“Tag: Bob Robb”

Here in the dead of winter is the perfect time to help many big game hunters understand why the meat they are getting back from the butcher this year tastes more like an old rubber tire than the finest meat on earth.

The changes in trail cameras over the past decade are the stuff of Star Wars. Today’s units are smaller, lighter, have longer battery life, can take incredible high-resolution video and digital photos, and can easily swap data to computers or smart phones.

If you're a big-game hunter that dreams of taking a bull elk, mule deer or pronghorn out West, the time to start planning is now.

This is the time of year when hunters eagerly begin planning their 2013 big game hunting trips. Many use the services of guides and outfitters, which makes me wonder why so many people book hunts without doing any research.

Did this happen to you this past hunting season? Before opening day you found a really good buck using your trail cameras, so you set stands, were all a-twitter—then never saw him again all season. Did you think you did something wrong, and forced him to go nocturnal? Maybe—but probably not.

During this year’s whitetail rut, perhaps you observed a buck fight. While most “fights” are just pushing and shoving matches often involving young bucks that don’t even know they are bucks yet, others are very aggressive encounters.

It’s that magical time of year, with bucks chasing does and all Hell breaking loose in places that, for much of the year, can seem like a moonscape for their lack of deer activity. This is when every second on the stand is so important.

Bowhunt whitetails long enough and you’ll find yourself in a situation where you have to try and follow a blood trail after dark. After all, many good bucks do not make an appearance until it is almost too dark to see your sight pins. When you shoot them and they run off, you have to go find them. And while bloodtrailing is more art than science and each situation is unique unto itself, here are some rules that will help you quickly recover your deer.

Before you pull the trigger or release an arrow, do you know how to field judge a whitetail deer’s antlers? Those who hunt simply to fill the freezer, this is not really an issue. But for those who are hoping to shoot a buck with antlers that meet or exceed a certain numeric score, more often than not, overestimate the size of the antlers, leading to that common malady known as “ground shrinkage.”