Of course this tune is the classic, “Da Turdy Point Buck” and if you haven’t heard it, you are in for a treat. Below is the classic song, straight from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. If this doesn’t bring a smile to your face, I don’t know what will….Except maybe a Turdy Pointer…

Good luck hunting to all of you heading to the woods with boom sticks for the first time this year!

It’s time for a little Wednesday buck porn! Although I often dream of hunting in the big buck states of Iowa, Illinois and Kansas, things are definitely getting better in my home state of Michigan! Here are a few nice bucks that friends of mine have got pictures of down here in Southern Michigan. And if you saw my post yesterday, you saw my pic of the Backyard 13! Right there is a true Michigan giant. On top of that, now that I’ve moved down to the big buck capital of the state, expect a lot more big buck pics coming from me soon!

Also, be sure to catch the 3rd episode of Heartland Bowhunter‘s new season tonight on The Sportsman Channel at 8:30 PM EST!

Enjoy, and let us and the HB crew know what you think!

For more info, visit HeartlandBowhunter.com

I got a fun surprise the other day when I saw a post from a reader on our W2H facebook page, stating that he saw my name in the most recent Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine! Well low and behold, my girlfriend’s venison pot roast recipe was selected and published in the Reader’s Recipes section in D&DH! Pretty cool, right? That being said, here’s to hoping you’ll see me in Deer & Deer Hunting again soon, but with a real article this time!

If you’re interested in tasting this hearty venison recipe, I’ve included the details again below!

Marinade for Roast

In small bowl combine all marinade ingredients; blend well. Place roast in non-metal bowl or plastic bag. Pour marinade sauce over roast. Cover and refrigerate 3-4 hours turning several times.

Venison Roast with Veggies and Gravy Sauce

GRAVY

Pour gravy over roast, breathe in the amazing aroma and enjoy!

Season 4 of Heartland Bowhunter is set to premiere in just a couple weeks on the Sportsman Channel and leading up to that, the HB crew wants to answer your most pressing questions! Interested in what the HB crew’s favorite hunt was from last year? Or maybe you’re interested in more details about what to expect on this season of Heartland Bowhunter? Better yet, maybe you’re curious about who on the HB team is the worst at waking up early, being quiet on stand or shooting their bow! Whatever it is you want to know, this is your chance to get an answer!

In a special deal for the Wired To Hunt Nation, the HB crew will be taking a selection of your questions and then answering them personally by filming a video response to be featured here on Wired To Hunt! To get your question(s) answered, send us an email at wiredtohunt@gmail.com with your questions between now and Sunday, June 19th! And look for the the video response from the Heartland Bowhunter team some time next week!

Visit HeartlandBowhunter.com for more info about the team and the new season.

As a member of the Quality Deer Management Association I receive the Quality Whitetails magazine six times a year and boy is it an exciting day for me when the most recent issues hits my mailbox. It truly is one of the best hunting/deer related magazines in publication, if not the best. Across all of the great content provided within it’s pages, one of my favorite sections is titled “Age This”. In each issue the “Age This” section features pictures of several different bucks from around the country and a set of details regarding nutrition available, location of the deer, management practices, etc. Then from that picture and information, a handful of experienced hunters/managers/biologists estimate the age of the deer and share their reasons for this decision. For anyone interested in learning how to better age deer on the hoof, this is a terrific exercise to go through and I’ve found it both fun to read and very educational. I personally like to take a stab at aging the buck myself and then compare my thoughts and estimations to those of the experts. That being said, I’m excited to share with the Wired To Hunt Nation a sample straight from the “Age This” archives! I’ve got to send a big thank you to the QDMA for sharing this with us. That being said, take a good look at the buck above, see the details about him listed below and then check out the expert estimations from the panel. It should be a great way to test your “aging chops”! Once you do that, let us know what your guess was in the comments!

Age This – Kentucky

Owner: Tom Roby, Philpot, Kentucky

Location: Hancock Co. (on the Ohio River in western KY)

Date: September 18 (rut peaks in mid-November)

Notes: 170 acres, under QDM for eight years; 13 acres in warm- and cool-season food plots; 10 acres in warm-season grasses. Corn, soybeans and alfalfa grown on surrounding farms. High hunting pressure in the area, but most neighbors protect young bucks. Herd was hit hard by HD in recent years.

