“Tag: Patrick Durkin”

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.

Feral cats cause widespread problems in rural, urban and suburban areas. They not only kill billions of birds and mammals each year in the United States, but also spread diseases like toxoplasmosis that affect humans and whitetails.

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.

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.

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

It is often the first installation in a deer camp. It is usually a timber cut from nearby woods but it could be a salvaged scrap pipe. Regardless, it is always a place for hunters to gather, assess and admire deer. It is the buck pole, a symbol of success to American hunters.

Deer respond differently to hunting pressure, but all seek refuge within their known home range, not the next county.

If football is a game of inches, then hunting is a chase of split-seconds.

Until manufacturers make clothing and laundry soaps that eliminate human movements, deer hunters should realize they face bigger worries than which camo or blaze-orange clothing hides them best.