2021/2022 was another great year for our family and Full Potential Outdoors. Going into the season, there were 4 of us going to hunt. I would be hitting the archery season and late muzzleloader seasons hard. Amy would end up hunting archery, and then ultimately ended up going late muzzleloader as well. Our son Forest drew a non-resident archery tag, and our daughter Lily drew a non-resident late muzzy tag. The goal, for me, was to do the most or best I could to make sure we all had good hunts, and that Amy, Forest, and Lily would get chances at mature bucks.

I was actually quite shocked at how much or hard Amy hunted this year. Not because of any opinion I had…but because going into the season she said her only intention was to hunt the nice weather days. Well, she hunted many days that were anything but nice. I think between archery and late muzzy she hunted over 30 days, maybe more. Many of those days were nasty miserable days to be on stand. (I think she’s hooked!) She ended up having a hell of an archery season seeing more really nice bucks than probably every year combined up to this year. She ultimately shot a mature buck during the late muzzy season.

Forest drew his non-resident archery tag this year. He had been alternating with Lily for the late muzzy hunt but chose to wait the 5 years needed to draw his archery tag. He hunted hard, sitting most of every day taking maybe a few minutes off each day to switch stands because of changing winds or morning to evening pattern type changes. He too saw more mature bucks than he ever had during an archery hunt/season ever. He ultimately shot a mature buck toward the end of what he took off from work.

And then there’s Lily. She’s had some bad luck for her late muzzy hunts. A few years ago she missed a giant we called Blind Side. She was so mad when it happened. Blind Side was a buck that scored over 170. We didn’t figure out until a year later that the gun was off almost 16″ high when I again shot it before the late muzzy season. She hadn’t missed at all…well she did but it was because the gun was off that far. That had never happened to me before in my life (having a gun with a scope shift like that)? This year, we saw a ton of deer but got bumbled several times by cows and when we did see a big buck, it was very late. She too, ultimately shot a giant on a corn/soybean plot when the weather got really cold and snowy…sending deer to grains for feeding.

For my part, I hunted as much as I could. By myself, or sitting with others, I hunted close to 70 days. My goals going into the season were to help or do what I could to make Amy, Forest, and Lily’s hunt a success…and to be able to spend as much time as I could in the field. It worked out. We had a great season. And we did see a ton of deer and a bunch of really nice big bucks.

My hunters had a so so year. One hunter from Louisiana shot a really nice 10 point on my cabin farm. The other two hunters from Michigan struggled on a different farm. Their farm was where Lily and I kept getting bumbled by the loose cows. I can say, I did everything I thought I could do to help all three hunters have a great hunt. Killing a big deer on a consistent basis comes down to 3 things, always has and always will. 1. Big deer have to be there to hunt, the more mature big bucks, the better your chances. If they aren’t there, or there is like only one, your chances are near zero. 2. You need time to hunt and kill them. It is hard to put together a hunt and kill a mature buck on a short hunt. Not that it can’t be done, but it’s just hard. There are so many things out of your control that when you only hunt a few days or even a week, it can be really hard at times to catch up to and kill a big mature buck. And, 3. You need to have some pretty good basic hunting skills and woodsmanship skills. Just things like understanding how deer can smell and how to hunt with the wind, how to stay quiet, being a good shot, hunting with low pressure on the deer. All three of my hunters this year I feel had great woodsmanship skills and understood how to hunt whitetail successfully. I sure wish the brothers from Michigan would’ve had more time to hunt, or the bucks on that farm would’ve been more cooperative? It just didn’t happen for them.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. 1 for 3 with hunters…and 4 for 4 with the family this year. But that’s only part of the story. For me, it’s way more than just about “did I kill a buck”. For me it’s all about spending as much time as I can in the field, seeing my work pay off, and being able to hunt mature deer. I can say without a doubt I was on deer all year. I pretty much could predict what I was going to see, when I was going to see it, what the bed to feed patterns were…etc. Not that I could predict on a daily basis exactly what deer I would see, but more so different movement or bedding patterns.

Needs Improvement

For next year, I have a ton of work to do. I’ve already started since Monday was the last day I could hunt, I’ve already fired up the chainsaws and started on habitat work. My list is a mile long and has everything from where stands need to be moved a little bit, to where I need more bedding cover, to where I need to do some work with a couple fence jumps. It never ends.

