Category: Deer Hunting Stories

It’s almost mid-December and much of the whitetail deer hunting action is heating up and the temperatures cool down. There are still some hunters with deer tags to fill, so get to work before winter sets in! As we spend time in the woods each year, hunters see quite a few deer predators. Although we don’t like to think about it, predators can impact local whitetail deer numbers. Coyotes are the ones we worry about the most, and in a good example caught on game camera, check out the photos of two coyotes that kill a buck!

A good percentage of whitetail deer hunters simply hate coyotes. They dislike even the thought of a coy dog killing a fawn, yet these same hunters will not blink a eye and will shoot any deer that presents itself—even that same fawn! I know the majority of “hunters” are not like this, but there are some killers out there that live my the mantra “if it’s brown, it’s down.” If it sets foot on their food plot it is BLAM! At least coyotes are selective hunters, right? Continue reading Caught on Game Camera: Coyotes Kill Buck!

Deer hunters typically think that it’s pretty cool to see a couple of whitetail bucks fighting during the breeding season, but not when the fight causes one or both of them to end up dead. The photos today show fighting buck with locked antlers, but there are not just two bucks locked together today — there are three! These pictures were taken by some saddened Ohio hunter that found these giant whitetail bucks dead on his property.

When bucks who have not established an order of dominance meet in the fall, visual cues often occur that result in dominance being established by the big buck. The meeting is usually initiated by one of the bucks initiating an aggressive posture toward the other, which is characterized by laying back the ears, erecting hair, and lowering the head. Though many meetings between bucks result in little to no contact, a fight can break out if the threatened buck also assumes a similar “bring-it-on” posture. Though most skirmishes end rather quickly, bucks can fight to the death. Continue reading Fighting Bucks Lock Antlers

I moved back to Texas earlier this year, found a deer lease, and have been pumped up about whitetail hunting ever since. It really helped that my game camera captured a big mature buck on the SD card, so I’ve been daydreaming about bagging this buck since late August. So after coming up short on the opening weekend of the general deer hunting season, I headed back down to try my luck.

The big buck I was hunting had been on my game camera for some time, but then he disappeared for 2 weeks prior to the opener and I was deflated. At this point in the season, I was chalking up the missing buck to some other lucky deer hunter. But I remained diligent because, like my grandfather always said, “You just never know what will step out of the woods at any moment and turn a boring hunt into the hunt of a lifetime.” He’s gone now, but I take that to heart. Continue reading Whitetail Hunting Trip in Texas

The only thing I enjoy more than whitetail deer hunting is hearing stories from other deer hunters. No matter how many years someone has been whitetail hunting or many deer they have harvested, it’s still exciting to hear about the details of a successful hunt. Although all truly successful hunts end the same, it still gets my blood pumping to re-live another hunters deer hunt through their eyes. I received this Stephens County, Texas, deer hunting story in an email:

“I got in the deer stand this morning shortly after the sun started coming up I made a few grunts right into the hunt. Not 5 minutes later I heard something walking close by and I look out to my left. There he was, a mature buck, only 30 yards from my stand. The big buck started walking away just cruising around and wouldn’t stop for me, so I had to shoot on the walk.

I am not going to lie and say this shot was the best shot ever, but it might be my luckiest. The heavy whitetail dropped in his tracks and it was my first kill with my T/C Encore Endeavor — and my first true trophy, at least in my eyes. I couldn’t be happier with this solid buck and I can’t wait to get him on the wall. Continue reading Deer Hunting in Stephens County

It may not always get the attention that it deserves in the whitetail hunting world, but there are some big bucks in East Texas. This region is usually blessed with high amounts of rain and a whole lot of high quality food. Sure, many areas of East Texas are hunted hard, but the areas that are managed for deer make for whitetail hunting dreams. I received this lucky hunter’s story in an email:

“I have been trying to get this whitetail buck since 2007. I have never had a daylight picture of this deer until this year. Yesterday morning, I saw some good activity, but only smaller bucks. At 1:00 pm, I climbed out of my tree to get some lunch and check my game camera. From the photos, I saw that this big buck had been working the scrape behind me 2 days earlier, at 7:15 am. Continue reading Big East Texas Whitetail Buck

Many that head out whitetail hunting are looking to bag a big buck, but there are some trophies in the woods that are much more rare. And they may or may not have antlers. These are whitetail deer that have color abnormalities. Recently, I received an email with a fawn that was much different than your everyday, run-of-the-mill, normally-colored fawn. This whitetail fawn is black!

It is not unheard of for most mammal species to occasionally be different colors. It’s all based on their genes. Most animals of the same species end up looking much like each other, but sometimes those recessive genes show up. Many times hunters and non-hunters alike will report seeing albino deer, but melanistic black deer are even more rare. Melanistic deer are, of course, not what a normal whitetail deer should look like! Continue reading Melanistic Fawn Photos