“autumn”

A good raccoon hunt doesn't just take place at night. The truth is, high noon can be just as effective—if you know what you're doing.

We’ve all been there. Opening day. The sun is shining, birds are calling and our over-eager dogs are racing through the cover, thicket to thicket, horizon to horizon, sucking air, searching for scent. They point. They flush. They fetch. They collapse. It’s not even noon and they act as if they’re on their last legs because—they are.

More is learned about what keeps hunters in the field every year thanks in part to license-sales data.

There are too many variables with wind and terrain to explore here, but if you apply these general rules to your woods you’ll see the places where, though they might have a lot of sign, the winds aren’t stable enough to hunt.

While we know to hunt our treestands with discretion, knowing how much is too much is the key. Before we blow our cover, research sheds light in time for fall.

Perhaps there is no greater spectacle in nature than the one elk hunters across America observe every fall as they pursue our continent’s greatest ungulate.

Larry Koller wrote the legendary book Shots at Whitetails in 1948, drawing on hunts at the Eden Falls Hunting and Fishing Club in the Catskill Mountains. Today Koller’s legacy endures, even as hunters move on from still-hunting and deer drives.