Kip Adams • 2½ • “This young buck hails from some of the best habitat in the country. He has a thin neck, long legs and overall lanky appearance. He has little muscling in his shoulders, a sleek torso, and a tight waist. Most of his body characteristics suggest he’s only 1½ years old. However, this is a good example of when to consider antler size, as yearlings can grow eight or more points but they rarely grow numerous points in combination with long tines and/or main beams. This buck can really be something special, so unless he crosses paths with a youth hunter, he’s a great one to let walk.”

Erich Long • 2½ • “What a great picture of a 2½-year-old. His front and rear end are about the same height and same size (a yearling’s rear end tends to be higher). His stomach and waist are tight, and his neck is thin and appears to be Photoshopped onto his body, since it doesn’t join the shoulder or chest. This deer should be a giant given a few more years and the continued support of the neighborhood!”

Joe Hamilton • 2½ • “Sometimes being familiar with the quality of deer in a specific area puts me at odds with the other panelists when aging a buck. I do have experience with deer from along the Ohio River in western Kentucky and have learned that the occurrence of Pope & Young bucks is as high as one per 150 acres. In this area bucks exhibit great potential for antler and body development at a very early age. Although this buck has two months of development before the peak of the rut, he is long-legged, slim necked, and sleek from stem to stern, so I would be inclined to put him in the 2½-year-old age class.”

Dave Edwards • 2½ • “This deer lives in the big buck country of western Kentucky. Abundant agriculture and fertile soils in this area have produced some giant whitetails, so it is not surprising to see a very respectable rack on this young buck. He demonstrates what I consider textbook characteristics for a 2½-year-old. His body is more developed than a yearling, but still has a somewhat lanky appearance. To me, the body of a 2½-year-old buck takes on a rectangular shape, similar to a 4½ but less developed, whereas a yearling’s chest is very thin compared to the rump, and a 3½-year-old buck’s chest is deeper than his stomach. This buck also has a relatively thin neck, but I suspect it will fill in some as the rut approaches. Great young buck with lots of potential!”

Jason Snavely • 2½ • “Note this buck’s clearly underdeveloped shoulders and hindquarters and an awful lot of space between hooves and chest line. Given the quality soils under him, this buck will be an incredible animal if given a few more years! He has a lot of characteristics of a yearling, so if your harvest guidelines are based on age, definitely enjoy the observation but don’t shoot! I ultimately decided 2½, and not yearling, because of his main beam and tine length. You should also note the smaller diameter of his bases, a characteristic of an immature buck. Don’t get caught up trying to decide 1½ or 2½… either way, he’s an awesome buck to have in the pipeline!”

BuckScore • 2½ • (100 percent confidence)

If you’d like to learn more about the Quality Deer Management Association or to sign up for the Quality Whitetails magazine visit their site here.

This past weekend, while camping in Northern Michigan with friends, we decided to go for a hike through the wooded sand dunes of the Lake Michigan coast. After spotting an interesting tree that would be perfect for a photo op, we snuck off trail to get closer. And I’m sure glad we did, because upon stepping over a nearby log we were greeted by the above image.  A newly born fawn, curled up, patiently awaiting the return of it’s mother. Upon discovering this little guy, I launched into an explanation to my friends of why fawns are left by themselves, the chances of this fawns survival, the effect coyotes have had on fawn recruitment and an analysis of the available fawning cover in the area. Needless to say this all went way over their heads and they may not have been listening to me at all in fact! That being said, I figured it might be better for me to share my thoughts with the Wired To Hunt Nation instead! So below, I’ve outlined a few of the points I shared with my friends and elaborated even further.

