Wild Rose Country blooms with trophy big game

The good news is that Idaho has just about any species a hunter would love to hunt. The bad news is they’re just not as big as they used to be. The 1950s and ‘60s saw record-book mule deer being taken, and while there’s no doubt the state has some whoppers running around, the trends suggest the good old days may be behind them for mule deer. If you want to chase down a trophy cougar or maybe a…

Like its midwestern neighbors, Iowa is about whitetail deer. Sure, there are other opportunities to hunt turkey, migratory waterfowl and small game, but for big game hunting, it’s going to be whitetails. The highest number of all-time entries in the top 50 goes to the non-typical category. Most of those bucks high on the list have come in the 21st century while the top typical bucks entries…

Do you want to know a secret in the world of whitetail deer? Kentucky! If you’re looking to hunt trophy whitetail deer and even black bear, Kentucky is a solid bet. In fact, Kentucky ranks in the top 10 states for whitetails, according to the Boone and Crockett Club’s Records of North American Whitetail Deer. Kentucky wasn’t always the big buck factory that it has become. Consider…

It’s deer, deer, and more deer for Illinois in the Boone and Crockett records. To be fair, the state does offer hunting for turkey, waterfowl, small game, upland birds, and furbearers, but we do not keep records for longest spurs on a turkey or fluffiest squirrel tail. Illinois made waves back in 2018 when Luke Brewster killed a giant non-typical whitetail in Edgar County that scored a mind-…

If there ever was a sleeper state for whitetail deer, Indiana might be it. Consider Dustin Huff’s typical whitetail that scores 211-4/8 points. He killed that deer in 2021. That’s second only to Milo Hansen’s Canadian monster. And those deer will likely keep getting bigger because the state instituted a one-buck rule in 2002. Read more about that here. Consider this. From 1980-2002, Indiana…

Thankfully, the state of Georgia’s hunting season runs well past the regular college football season. Die-hard Bulldogs fans can rest easy knowing they won’t miss a game or a chance to hunt some whitetail deer and a few black bears in the Georgia pines. Monroe County had a couple of whopper deer entries, but that was decades ago. Today, Worth and Dooly County are coming into their own. And…

The Pelican State offers swamp to pine hunting

This may be the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but it doubles as the land of big whitetail bucks, some Canada moose, black bear and even a top five non-typical elk that died of pneumonia after it got its antlers stuck in the mud—true story! The big typical whitetail deer made the records many, many years ago. To be honest, the top black bear entries and that non-typical elk all happened in the 21st…

Manitoba delivers massive whitetails and more