Author: Larry Weishuhn

Here we were, talking about a friend’s new mount. “I don’t know how to tell Jim, or if I should, but that mount he just got back doesn’t look anything like a Whitetail! It looks more like a rat with antlers than the magnificent buck he was. Horrible!,” my friend said. Before I could agree, Jim’s and my mutual friend continued. “He must have thought he was getting a really good deal. He did tell me the guy only charged $150 for a shoulder mount and told him he’d have it back in less than three months. Actually, that should…

“Dad, we want to go deer hunting with you and I want to shoot a deer!” I recall that my Dad smiled at this exclamation and nodded approvingly. At the time, I was nearing seven and my sister, Beth, was five. I had actually been hunting with Dad for the past couple of years. Beth joined us when she was four. We sat in blinds, ate cookies, drank hot chocolate, looked at books, played games, looked through Dad’s binoculars and did our best to be quiet, which we seldom were. Dad simply smiled. When it became obvious that we were…

Have you ever been locked into trying to take a particular buck, especially an o-l-d, wily Whitetail that has survived at least six or more hunting seasons? I have! There is nothing easy about it! I started hunting Whitetails when I was four, sitting in a tree with my dad. By the time I was six, I was sitting by myself in a “deer stand.” (Back then, that meant sitting on a limb in a tree.) My “deer rifle” during those early years was a single-shot .22 Rimfire, back when rimfires were legal for deer. Thankfully, that’s not so today.…

Photos by Larry Weishuhn Outdoors “Larry, have you ever caught a really big catfish, something bigger than, say, 30 pounds?” Luke Clayton, with whom I do a weekly radio show, a weekly podcast on Sporting Classics Daily, and a weekly television show, (A Sportsman’s Life” on CarbonTV.com) was asking. Before I could respond, he continued. “I’ve got a friend, David Hanson, who fishes Lake Tawakoni for big blues. He’s invited us to fish with him. He said if you had a friend you might want to bring with you, that would be good, too.” That’s where I interrupted him. “NO!…

“That’s it!” exclaimed the hunter, throwing his Stormy Kromer to the ground. Shaking his head in disgust, he added, “I missed another buck. Less than a hundred yards. I’m headed to the gun shop as soon as I get home. It’s time for a new rifle.” I secretly wondered if he had properly sighted in his rifle or if he had a bad case of buck ague, closing his eyes and jerking the trigger. Or was there really a problem with his rifle? I suspected it really did not make any difference, as he was convinced the reason for missing…

“Why did you not shoot that buck? He walked to within less than 20 feet of where you were hidden under that pile of corn stalks,” exclaimed the smiling neighboring farmer when I walked back to my pickup, which was parked at his gate. I simply shook my head. For most of the Iowa late muzzleloader season, I had targeted and hunted one individual buck. He was “just an eight-point,” but that eight-point carried antler mass the size of a soft-drink can from just above his antler burs to nearly the end of his tines. His shortest tines were his…

In an ideal world I never would have quit hunting Canada for whitetails, especially with my long-time friend Ron Nemetchek and his North River Outfitting. Simply to quit hunting Alberta had been a matter of economics, not the cost of the hunt, but the cost of time. As a producer of outdoor television shows I could go to Canada, hunt for a week, and, hopefully produce one really interesting episode. Or, I could during those same nine days hunt two different destinations in the States, produce two shows complete with numerous encounters and likely show the taking of two mature…