By Bill Heavey

It’s deer season. Which means I’m pinned between a mortgage payment, a deadline, and an editor who says that I would be making a “career decision” if the promised copy failed to arrive by close of business today. And I don’t think he meant a promotion.

And all I want to do, all I can think about, is showering up, getting in the car, and riding that 2 p.m. bow wave of rush-hour traffic out of town like a happy dolphin to be in the woods for the evening hunt.

So far this season, I’ve already had two bachelor groups of bucks bed down under my stand. The biggest one in the first group was almost a shooter, an ears-wide 8 that, strangely, was the only one of the four still in velvet. He had the long legs and thin neck of a 2 1/2-year-old, though, and I’m starting to believe in letting those guys biggen up. (Remember when people said catch-and-release fishing would never take hold? Now it’s the norm. Let’s do the same thing with deer. Let the little bucks grow. Not because the law says so –  though it does in some places- but because we could all be shooting bigger bucks. End of sermon.)

By Scott Bestul

When I was growing up in central Wisconsin, delaying the Big Swamp drive was a short-term investment that paid huge dividends. My family and friends and I knew if that we stayed out of the 40-acre bog during the first several days of the gun season, the gnarly cover would become lousy with whitetails. And it always did.

To apply the same tactic, simply leave a good-size chunk of security cover alone through at least the opening weekend. Meanwhile, between early-morning and late-evening stand hunts, make small drives in the nearby brush. The deer you don’t bag—along with those pushed from surrounding properties—will hole up in your sanctuary. Then it’s time to cash in with a final push. A perfect four-day plan is laid out on the hypothetical property illustrated here (you can click on the image to enlarge it).

By Scott Bestul

The whitetail season is young—and in some places, yet to start—but already some great deer stories are emerging. And I can’t help but love early-season tales of success, largely because so many of them involve a hunter doing everything right. Case in point? Phil Williams of Wisconsin, who shot a tremendous 10-point he’d pursued for three seasons.

Williams, a retired school teacher who owns 40 acres in northern part of the state, first saw the buck he nicknamed “Big Boy” in the fall of ’04. Williams knew the buck was special even then, and so did many other hunters in the area. “I own a small property, and the area around me is mostly private,” Williams says. “Every one had seen Big Boy and was after him. I knew of at least two different people who had shots at him last fall, and I wasn’t even sure he was alive when the season ended.”