Apologies for the delay in getting your Friday Morning Mashup to you today! I’ve been home sick pretty much all week, and have not been in any condition to write much at all. That being said, I mustered up some energy this afternoon and made sure I could share the best whitetail links from across the web with you this week! So read on, have a great weekend and God Bless!

Giant Illinois Buck is Potential World Record 8 Pointer – Whitetail 365: As always, world record hysteria explodes whenever a monster is killed. But supposedly this one may be the real deal. A one-time world record 8 pointer was actually shot only a few miles from my house here in Michigan some years ago, but it looks like an Illinois buck may be taking on the mantle soon!

Bowhunting Suburban Bucks – Dreams To Reality: A great article from Dan Perez of Whitetail Properties, as he discusses the tactics that can be used to kill whitetails near to town!

The Black Belt Might Be the Best Place To Shoot A Deer During  the Rut – Deer & Deer Hunting: Interesting insight regarding the hunting of Alabama’s “Black Belt” during their late winter rut!

Top 10 Recommendations for Managing Land to Yield Mature, Huntable Deer: Part 3, Cover – Growing Deer TV Blog: Dr. Grant Woods leads us through his 3rd most important factor for managing land to yield mature and huntable deer and it is cover! Great tips from a man I respect tremendously!

Why Food Plots Are Better Than Bait for Deer Hunting – Whitetail 365: Scott Bestul of Field & Stream takes on the topic of food plots vs bait. I stand with Scott!

With February now upon us, the unofficial start of shed hunting season is pretty much here! And with the ever growing interest in shed hunting, I’ve decided that we can do a better job here on Wired To Hunt of  showcasing some of the awesome sheds being found out there. So how do I plan to do that? With the Wired To Hunt Nation’s help of course!

What I’m proposing is this. If you find a cool shed this winter/spring, we want to feature it on Wired To Hunt! If you’d like your shed on the blog, send an email to wiredtohunt@gmail.com with the following items:

- A great picture or pictures of your shed. Preferably one of the pics would be of the shed as you found it in the wild.

- Details regarding the state you found the shed, the date of your find, and a description of the terrain where the shed was located.

Hopefully this will result in all of us being able to check out some awesome sheds, while also learning a little bit more about where/how sheds are found!

So with that being said, whether you are starting now or in a few weeks, get ready to strap on your boots and get walking. As a little bonus, whoever sends in the pic of the “coolest” shed (admittedly this will be pretty subjective), will win a Wired To Hunt trucker hat! Let me know if you have any questions, otherwise good luck shed hunting and I look forward to seeing what kind of monster bone you guys can find!

The weekend is finally here, so without further delay, here is your Friday Morning Mashup! We’ve got some giant bucks and a few neat shed hunting articles too. And while it’s true that the “off season” is here,  there’s still plenty to keep whitetail hunters busy. So read up on this great whitetail literature and then go enjoy the great outdoors!

Giant Whitetails – A Trailcam Surprise – DreamDirt: Our pal Jason Smith of DreamDirt  got some trailcam pics/video of some GIANT Iowa bucks recently. Gotta love these kind of surprises!

Shed Antler Hunting Tips and Strategy – DreamDirt: Speaking of Jason, he also put together a great shed hunting article, which ought to be useful for a lot of people with shed hunting just over the horizon!

Search for Antlers – HuntingNet.com: Brandon Wikman gives us his two cents on why you should hit the woods in search of fallen antlers! I’d recommend it as well.

We Found Them! G4′s Sheds – Midwest Whitetail Blog: If Brandon’s blog still didn’t get you excited to shed hunt, this one definitely will. Check out the MEGA-GIANT sheds that Bill Winke and his crew recently found off the buck they call the Double G4 buck.

Top 10 Recommendations for Managing Land to Yield Mature, Huntable Deer – Growing Deer TV Blog: Dr. Grant Woods discusses the first of his top 10 recommendations for managing land to grow more mature bucks. Specifically he discusses the fact that “dead deer don’t grow”! …Write that down.

Tall-Tined Indiana Giant Buck – 169! – Mike Hanback’s Big Deer: A great story of an Indiana giant. These big buck stories are just what ya need to stay motivated through these cold winter months to keep working towards the 2012 season.

As many of you know, last week I attended the 2012 SHOT Show in Las Vegas, which is the largest shooting/hunting/outdoors convention in the country. Needless to say, it was a wild and overwhelming experience. The week prior I attended the largest archery only convention, ATA, and I thought that was big! But SHOT truly dwarfs it. That all being said, regardless of the size, the SHOT show truly was an incredible experience. With the latest and greatest hunting products from across the hunting world represented, there truly was too much to see. I only had one day, so my time at SHOT consisted of me running back and forth across the mammoth convention center for 10 hours striaght, seeing everything I possibly could.

