Deer Hunting Tips

VIDEO – Late September Hunt

Any buck is a good buck if you’re happy with it – let me start by saying that. I always fear being seen as a deer snob by having some standards of what to shoot. For us on our farm, we have decided to manage by trying and harvest older bucks and letting the younger ones walk. We’ve set the line around 4yrs old, meaning that we try and only shoot bucks that are 4yrs and older. This is not to say that we don’t get excited at times and mess this up, but we are beginning to see some good results by doing this over the course of the last several years. Research shows that bucks are expressing most of their antler potential at 4 although there can still be significant growth after.

However you decide to manage where you hunt, I wish you the best this year and will continue to release weekly videos of our successes and failures both past and present – Enjoy!

VIDEO – Passing the Tradition

VIDEO – Gearing up for Waterfowl

The Haul

VIDEO – Trail Cams

“Brows”

VIDEO – Food Plots & Bow Shooting

Happy 2013 at HunterByDesign!

Thanks for stopping by! We at HunterByDesign are happy to welcome you to a new year of hunting and would like to do that by offering weekly videos and posts that will be designed to both entertain and educate. I know that many of you are seasoned hunters that could teach us a thing or two, but hopefully we can re-affirm and entertain you and educate others new to the sport.

Our goal is to post one video per week that we will release on Saturday. We will share through video what we are doing to prepare for the season, how we hunt and of course our hunting successes and failures. We will be talking with some experts in the field bringing you information that will not only make you a better hunter but also a better manager.

We’ve got some good deer picked out this year as well as high hopes for some killer waterfowl action. Drop us a line and let us know if you have questions, comments, advice or anything else you would like to share with us. We’re always up for a good hunting story with some pics! Contact us at hunterbydesign@gmail.com.

Best of luck to you this year – we’ll see you on Saturday!

Gobbler Down

24lbs – 3/4″ Spurs – 10″ Beard

2013 Spring Turkey Season
I had a great turkey season opener this year and was thankful to do it with my 5yr old at my side! Our first set didn’t pan out so we picked up and moved to the other end of the property at about 7:30. We slowly moved down a field edge until I saw what I thought was a turkey head pop up and go back down to feed approx 150yrds out. We crawled up to the field edge and a few minutes later I saw the top of a fan about 200 yards out.
I began trying to work some magic on my slate call and the Tom liked what he heard! He had a hen feeding away from us so he worked in slowly, but he put on quite a show strutting and gobbling all the way. I finally put the hammer down at about 30 yards and that completed a great father/son memory that neither of us will soon forget!

Good Luck!

The Haul

The Haul

Hello fellow hunters! I apologize for my long period of silence, and quite frankly, I can’t promise that it won’t happen again. I am a father, husband, provider, and hunter just like you and sometimes hunter gets pushed down the priority pole. That being said, I will try to do better and must say that I truly enjoy sharing my feats and defeats with you!

As you can see, I’ve been doing some waterfowling this past month and I must say that I’ve had some pretty amazing action. These pics are from a hunt that I was on in North MO. We were hunting in a cut cornfield and thankfully for us, there was a good snow on. This was helpful in concealing our layout blinds. The corn stubble was pretty short so with the snow covers over our layout blinds, we blended in quite well. There were 6 of us hunting so in Missouri this means 18 geese to kill.

On this hunt we set out approx 5 dozen full body decoys along with a few shell decoys mixed in. At the time there were literally thousands of canadian geese in the area. It was a cold day and the stiff north wind wasn’t making it any better. The first groups came in and it quickly became obvious that these geese had been shot at over decoys before. A few sailed right in landing not 15 yrds from our blinds, but the bigger groups kept swinging in and peeling off. It wasn’t long before we had as many as it seemed we were going to get from those groups into range, we made the call and steel began to fly!

This became the story of the day, with groups working us low, but not quite completely committed. We would consistently get smaller groups fully committed, but the bigger groups kept wanting to land to our left or right. I’m not complaining, it was an awesome hunt it simply took a bit longer than a could’ve had we had geese that would fully commit. We all were able to get our 3 goose limit and even collected a band in the process! It’s hard to beat the sight of approx 200 canadians locked up tornadoing down into your decoy spread! I have some video from this hunt along with a few others that I’ll be sharing soon – stay tuned!!

Nov 8th – Bow Buck & Coyote Down!

November 8th was one of those days that you just don’t forget for a long time if ever. I was in North Mo bowhunting the rut just before rifle season opened and I wasn’t disappointed when 3 nice bucks come running through corralling 3 does. All three bucks were grunting and I was breathing hard. I saw that two of the bucks were young 8 pointers, but the 10pt in the back looked like a shooter. The does finally ran directly under my tree and the bucks followed suit. Long story short I shot this buck just a few steps from the base of my tree. I shot straight down between the shoulder blades, dropping him in his tracks as the arrow passed through his spine into his vitals. Beautiful deer, great hunt!

My day was going great and could’ve gotten skunked on the evening hunt and been just as happy but that wasn’t to be. I went along with cousin and pro-staffer Ryan to video him as he tried to tag another buck. We saw a couple of deer but nothing in range. We then heard something running through the brush. We were hoping for a rut crazed buck but were also happy to see the coyote trotting through. He began to go around us when Ryan gave a few rodent squeaks with his mouth. He wheeled and came in to our tree as if on a string. Ryan made a great shot of about 25 yards as the coyote was still moving. He ran approx 70yrds before piling up. Needless to say this was a great day in the woods!