One thing that really caught my attention was the lack of predictable food sources close to home where we hunt. Right here at the house, I’ve been trying to get creative with what I can plant into food sources while still maximizing what I lease out to the farmer for income. At the end of harvest season, there is just nothing left. These modern combines just take everything. My getting creative allows for maybe at most 1 acre of clover, winter rye, and brassicas but not even where I choose to plant them. I was just trying to take what the farmer couldn’t plant. This next year, I will be taking over the farming at home, so that will make putting in some food plots and possibly leaving corn or beans standing a possibility. I have about 64 acres of tillable, but still want to harvest as much of the crop as I can for the income. Even so, I’ll still be in better shape than we were this last year. The switch grass we planted in our bottom ground, along with some hinge cutting of box elder, and some other habitat work on our home farm has greatly increased deer usage since we bought this farm in 2016. Now, the next step will be to add some food that lasts beyond the fall harvest.

At the cabin farm, we saw a ton of deer this late season. But the cameras still showed lower than expected numbers of bucks and mature bucks than I would like. More work needs to be done on the timber and in the draws to create more cover. That farm is the opposite of the home farm…it has a ton of food but even though it has more available acres for cover, too many of those acres are still too open. I’ve been cautious or conservative with my forest stand improvement on that farm, trying not to be so aggressive that I loose control of the different growth stages in the timber. Once again, this off season, I’ll need to spend several weeks or more cutting out canopy on that farm, doing some edge feathering, and making more areas for does and bucks to bed during the fall. Back in 2012, when we bought that farm, we were very aggressive on that farm with cutting down and hinge cutting a block of about 10 acres. That block was ok, but almost too thick early on. I don’t want to do that again.

And lastly, on one farm I lease, (the farm with the cows) I will have to let it go. I’ve had some great deer on that farm. This year not included, there has been a giant on that farm every year since I’ve had it. And the hunting, with my improvements, has been pretty good, even exceptional at times. But, because it’s a lease, I’m limited to what I can do, AND to what I’m willing to do. The farm needs new fencing to keep the cows off the farm, and out of the plots. I don’t see it happening, and because I’m only leasing it I just can’t commit to fixing the fence myself. Even though I hate to lose the farm, based on my experiences with leasing land for hunting, I’ve got to cut my losses now before I pull my hair out and lose sleep worrying about things out of my control. I can’t keep putting resources into a farm under that scenario.

New Insights

The one thing that blew me away this year was how easily deer can pin point our hunting movements when using our Polaris Ranger. Ok, I always knew it was not a great idea to be riding around on an atv during the season. We never go into our stands with an atv. In fact, the closest we get is about 1/2 mile to any one spot, and that closest spot is where we park on the road. But the problem was they could identify that specific sound with hunting. Let me give you an example. One stand we hunt, would be a mile walk from the house, or a 1/2 mile walk from the Ranger if we parked it on the farm road and then walked in. This farm road has freqent traffic, so the thought was we’d be ok. When we parked there, and walked in, the deer already knew we were coming and consistently were on high alert and would bust out hundreds of yards from our position. They knew we were coming! On one night, to test the theory, I drove along side Amy with my truck. She drove the Ranger along side while I drove the truck…when we got to the spot we would normally park the Ranger, she veered off a bit and parked about 100 yards farther as I continued to drive the truck right on by. She snuck into her stand that night…same wind conditions as we’ve had many times before, and she had deer bedded by her within 75 yards or so. Had it been only the Ranger, and had we stopped and parked in the usual spot, it would have been game over. We have another spot where we park the Ranger almost 3/4 of a mile away from where we walk in and there is no doubt, based on our observations, that there too deer knew we were coming. ATV’s are bad news for deer. I always knew it was bad, just never realized how bad. Here too, we will have to get creative on how this changes for next year. Longer walks, more use of my bike, something!

Those are the biggest changes and things I have planned for next year. All told, it amounts to probably 2 months of full time work, 40 hours a week, to accomplish everything on my list. The more the better! I love spending time in the outdoors, and won’t shy away from the work. In some cases, no work is needed, but corrective actions like better access and less use of our Ranger.

The Hype

Remember the three things you need to kill mature bucks consistently…well that’s not all entirely true. You do need number 1 (big bucks have to be there), and for most of us you need number 2 (ample time to hunt them), but truthfully, you don’t need any hunting skills at all (number 3). There are many many modern day hunters that really aren’t all that good at hunting and still manage to kill mature bucks every year. Some are not necessarily bad hunters, but are no better than anybody else and yet they still manage to kill big deer every year. What do they have that most don’t? Super lucky? No! If you have the ability to hunt thousands of acres of managed farms regardless of where they are in the country…with dozens of giant bucks running around on them…with little to no hunting pressure on those farms because they are private with limited access, you can be a pretty crappy hunter and still connect on big deer almost any year. That’s just how it is.