Along the way I saw some incredible new products, a lot of interesting folks and a good number of my friends in the hunting world as well! A few of the more interesting new products that I saw came from companies like Thompson/Center, Sitka Gear, Under Armour, Bushnell, StealthCam and ScentLok. But there’s truly too much to mention in a single post. So that being said, keep any eye out for new product videos from both the ATA and SHOT shows coming soon! Until then, here are a few images from my time down in Vegas!

The last two days at the SHOT show have brought the announcements of the winners for both the Sportsman Channel and Outdoor Channel’s 2011 awards. Of course this is always an exciting set of annoucements, but this year it’s even more so, as a bunch of folks who follow Wired To Hunt took home hard-wear!

Specifically on the Sportsman Channel side, all four major hunting related award winners were shows put together by people that are part of the Wired To Hunt Nation! Huge congrats to all of our friends and keep up the great work!

So without further adieu, here are the winners of the most relevant awards from the two ceremonies!

Sportsman Channel – Sportsman Choice Awards

Best Hunt Show – Midwest Whitetail with Bill Winke: Big win here for our friends at Midwest Whitetail, who actually won by write-in!

Best Bowhunting Show – Heartland Bowhunter: Definitely a deserving award for our pals over at HB!

Best Animal – Whitetail Deer from Whitetail Properties: While I thought WP was also deserving of the best hunt show, I’m glad they at least got some recognition on award night with this award.

Best New Show – Hallowed Ground Outdoors: Great news here for our friends at Hallowed Ground Outdoors who had a great first season!

Outdoor Channel – Golden Moose Awards

Fan Favorite Hunting Show – Bone Collector: Finally got to meet Michael, Nick and T-Bone at the ATA and SHOT shows, all great guys and look for them to appear more on Wired To Hunt in the future!

Best Big Game Hunting Show – Driven TV with Pat & Nicole

Best Deer Hunting Show – Craig Morgan All Access Outdoors:

Fan Favorite Overall Show – Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild: Big win here for my fellow South Central Michigan hunter!

The view from my hotel room this morning in Las Vegas.

Gotta love show season! While seemingly just returning from the ATA show in Ohio, I’m now already waking up this morning across the country in Las Vegas, Nevada, here for the only hunting related show bigger and more exciting than the one I was at last week! The SHOT show is the nation’s number one hunting, shooting and outdoor related convention and I’ll be attending for the first time this year. I’ve actually heard rumors that if you were to walk down every aisle of this convention once, you would walk something like 30 miles!

That being said, I’m not planning on seeing everything! haha. But, I am planning on seeing as much as I can that pertains to whitetail hunters. New rifles, muzzle loaders, trail cameras, camo and accessories, I’m sure there will be tons to see. So as we did last week, I’m planning on sharing as many pictures and updates as I can throughout the day on the Wired To Hunt Facebook page.

Be sure to “Like” our page, and then check back frequently as I’ll be posting all the highlights throughout the day. And hopefully late this week I’ll be able to get videos from ATA and SHOT online too!

Wired To Hunt Facebook Page

The 2012 ATA show is now in the history books, but show season is really just kicking off. I’ll be continuing our coverage at the SHOT show next week in Las Vegas and then we’ll be hitting a few more deer expos throughout the winter, so look for some great info on new products this winter! In regards to my ATA show content, look for new product videos and other interviews getting posted this weekend or early next week!

That being said though, there are still some folks hunting and if you are, I wish you the best of luck out there! In this weeks Friday Morning Mashup we’ve got big bucks, a few updates from the ATA and a couple more interesting articles related to deer hunting in general. Really  a little bit for everyone, no matter if you’re still hunting or are already planning for 2012. So read on and enjoy!

ATA Update – Bowhunting.com: A bunch of pictures of some of the ATA’s coolest new products!

ATA: Stealth Cam’s new  Drone - Stuck In The Rut: A cool new trailcam from the Stealth Cam, this one with cellular technology allowing you to view your photos remotely. This isn’t something completely new, but it looks like it’s been done in a good way w/these cams.

Confessions of a Mediocre Shot, and Some Thoughts On How To Get Better – Big Buck Zone: Some helpful tips for improving your ability to make consistent shots with a firearm!

