Jason Ashe (pictured here) and his wife Laura kill some of the nicest bucks in their central NY area each year. Their secret? They know their property and they know how the deer they hunt use it. They pay attention to what’s going on in the woods 24/7/365.
 
The Ashe’s are also big believers in doing their scouting and stand work early—as in right now. For them, this is the time of year for serious scouting for next fall and their tactic seems logical. Pre-season fall scouting alerts mature deer to your presence. To them it is all the same, and it stinks like human intrusion. [ Read Full Post ]

Some of us might not yet know it from looking out the window, but spring is indeed on its way and the time is right for frost-seeding food plots. Frost-seeding can go a long way to repair existing plots or provide a way to plant deer-attracting forage if you don’t own farming equipment.

Frost seeding refers to a spring seeding procedure whereby food plot seed is spread either directly on snow cover or on bare ground and left to make it’s way into the soil with the help of the alternating freezes and thaws of late winter. No special equipment (other than a simple hand seeder) is required and the results can be quite satisfactory. [ Read Full Post ]

There’s a narrow ledge above the middle stall in the bathroom of the Billings, Mont., airport that’s just a little wider than my 3-blade Old Timer pocketknife.

I’m familiar with its dimensions because on more than one occasion, I’ve been required to stash my knife there before flying out on a commercial flight. Luckily, the shelf is just obscure enough that my knife was still there when I returned.

I’m a frequent flier, so I feel like an unpolished rube when I inadvertently appear before the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) with a knife in my pants. But I’m also a hunter, and for me, a pocketknife is almost a part of my anatomy. And I’d rather lose my knife to a janitor than to the black hole of TSA confiscations. [ Read Full Post ]