By Scott Bestul

All else being equal, the hunter with the most experience usually has the best shot at bagging a good buck. And when that Experience comes in the form of a great bow built by Bowtech, the odds are even better. Hurteau and I (along with test team members Will Brantley and Danny Hinton) recently put the Bowtech Experience through its paces in our annual Best of the Best bow test, and while I can’t reveal exactly where it placed in a field of hot shooters, rest assured it ranked high enough that I know this to be a very cool prize indeed.

By Scott Bestul

When European settlers reached North America, the American chestnut was arguably the most important tree in the country. From the Adirondacks to southern Appalachia, chestnuts fed people, livestock, and wildlife. The tree produced lumber of both high quality and tremendous volume. Then, in 1904, a single tree arrived in New York City that carried a blight lethal to chestnuts. The disease tore through the eastern United States like a tsunami, and by the early 1950’s, the American chestnut was nearly extinct.

By Scott Bestul

No, not “buck” as in a dollar. You can’t do much of anything in Alaska for a dollar. But you might be able to save a whole bunch of money chasing trout, salmon, or halibut if you have access to some good whitetail hunting. I know because I’ve done it, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my friend Greg Brush, owner of EZ Limit Guide Service in Soldotna, AK. That’s him in the photos.

Greg and I met on a bowhunt a few years back, and that’s when I learned he’s nuts about whitetails, which are damned rare near his home. So every fall he travels somewhere in the Lower 48 to chase deer. And to save money, he tries to swap a guided fishing trip in Alaska for a whitetail hunt.

By Scott Bestul

This winter I was fortunate to tag along with a team of researchers as they captured bucks in northern Wisconsin. One focus of the research is to find mortality causes for bucks in two separate areas: the east-central counties of the state (mixed farmland and timber) and the “big woods” habitat of the northern counties.

We captured 10 deer that day. Four were fitted with telemetry collars, and will be tracked weekly until they die. The study is slated to end in 2015 but there is already some great information available. I talked to research biologist Jared Duquette about some of the most interesting data they’ve accumulated.