Deer & Deer Hunting
June 2021Deer & Deer Hunting is written and edited for serious, year-round hunting enthusiasts, focusing on hunting techniques, deer biology and behavior, deer management, habitat requirements, the natural history of deer and hunting ethics
in this issue
3 things i think i think
There’s a lot of unrest in the outdoors world these days, and numerous topics need to be addressed head-on by sportsmen and women everywhere. We cannot be complacent on any topic that compromises our natural resources (first), and our cherished hunting traditions (second). Here are three of them that have been in the news lately, and my views on where we should collectively stand on them: 1. Hunters everywhere should be allowed to hunt on Sundays. How, in 2021, there are still more than 10 states that have some sort of law against hunting on Sundays is puzzling. Recent news out of one of those states, Pennsylvania, shows some signs of movement, as hunters there will be allowed to go afield three Sundays this fall. That’s not enough. Most proponents say it’s not…
readers recoil
I JUST READ Dan Schmidt’s online article, “Why Your State Will Never Be Like Iowa,” and agree with his opinion that human pressure has much to do with the quality of deer hunting that you will have on your property. I moved to Iowa from northern Michigan. — Edward Koetner, Iowa BELATED THANKS FOR the article, “Hard Work Earns the Buck” by Tom and Noah Carpenter in your recent issue of Deer & Deer Hunting. This article included great deer stories but it also reflected the best of human values, particularly valuable in these times of agitation. Noah did an especially fine job. Congratulations. — Dr. Phillip Mendell, Florida AFTER READING THE story of “Age & Grace” by Joel Spring in the recent issue, I wanted to thank you on behalf of us older hunters. As you know,…
d&dh community
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whose buck is this?
When reading about deer hunting customs, results, rigors and techniques elsewhere in the country, you note vast differences in the way things are done elsewhere when compared to New England, where my wife and I have hunted all our lives. For example, I only know a few hunters who know how to score a deer, and I don’t have the slightest idea of how to do it. In our woods, people weigh deer after field-dressing and count the antler points. The commonality between our customs and what deer hunters customarily do elsewhere is that we meat hunters appreciate the value and table fare of venison. The quest for venison in New England seems related to years ago, when there were no deer to hunt, except in Maine. You had to have…
digestible energy dilemma
Winter often arrives early on the whitetail’s Northern range, sometimes with devastating consequences. Even a few inches of snow can cause deer to switch from eating highly nutritious herbaceous plants to consuming woody browse, forcing them on to a negative energy balance. This curtails the physical development and fattening among fawns and can set the stage for excessive fawn mortality during the harsh winter season. Prospects for survival are especially precarious for fawns, due to their small stature and limited fat reserves. Not only do fawns have shorter legs than adults, which hinders their travel through deep snow, they also lose more body heat from each square meter of surface area than do larger deer. The critical body weight for Northern fawns is between 77 and 88 pounds. Animals weighing less…
sweat equity
When editor and great friend, Dan Schmidt, asked me to do a piece on summer scouting, my first thought was why? And my second thought was that I really didn’t want to. For me, in-season, post-season and right before spring green up are when I really make my scouting hay. Summer scouting is actually “icky” in a lot of ways. Then I actually started to think about it deeper. No, summer scouting will never be my favorite, but the reasons why are very important to grasp. At the same time, there are two very helpful scouting methods to employ midsummer through the weeks before the season starts. For as underwhelmed as I was at first hearing the idea, the more I kicked it around the more truly helpful I could see this…
