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Articles by Mark Haslam
Ep. 479: Civil War - Part 5: The Most Underrated Man in the Civil War?
Subscribe Continuing on with Bear Grease's Civil War Summer series, Clay Newcomb travels to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library in Starkville, Mississippi, to uncover the story of the Union general who may be the most misunderstood figure of the war. Alongside Grant historian Dr. Louis Gallo, Clay traces Grant's unlikely journey from a quiet Ohio farm boy and gifted horseman to a failed farmer, struggling businessman, and former army officer battling personal struggles.
Ep. 1021: Foundations - How to Kill a Longbeard in Any Weather This Spring
Subscribe This week, Tony breaks down hunting turkeys in high winds, rain, and extreme temperatures.
Ep. 988: Foundations - Learn to Use All Types of Weather to Kill Big Bucks
Subscribe In this episode Transcript This week, Tony explains how weather messes with our hunt plans, but can also teach us to be far better deer hunters if we can get past what we want to believe about certain conditions.
Deer Decoys Done Right During the Rut
According to my wife, I’m a late bloomer with a lot of things. She’s not wrong, but one that she doesn’t care about but which bothers me a lot, is that I’m just starting to really incorporate decoys into my deer hunting strategy. I’ve spent so much time hunting public land and other pressured places, which often lack a good class of mature bucks, that it just never really resonated with me. I did manage to lure in a cruising Nebraska buck several years ago on some public dirt.
How to Hunt Pressured Deer Camps
Some of my first hunting experiences occurred at a deer camp. Looking back, that camp persisted on nostalgia and the culture it fostered in a rural Mississippi community. Occasionally, someone would shoot a big buck, and I don’t mean big for the pine hills of Mississippi. They would have been big anywhere. But those opportunities occurred about as frequently as snow did. When someone killed a deer of that magnitude, it might as well have been snowing.
A journey into the self
An invitation to an in-person group experiential workshop to unlock your creativity....a journey into the self. I aim to create a safe and conducive environment free from judgement whereby we can each be who we are, enabling each person to tap their creative potential.
How the Newest Generation of Whitetails Survives
A week ago, a buddy of mine sent me a picture of twin fawns lying on the forest floor. While scouring the woods for morels, he stumbled onto the pair. They couldn’t have been more than a few days old. These encounters are happening all over the whitetail’s range right now. If you’re lucky enough to walk up on a newborn, it might seem like it would be impossible for enough of them to survive the first few weeks of their lives to the point where we have viable populations to hunt.
How the Experts Manipulate Deer Travel for Better Shots
Top-tier deer hunters are never satisfied. After interviewing hundreds of these folks on the Wired to Hunt Podcast, this stands out as one of the only rock-solid consistencies among all of these hunters. They’re constantly trying to improve, constantly trying to learn more, constantly trying to fine-tune their approach and, most certainly, their set-ups. This last example is of particular interest at this time of year as hunters race to set, prep, and enhance stand sites before opening day.
Understanding Thermal Cover in Conifers
The term “thermal cover” is thrown around in the whitetail world almost as often as the term “food plot.” Cedar patches, pockets of spruce, and fields of warm-season grasses all come to a hunter's mind. But understanding the process and science behind what thermal cover truly is, will help you to better manage and improve your land. What is Thermal Cover? Just like every day since the start of time, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
A Silver Bullet Solution for Improving Wildlife Habitat
It’s long been preached that there are no silver bullets when it comes to improving wildlife habitat. There are no shortcuts, no end-around, no one-size-fits-all fixes. But what if I told you there was an exception? There is one silver bullet for wildlife habitat management. One concept that is applicable everywhere from Maine to Montana to Mississippi. There’s one approach that will help deer and turkeys, birds and bees, bugs and frogs and turtles, and well, you name it.
The Science of Planning the Perfect Plot
The food plot is one of the most utilized, yet perilous, land management techniques used by landowners and land managers alike. At its pinnacle, it's a multi-species food source beneficial to the resident animals, but can simultaneously be used as a strategic chess move by the hunter. At its very worst, it is a bare patch of dirt. Creating the perfect food plot for your property is often a complex and time-consuming chore, where research and extensive planning are often overlooked.
The Predator That Deer Fear Most
If you’re thinking wolves, coyotes, or cougars, think again. The predator deer fear most walks on two legs. A study conducted in 2018 at the Jones Center at Ichauway in southwest Georgia found whitetails were significantly more spooked at the sound of “super predator” humans than any other predator.