I bring this up not because I’m jealous, or because I’m bitter. I bring it up because two separate things have really gotten me thinking about the state of hunting in this country. The first, was a social media post of a truly humungous buck shot by a guy with a crossbow. At the time, it was thought it could be the new Typical world record. I have no opinions about crossbows, seriously, I just don’t think about or care about the whole crossbow drama about should you be able to use one or not. But wow, you should’ve seen the guys and gals dumping on this guy for using one. It really got me to thinking….

Then, there was an article I read about Boone and Crockett’s new rules about what you can’t use, even if legal, to enter a big game animal into the record books. Again, I don’t give any of this much thought either, but you can’t use a cellular game camera if it helps you immediately or even the next day kill a record animal. You can’t use smart scopes that allow you to range an animal through your scope. You can’t use two way radios between hunters (even where legal) to locate animals. No use of drones. Boone and Crockett is trying to say only so much technology can be used…in other words, technology shouldn’t be used to make up for hunter skills. Hmmm?

So, would a hunter who uses a crossbow…walks in 3 miles on public land on weekends…and shoots a new state record he or she has been hunting for 4 years somehow be less of a hunter—than a guy who hunts 3000 acres of private land spread out over 8 different farms, that nobody else can hunt but he uses a compound bow? I find that interesting?*****How about the hunter who uses a cell camera to locate a big buck and he uses that information to kill it because they only have a couple days to hunt each fall because that’s all they can get off of work, and that buck is killed on the family farm where 6 other hunters can also hunt that same deer. It’s a record book buck, but it doesn’t count, too easy, because he used a cellular trail camera. However, the hunter a county over has 4 different farms, totalling 1400 acres, where he alone can hunt. He doesn’t use any cellular game cameras but pays a “land manager” to do all his scouting, hang all his tree stands, and put in his 100 acres of food plots each year. That guy, he shoots a giant and it’s all good!

The point of all this is—-chasing scores, and records, and hunting for bragging rights is a game with ever changing rules and no end. It will never be worth it unless your wallet is endless and your ego needs stroking. Ask yourself this…If you were hunting and you couldn’t show or tell anybody about any of the bucks you shot, how would you hunt? What would you kill? What would your goals be? What challenges would you embrace? Would you even hunt anymore? Now I don’t mean sharing the hunt with your family or friends, but beyond that nobody would ever know what you got. It kind of makes all those things like cell cameras and antler score a non issue.

Before I’m done, I’ll give you one example. This year, we put to use several totally sealed store bought blinds complete with sealed windows. They aren’t the $4000 dollar models you see on all the hunting shows, but nevertheless they are sealed. As an experiment, I hunted out of one when I knew the wind would be wrong, and I was confident I would see deer downwind of my position this late muzzy season. I had deer downwind of me that night, for quite some time, and with the windows up and sealed, those deer had no idea I was there. During Amy’s late muzzy hunt, we used that same blind, with the wrong wind, to kill her deer opening the window just at the point of kill. This, to me, is more of an unfair advantage than any crossbow or any two way radio. It is “artificially” taking away a deer’s ability to use it’s best defense against being killed by a hunter. AND, these blinds are using technology and money to get the best of a deer. Makes you think, is that really fair? Is it really fair to use ozone generators in the woods? Is it really fair to have hundreds or even thousands of acres of private land to hunt all to yourself, film your hunts, and then make money off of those hunts to lock up even more land? I’m certainly not judging anybody’s methods or motives. But think about this the next time you queston why you hunt or possibly judging how someone else does. I don’t know where it all ends, or when enough is enough.

Thank you for following along. I might start up a winter blog the first part of March that talks about the habitat work I’m doing and planning. Check back early March to see if I’m putting one together.

One very last thing…as of 01/18/22 I still have 3 cameras in the field. I hadn’t checked or pulled them yet because I didn’t want to go into those areas until after the season, and there was really no reason to pull them after the season ended. Yesterday, I went into that small wood lot I hunted this year to do some post season scouting and I did pull that last camera on that farm. To my delight, the giant I saw on that piece of ground during late muzzy that I (in theory) passed up made it to the end of the season. I got a picture of him the last day!!!