Fawns Found Alone

Very often folks find small fawns curled up in some brush, all by themselves. To most people, this looks like an abandoned baby deer with no mother, so they assume the fawn is orphaned and take it away to their home or an animal shelter. Unfortunately this isn’t the case! I know many of you already know this, but for those that don’t, it’s an important lesson. Does leave their fawns by themselves during the initial weeks after birth and only visit them a handful of times during a given day. This is essentially a defense mechanism, to protect a fawn from being found by predators during these early days when a fawn could not out run said predator. Fawns do have a scent, but it is very minimal and by leaving the fawn hidden primarily on it’s own, a doe will not attract attention to the fawns location and predators will have a hard time finding them.

Factors Effecting Survival of Fawns

The term “fawn recruitment rate” is a measure of an average number of fawns that survive into the fall of their first year, per doe. So for example if the recruitment rate is 1.2 fawns, it would mean on average 1.2 fawns make it to their first fall season per every adult doe in the area. This rate is incredibly variable across different parts of the country, but recently researchers have seen a marked decline in a wide number of areas. Much of this has been attributed to increased predation by predators, specifically coyotes. The effect that coyotes are having on deer herds throughout america is becoming an increasingly worrying issue every year, and it’s a topic that deserves several blog posts on it’s own! But let me say this, they are definitely having an impact on deer, especially fawns. According to research presented to us by Dr. Karl Miller at the QDMA Deer Steward course, coyote predation has in some cases cut fawn recruitment rates in half or worse and coyote predation rates in some areas have been as high as 25-50%.

In addition to predation, factors such as nutrition available, health of the birthing mother and presence of good fawning cover  are all important factors in the survival of fawns.

Good Fawning Cover

When we found the fawn pictured above, I was surprised and a bit dismayed by the area this fawn was hiding out in! It was next to a small log, with a few sparse bushes and plants nearby, but the fawn was largely out in the open and quite visible. Needless to say, this was not ideal fawning cover. Fawning cover really is an important factor to a fawns survival, mostly as a means to protect itself from predators. Being able to stay hidden is key and open wood-lots like where we found this fawn are definitely not ideal. In a perfect world a piece of property would have plenty of thick cover, with plenty of healthy forage in it or nearby. This allows a fawn to easily stay hidden and have quick access to food when it comes time to eat vegetation. The presence of good fawning cover greatly reduces the effect coyotes have on recruitment rate and it’s something that deer hunters and managers can greatly help with!

How We Can Help

As deer hunters and managers, we obviously want as many fawns as possible to survive their early months and make it to the fall. Luckily for us, there are a handful of ways we can help make this a reality. First off, as mentioned just above, we can have an easy impact on fawning cover. Work on your property to increase, grassy, brushy thick cover and you’ll without a doubt help more fawns survive. How can you do this? Try thinning out a timber lot to allow light to hit the floor and spur new growth, hinge-cut trees or plant warm-season grasses and other heavy cover plants in fields.

Secondly, you can help fawns survive by providing them and their mothers with high quality nutrition. This is important to do before the fawn is born, right through the time it is weaned. To do this, plan a food plot program that provides quality nutrition in those high stress periods of later winter, when food is scarce and summer when does are lactating and fawns are just starting to grow.

Lastly, you can  certainly make an impact on your fawn recruitment rate by controlling your coyote population. This in itself is a topic for another day, but take the time to do some additional reading on this and make it a priority to look into it. Hunting and trapping coyotes in the spring, around the time of fawn drop, is most effective.

You can also diminish the effect predators have on your fawns, by managing your deer herd towards a more natural sex ratio. Having a closer buck to doe ratio within a deer herd will encourage a tight and well timed rut, resulting in a synchronized drop of fawns by most does in the spring. When sex ratios are skewed, deer can be bred over several cycles, which can lead to a fawn drop that lasts several months. It’s much harder for coyotes to kill large numbers of fawns when they all drop at the same time. It’s a whole different story when fawns are dropped periodically over a couple months.

I’ve watched a lot of hunting DVD’s over the years and I’ve written about quite a few of them here on Wired To Hunt. Some are just fun to watch for the big racks, others paint a beautiful story of the hunt and others teach great whitetail hunting tips along the way. But few can do all three, and that is where Drury Outdoors stands above the competition. I’ve watched many of the Drury Outdoors DVDs in the past and they’ve always been some of my favorites, but this year they took it to a new level. With the recent release of Whitetail Madness 14, Dream Season 14 and 100% Wild Fair Chase 11 the Drurys have taken it up a notch in production, education and story telling. Making this year’s DVDs possibly the best ever to come from Drury Outdoors, and most likely some of the best the industry has seen as a whole.  Here are the top three reasons, in my opinion, that these DVD’s deserve such high acclaim.