Wolves and Deer Hunters: A New Year – Deer & Deer Hunting: Some thoughts on the recent announcement from Minnesota that they’ll be launching a wolf hunting season in 2012 and how this might affect deer hunters as well.

Illinois Dream Buck – Main Frame 8 Scores 160 Plus – Big Deer Blog: A story of a giant 8 pointer killed in Illinois. Sure would love to see one of these next year!

How Weather Conditions Effect Hunting – Growing Deer TV Blog: As always, Dr. Grant Woods has some great insight into whitetail behavior, this time in particular it’s relation to weather. Very interesting.

Talk about a whirlwind. The 2012 ATA show, for me, was here and gone in a flash. I drove into Columbus last night and left for home this evening! But I sure packed in a lot during that 24 hour period.

Things got kicked off right away when I arrived in town and headed to the Hyatt Regency hotel bar. The mezzanine level floor was packed to the brim with essentially  everyone in the hunting industry and that ended up making for a very fun night. One thing I love about being involved in the hunting world is that there truly seems to be almost like family or fraternal feel to it. Everyone bonds so well (for the most part) and it just makes for a lot of great conversations and good times.

That being said, the good times certainly continue onto the tradeshow floor itself. When you walk through the doors into the ATA show it’s like walking into a Disneyworld made for adults, specifically adults addicted to bowhunting. Every major brand you can think of has a huge booth, there’s flashing lights, incredible displays and interesting people everywhere you turn. It’s pretty awesome, but at times can even  be a little overwhelming. That being said, the last two years when I first arrived,  I just took 20 minutes to just walk around and soak it in. But from there, it’s game on.

One of the first things anyone new would notice at the ATA show is that just about everyone you’ve ever seen on hunting TV is here and walking around! It makes for a neat experience for fans and a great opportunity to network and share experieinces. For example,this year I finally was able to personally meet Michael Waddell and Nick Mundt from Bone Collector, as well as Tiffany Lakosky, while also seeing plenty others too! A mainstay for the show is the “celebrity” signings and you often see lines snaking around various booths, as people wait to get pictures or products signed by their favorite TV hunters. While I don’t really have any interest in getting autographs, it is fun to chat with some of these folks and in fact a lot of these guys are friends now and it’s always great to catch up at these shows. That being said, ATA more than anything is about the products…

And new products are something that were certainly not in short supply at this years ATA show. Thousands of new archery accessories, bows and random gizmos were displayed and touted this week at ATA, and I was fortunate enough to get the scoop on many of them, so look for those product videos soon. But of all the new  items I saw, a few stood out above the rest. In particular the new items launching for Muddy Outdoors seemed to be one of the more exciting pieces of news, as they are branching into brand new product lines of scent elimination, bow accessories and arrows! Another product that stood out for me was a new quiver launching from Trophy Ridge that incorporates a number of new features, including internal and external LEDs to help with low light arrow organization and travel.

The new Bowtech Insanity CPX bow was another that seemed to grab a  lot of peoples attention and after getting the lowdown from the bow designer, I can see why! This latest offering from Bowtech is super fast and also has some really innovative new features to dramatically improve accuracy, I think we’ll see this bow pick up a lot of fans.

Now on top of these items, I saw tons of other really interesting items from companies like G5, Sitka Gear, Under Armour and many more. So keep an eye out for a lot of product videos and more details coming soon!

The ATA show, aka Archery Trade Association show, is the largest archery/hunting convention in the United States and boy is it an incredible event. The latest and greatest bows, hunting accessories, gizmos and gadgets. “TV hunters” (ie. the Drury’s, whom I’m pictured with above at last years show), random celebrities (like Scottie Pippen last year haha), manufacturers and retailers. You’ll find the who’s who of the hunting world in Columbus, Ohio this week and I count myself lucky to be invited to such an event.

With such a plethora of hot new products and exciting announcements taking place, I’m going to do my very best to report back to you all on the latest and greatest in the hunting/archery industry. While you can of course look forward to many product videos, first impressions and news updates on the blog over the coming weeks, I’m also going to be covering the show as close to “live” as I can through our Facebook page!

I’m going to be posting a TON of photos and updates from the show on Wednesday, so be sure to hop over to the Wired To Hunt facebook page, click “Like” and check back frequently! And if you have a certain product or brand that you’re particularly interested in hearing about, post your request on our Facebook wall and I’ll be sure to head over there and send you an update and pic from the booth!

Click here to visit the Wired To Hunt Facebook page!

Update 1/12/12: Now that I’ve returned from ATA – be sure to check out my recap and first impressions here.