“quality deer management association”

Here are several things GPS-collar studies are teaching us about how to hunt whitetails, which you can use to your advantage this fall.

Again and again, GPS-collar movement studies of whitetails find that mature bucks are individuals. There are types, sure. Just as some middle-aged men are homebodies and others like to be out and about, there are categories we can put bucks in—but that really doesn’t help you decipher the specific pattern of an individual deer.

The Quality Deer Management Association and Powderhook have announced the release of the 2016 update to their "Deer Tracker" app, a free program that allows hunters to monitor deer activity and harvests in their surrounding region and throughout the country. New interactive features allow users to estimate the age and score of bucks in posted photos as well as locate nearby public hunting land.

Hunting’s post-kill rituals aren’t spontaneous gestures like high-fives or war-whoops, but perhaps that’s where they began.

You see a buck across a field in the soft, late light of a summer evening. You tell yourself he isn’t really that big. The velvet on his rack in the diffused light is giving the buck cartoon proportions. But he is big enough. You next look at the woods beyond the buck and wonder how you can get him in your sights in autumn daylight. To make that happen you have to concede and understand a few things.

A fundamental change to deer management is coming. Changes that can and will affect your deer season. Let Field Editor Frank Miniter explain.

Deer populations are local affairs, but there have been some surprising regional trends hunters should be aware of.

Maybe you have a sure-thing rut stand, a place of your own where pleasant memories of big bucks tagged play in your head like a deer-hunting show marathon. Good for you. Now go away; this is for the rest of us who must constantly scout, look for new properties and put in the time for our dream bucks.

This is the deer hunter’s calculation. You ask yourself if there are low-impact entry and exit routes that will take you to and from a stand. Can you get a true wind in/near the buck’s likely bedding area? If you’re bowhunting, will you have to cut shooting lanes? Can you afford to risk making this buck even more nocturnal in October?