bone, this is pure, gnarly, twisted, and, massive beauty we’ve come to know as antlers.
We as hunters desire to learn the necessary tips and techniques on growing a deer’s headgear far past its usual poten ...
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I’ve been waiting to say this for quite sometime and can finally announce it with a sigh of relief, college has been dismissed for summer at last. There’s no more remembering important historical dates, key vocabulary terms or any foreign language. The final week exam season has evolved into the final turkey week of turkey season. It couldn’t be at a better time, considering I was able to squeeze ...
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Establishing a common licking place where deer and other wildlife gather for necessary minerals from the earth is certainly nothing new. The fact is that most every animal including man has sought out salt and other minerals from the earth since the dawn of time. Salt was once such a valuable commodity that it was considered a form of money. Thus the old saying that “some folks just aren’t worth ...
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