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2 months ago | 
themeateater.com | Adam Moore |Andy May |Dylan Tramp
Post-season reflection isn’t just about missed opportunities, but it’s a great time to evaluate your hunting setup, too. Improving your hunting skills requires learning from your mistakes and making changes next season so you don’t repeat them. This includes your hunting gear. Just like you might drop or add certain hunting techniques and strategies, you’ll also know which gear stays and which gear needs to go to eBay or the dump.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Adam Moore |Beau Martonik |Tony Peterson |Andy May
Few things substitute experience and time in the field. While it can be tempting to think a new piece of gear can help you level up, it rarely works that way. As a gear editor and reviewer, I’ve used some of the best hunting gear money can buy, and I can tell you that no single piece of equipment has directly correlated to me killing a big buck.
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Sep 9, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Adam Moore |Andy May |Mark Kenyon |Tony Peterson
As much as I love hunting gear and testing it, there’s no correlation between new purchases and killing a Boone and Crockett caliber deer. Unless maybe that purchase happens to be a large farm in Iowa. Otherwise, anything you can get in stores can’t guarantee you a big buck, or any deer for that matter. But that doesn’t mean hunting gear can’t make you a more comfortable or efficient hunter.
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Jun 12, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Aaron Hepler |Dylan Tramp |Andy May |Tony Peterson
My world in bowhunting began from a humble ground-swatting position. It wasn't until I turned fourteen that my dad gave me a clunky climbing stand, the kind that's built to last. This was a game-changer. I was experiencing deer hunting from an elevated position, and that perspective increased my love for deer hunting like nothing else. After a few years of grinding tree bark, clinking, and clunking around the woods, I needed something more. Often, I'm overly skeptical of "trending" gear.
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Apr 11, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Dylan Tramp |Andy May |Mark Kenyon
Fail upward? What kind of corporate jargon is that? How could this possibly help me become a better hunter? Hear me out. Every hunter that I know with at least a dozen seasons under their belt goes through a natural evolution. That evolutionary path is different for everyone because everyone has a slightly different situation and different personal goals. For example, you might come to a fork in the road after having some success here and there, but never consistently filling your tag.
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Feb 13, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Andy May |Tony Peterson |Mark Kenyon |Adam Moore
This time of year should be a time of reflection on last deer season. While you might turn your attention to shed hunting and winter scouting, it’s reality check time for those lofty goals you set in October. Did you tag your “target” buck? Check out that new piece of ground? How many deer did you miss? When you did drag a deer back to the truck, were you winded and gasping for air? This last one, which pertains to your hunting fitness, should be as fundamental to deer hunting as anything else.
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Oct 7, 2023 | 
themeateater.com | Tony Peterson |Dylan Tramp |Andy May
If you’re living vicariously through hunting industry folks to get your deer info, you’re in trouble. I know that probably sounds crazy coming from a guy who is in the hunting industry, but hear me out. The worst thing most hunters can do is adopt belief systems that shortcut their critical thinking skills. This goes for most of life, actually, but is most applicable here with whitetail hunters. The set-in-stone beliefs, the always and never statements, and the truth as you know it has to be yours.
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Oct 6, 2023 | 
themeateater.com | Mark Kenyon |Andy May |Tony Peterson |Adam Moore
Editor’s note: For more on this topic, tune into Eps. 690, 693, 696, and 699 of the Wired to Hunt Podcast. I’m fascinated by old whitetail bucks. If you’re reading this, you likely are too. I’ve heard it said that old bucks are almost an entirely different species from the rest of the herd and my own observations back that up as well. They move differently, act differently, and think differently. You can hunt deer or you can hunt old bucks, but you cannot hunt them the same.
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Sep 26, 2023 | 
themeateater.com | Dylan Tramp |Andy May |Mark Kenyon
If you’re up on the current whitetail hunting trends, mobile whitetail hunting tactics are everything you hear and everything you read about. But if you aren’t doing hang and hunts on the regular, what are you missing? It’s surely the fastest route to wrapping your tag around a booner, right? Before you get caught up in the latest and greatest, it’s important to understand when mobile hunting tactics are absolutely the right move, but also when the tactic can actually be detrimental.
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Jul 19, 2023 | 
themeateater.com | Alex Gyllstrom |Andy May |Mark Kenyon
Organization. Unfortunately, it's not something that comes naturally to me, but when it comes to sneaking in tight to a buck's core area, I've learned the hard way being unorganized isn't an option. When mobile hunting, having a well-thought-out approach to packing your gear is the foundation for success in the woods. Let's look at four guys who have fine-tuned their packs through years of trial and error and have come to a process that works for them.