Production: The Drurys have always put together high quality footage for their videos, but they’ve definitely taken it up a notch this year. There were a good number of scenes in theses DVDs that just took your breath away and really transported you into the hunts. When that happens, I know I’m watching some great footage. Interesting angles, great shots of nature and unique perspectives bring the Drury DVDs to life in grand fashion and it makes these vids really engaging. On top of just the plain beauty of much of the film, the editors of the new DVDs have started doing some really cool things. This may be a love/hate thing, but  I have enjoyed some of the new editing tricks that were employed on this years releases. Take home message here is that these DVDs are some of the absolute most professional, beautifully done and engaging DVDs available. Without a doubt, you’ll enjoy watching.

Education: One area that I believe the Drurys have been consistently ahead of the pack in, is their focus on education in their shows and DVDs. This trend definitely continues in 2011 and to an even greater extent. In my opinion, no other DVD series shares as much high quality information in this kind of format. While of course these videos are super enjoyable, you’ll also be clued into many different strategies, tactics and tips. Which ends up making these DVDs the ones I like sharing with new hunters the most. I know the new hunter will see some awesome hunts that are fun to watch, but they’ll also pick up a lot of tools of the trade along the way. Now, on the other hand, some folks complain that they can’t relate to the Drurys because they hunt on big managed farms in Iowa and other big buck states that are unrealistic for 99% of hunters out there. And yes, there is some truth to this. But the Drurys haven’t always had the luxury of such incredible resources and property, they without question worked very hard to get it and did things the right way. What I like about their DVDs now is that they help explain to folks like me, who don’t have a big farm, how they went about setting it up and managing for these great deer. Additionally, they include a whole slew of other team members on the DVDs that hunt in all different types of settings and situations. You’ve got hunts from Kentucky to Wyoming to Iowa to Ohio. Big farms, small tracts, private land on permission and maybe even public. There truly is something for everyone to relate to.

Storyline: As much as all the aforementioned topics made the 2011 DVDs great, I think the number one improvement this year was in the storyline. Over the years the Drury’s have always told a pretty good story of their season and explained things along the way. But two things stuck out this year that took them to a new level.

First, the Drury’s included many of their “Inner Circle” online segments in the DVDs this year! For those that don’t know, the Drurys and the whole team essentially kept an online video journal called “The Inner Circle”, in which they shared videos almost every day of them talking about hunting strategies, BS’ing in deer camp, hanging with friends and everything in between. This type of footage isn’t what you normally see on a hunting DVD, but by including the “Inner Circle” segements, I think it made the stories told that much more vibrant and relatable. Definitely one of my favorite additions to the 2011 DVDs.

Secondly, the Drurys told one particularly incredible story on their 100% Wild Fair Chase DVD this year, that by itself made it my favorite of the three 2011 releases. Few, if any, DVD has documented and told such a fascinating tale as the Drurys did this year with their chronicle of two bucks named Goliath and Baby G. I don’t want to ruin this story for you, so you’ll need to check it out for yourself. But we’re talking about years of encounters, film, trail camera pictures and sheds of two over 200″ bucks. Both bucks ended up being record setters in their own way. Truly an incredible storyline with lots of ups and downs, and the Drurys probably gave it at least 30 minutes on this DVD. Like I said, this by itself made the 100% Wild Fair Chase DVD my favorite of the three and I know many other folks will feel the same way. It’s a must see. And oh by the way, the story has a pretty good ending!

All in all, the Drurys did another great job this year with their 2011 releases. Whitetail Madness 14, Dream Season 14 and 100% Wild Fair Chase 11 are definitely on my short list of best hunting DVD’s for 2011. You can’t go wrong with any one of these, and in fact the only mistake you could make would be not to get all three!

To pick up copies for yourself, visit DruryOutdoors.com.