“autumn”

Wise old mule deer bucks hole up in dark timber … or hide in plain sight. Tactics for one habitat may not work in the other; here’s how to adapt to successfully hunt both.

There’s nothing like the sight of a bird flushing through October foliage to make a grouse hunter’s blood warm … except maybe the sight of the bird flying away as a shot misses its mark.

Sage grouse, prairie chickens and sharptails have disappeared from parts of our country where they were once common. But proper management can restore these tall-grass species, if hunter-conservationists do their part. Here’s how to hunt the strongholds where they remain—and become inspired about the revival of our native gamebirds.

Even though hunters are the marrying type, they often spar with their spouses each autumn about their time away from home.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.