The Whitetail Manager’s Guide to Regenerative Ag Food Plots
It’s possible that you’re needlessly wasting money on your whitetail food plots and damaging elements of your hunting property just as much, if not more than you’re helping. Got your attention? Let me explain. Food plots are a proven means for providing high-quality wildlife forage and are an effective hunting tool. But it’s also true that traditional food-plotting practices can negatively impact your soil health, water quality, and surrounding native vegetation—not to mention your checking account.
Turkey Season is the Best Time to Test Your Whitetail Gear
Ask any random elk guide what midwestern and eastern hunters tend to get wrong about heading to the mountains to chase bugles, and you’ll hear two quick answers. First, they’ll tell you that clients rarely get into real high-country shape, and, second, they’ll tell you about untested gear and the trouble it causes. While holes in your gear game are easy to identify after a few days of living out of a wall tent at 8,000 feet, the same rules apply to whitetail hunting.
Yes, You Can Kill Big Bucks in Hot Weather
Mosquitoes, 90-plus-degree temperatures, and humidity so thick you can cut it with a knife—those add up to my kind of whitetail pursuit. Why? Because it’s a challenge to mentally and physically prepare yourself for the early season in the South. Season openers across the South range from July to September. This time of year comes with a high chance of being uncomfortable, which is why it’s crucial to give yourself an advantage.
Ep. 642: How to Find Where Bucks Like to Travel
If you’re fortunate enough to hunt whitetails in early September, you know how effective it can be to pattern bucks on their summer feeding routine. Factors like hunting pressure vary a bit from state to state, but this summer feeding pattern will soon come to an end, which often happens in conjunction with the shedding of their velvet. In my experience, while hunting the Great Plains, bucks shed their velvet around the first week of September...
Can Whitetails Stake a Claim in Alaska?
Other than humans, few mammals besides white-tailed deer have the flexibility and fortitude to live wherever they choose. As Rollin H. Baker details in the 1984 book “White-tailed Deer: Ecology and Management,” South America’s whitetails thrive from Peru’s humid, sea-level tropics to just above tree-line at 13,450 feet in northwestern Bolivia.
Ep. 620: Foundations - Tough Bucks
I slid across the lake’s surface like a skater on ice, the bow of my canoe slicing smoothly through the waves while diamonds sparkled on the water and shimmered off the antlers at my feet. This was something new. I’d seen flip-flops, fish, and beers in this context, but never antlers. I could get used to it. My friend Parker told me this was the very best part of hunting whitetails by boat. It isn’t seeing a buck emerge from the timber, taking a...
How to Find Bucks on Public Land After the Rut
The prospects of finding a mature whitetail buck on public land may seem like a fool’s errand and leave you disheartened. You’ve watched truck after truck leave your local public hunting area, presumably all donning firearms and all filling their tags. Why would you waste your time and sit in a proverbial snowbank, trying to fill your deer tag? The truth is, it can be a very difficult time to find a mature buck and kill him. On the contrary, what do you have to lose?
How to Avoid Crowds During the Rut
When it comes to getting away from hunting pressure during the rut, the key is timing and putting distance between yourself and other hunters. Deer, especially mature bucks, will typically only tolerate a small amount of human intrusion. They are going to find areas where hunters aren't, so that means you need to as well. Stay creative and separate yourself from the masses to get close to a pressured public land buck this fall.
How to Call in Bucks During Each Phase of the Season
Calling a whitetail into shooting range is simply one of the coolest things you can do as a hunter. Not to mention, it’s awfully effective. But (and when it comes to good things there’s always a but), if you use your calls at the wrong times or in the wrong ways they can do more harm than good. Here is a simple breakdown of how to call to bucks the right way, at the right times, during each different phase of the whitetail season. Early Season The early season is a time for very limited calling.
How to Use a Doe Decoy During the Rut
Deer decoys aren’t just for the Midwest. You don’t have to be immersed in agriculture fields or extensive, well-manicured food plots (but they can certainly help). From my experience, pinpointing your local peak breeding window and exactly where does will be in late October and early November are key factors. I’ve always believed the best decoy is a doe, and I’ve killed many good bucks using that style. Why mimic a doe in heat?
How to Track a Buck in the Big Woods
His name was Ernie. The sun has just gone down on the last day of the Vermont deer season when the flannel-clad old man with a white beard backed his rusty Chevy into the parking lot with the antlers of the biggest 10-pointer I’d ever seen sticking up from the tailgate. I was 17 years old, sitting in my car outside the general store and big game check-in station, eating beef jerky and begrudging my rotten luck.
