“open country”

If you hunt deer long enough you will eventually bump up against epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD). The scourge can ruin a deer season and devastate deer populations. The author encountered EHD last year in South Dakota; here’s what happened.

Your hunting rifle doesn’t need to produce painful recoil to get the job done. Here are six centerfire hunting cartridges that are easy on the shoulder yet effective on big game.

Nebraska’s Platte River flows through mule deer country among a smatter of crop fields—exactly the kind of landscape patient hunters can exploit to find big-racked bucks.

The BE.S.T. Lupo is Benelli’s bid to reinvent the hunting rifle, and there’s no doubt the Italian brand is taking that task seriously. An accurate rifle that’s overflowing with forward-thinking rifle technology, the Lupo is going to continue to win fans as more hunters learn to love all that these guns offer.

The Woodman Arms Patriot muzzleloader is light, short and easy to carry. It shoots extremely well and, with the closed breech, can be waterproofed to ensure it goes off every time. It’s accurate enough to manage the open country, light enough to climb mountains and small enough to handle well in a deer blind.

Thanks to changes in elk behavior due to land use, development, human encroachment and more, the elk we hunt today do not behave as the species did in our granddaddies’ days. Here’s how to zero in on modern habitat where elk seek refuge, and how to hunt it.

Just before the breeding season bucks make seemingly random decisions, forcing us to analyze their habitat’s food, water and cover and how each factor influences their behavior.

Everyone knows decoys can bring in the toms, but some setups are more efficient than others. Mike Roux brings his experience to bear in answering some common questions hunters have on how to run their decoys.