Bucky was a tame/wild whitetail buck who, when he felt like it, inhabited my ranch on the Tex-Mex border. When he felt like it, he also inhabited at least two other adjacent ranches.

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; Summer 2020 - After a quarter century of whitetail hunting, the author’s wife was rewarded with the buck of a lifetime. Her name is Jeannie. We called the deer “the early buck” because our only sightings of him in two seasons had been very early in the morning. Both times he’d appeared in the gray dawn near our camp house...

A conversation over Mule Deer vs Whitetail Deer by John Wootters and Bob Milek in which they discuss the pros and cons of both animals and their take on hunting the two.

Some pretty unforgettable sounds have fallen on these old gunfire-deafened ears of mine, but a shriek that shattered the evening hush at our Sandy Creek hunting camp 45 years ago still rings in them even now! Never, before or since, have I heard anything like it. With no warning, it welled up out of the silent woods and froze me in my tracks.

At dusk in an enchanted alpine meadow, 10,000 feet high in Wyoming's great Washakie wilderness, I knelt alone beside the last bull elk I shall ever kill. As the sky darkened, a full moon floated over my shoulder like a yellow-gold balloon, bright enough for me to admire the wide, solid six-point rack and burly body out of which, at last light, I had let the life. Paying reverent last respects, I felt a strong sense of gratitude to this animal, for having been what he was and where he was.

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; Fall 2021 - In the virgin forests of northern Manitoba dwell the kind of black bears dreams are made of. If bears’ eyes are so lousy, why was this one peering up at me in my tree stand, from a distance of 20 yards, as though reading my dog tags? The question rattled through my skull as I instinctively tried...

Anticipating a buck's moves, then altering your methods to confuse him can put venison in the freezer. All it takes is a little imagination and the ability to... "Think like a deer!"

Territorial dominance, female favors, just plain aggression - the rut could be what you wait for.

Perhaps the single most common question I'm asked, by mail and in person, is "Which is your favorite cartridge for deer?" The answer is that I don't have one. Sometimes it's phrased differently; for example, a reader may say "What do you use for deer, most of the time?" The answer to that one is most likely to be "Whatever happens to be handy."

What has come to be called "horn rattling" (even though we Texans do know the difference between antlers and horns) has an interesting history–and an even more interesting present! Strange things happen when a fellow goes out and beats a pair of antlers together, if everything is right. If everything is wrong, of course, nothing happens, but when conditions are favorable, strange, wild, hilarious, and sometimes frustrating events come to pass.