Lies Hunters Believe About Blood Trailing Deer
Blood trailing a wounded deer is a situation that can break bad in a hurry. This is due to the generally high optimism before the trail starts, to the reality that often sets in when the spoor starts telling the real story. Unless you’re dealing with a double-lung or heart shot, or even a severed artery, there are no forgone conclusions. Well, that’s not true. If you shoot a deer in the liver or the guts, it’s going to die. When and where are the big questions.
How to Hunt a Thermal Hub
Growing up at family deer camp, I would always hear my dad and uncles talking about these dynamite hunting spots they would find in creek bottoms. And how difficult it was to hunt due to the swirling wind down there. The more time I spent in the woods, the more I started recognizing these locations that I refer to as bowls. Over the last ten years, I’ve heard of this fancy term—thermal hub—used to describe these same areas. What is a Thermal Hub?
How to Find Pressured Bucks
Pressure may be the most difficult challenge a whitetail hunter faces each fall. Stand selection, access, adjacent landowners, shifty wind, it all adds up. Hunters blame "being skunked" on a variety of excuses: moon cycles, unseasonably warm temperatures, barometric pressure, and the various phases of the rut. But despite what your cousin's neighbor said, human presence is the leading culprit for a shift in the whitetail woods—outside of breeding season.
How to Increase Daylight Movement on Food Plots
Summer is the time to grind and prepare food plots for the season ahead. Most hunters and land managers know the power of sweat equity. Permanent deer stand sites can become stale if not set up efficiently or adjusted over time. Whitetails relax during the offseason but promptly shift back into their intense survival mode once hunters start hitting the woods for fall openers.
Why Some Whitetails Grow Fangs
Vampire deer sound like something out of a bad horror flick. But some small cervid species primarily found in Asia sport curved tusks, or fangs, measuring 2 to 3 inches on top of their petite frames. These vampire deer, such as the Chinese water deer and Siberian musk deer, don’t grow antlers—or suck blood—but use their giant canines to intimidate and spar with other bucks.
How to Create Ideal Fawning Cover for Whitetails
The future of any whitetail herd is in the success and survival of each year's fawn crop. Deer are exceptionally adaptive but certainly require adequate cover for safety. Trying to grow "giant bucks" is futile if you fail to maintain a positive fawn recruitment rate. What is fawn recruitment rate? It's a measurement of the number of fawns per adult doe that survive to at least six months of age. Therefore, a rate of 1.0 is one fawn recruited into the herd per one adult doe.
Why Fawn Rescues Fail
Everyone knows to not disturb a bird’s nest. In fact, many folks enforce the myth that birds abandon every egg or fledgling touched by humans. Why, then, must wildlife agencies remind the masses each May and June to keep their mitts off “abandoned” fawns curled beneath shrubs, backyard decks, and even parked cars? And why do politicians scold wildlife agencies while “paroling” bottle-fed “rescue fawns” the agency intends to euthanize, as per science-based policy?
How to Improve Any Bedding Area
In the grand scheme of things, bedding areas are small. Usually, you're working with one or two core locations, and often not more than a handful of acres in size and sometimes it's as small as your living room. So it's important to maximize the overall use and effectiveness of these areas. The more diversity you can provide within them, the more attractive they are.
The Most Underrated Type of Food Plot
Safety, cover, and high-quality forage are key for whitetail management. Provide those features and you will immediately improve the huntability of your food plots and how frequently deer utilize the space. However, you must also consider crop height, cover screens, protein levels, and soil nutrition when choosing warm and cool-season plantings. Sunn hemp checks all those boxes.
How to Improve Pine Stand Habitat for Whitetails
Tree farms get a bad rap by hunters and are too often viewed as “wildlife wastelands.” But proper planning and management with timber stand improvement (TSI) can make pines a wildlife paradise. They offer safety, food, and hunting opportunities. From the sweltering velvet season to the shortened days of the post-rut, the needs of deer don’t change much. Whitetails need three main habitat features within their home range: variety of food, water, and cover.
New book reflects on the last two decades of the British beer scene
Audio Description Login here to listen to the audio description The British beer scene has changed dramatically over the last 20 years and its story is celebrated in a new CAMRA title. Modern British Beer, written by award-winning writer and photographer Matthew Curtis, maps its evolution through the intricate stories of individual regional brews over the last two decades....
Getting online with tackling motor finance fraud, a guest opinion
As recently reported by AM Online, there’s a growing trend of vehicle financing being completed via the internet. This creates new opportunities for car dealers, but also runs the higher risk of increased financial crime and fraud. Showrooms are still an important part of buying a vehicle. People want to physically see and test drive a car, but also want a quicker and more seamless financing process. They’re happier arranging finance in the comfort of their own home.
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