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Mentoring a young or even just a new hunter is the best way to pass on the sport and the best practices of the sport. We’ve broken up the off-season preparations into a few categories. First up, is SAFETY & LICENSING. Now, during the off season, is the best time to start training and most importantly, encourage your mentee to get their hunting license. The tests usually take a few days to complete, so it’s better to do them in the off-time.Each state will have their own tests, some online, some

Riley Johnson of Lebanon, Tennessee, has been a member of the Mossy Oak ProStaff for three years, with a focus on gamekeeping. He's also a Mossy Oak Properties realtor. As a Mossy Oak Properties realtor, I not only sell land, but I also work with landowners to help them find people who want to lease land where they can hunt. We know that we can help our customers find small properties that they can lease, to manipulate the habitat, plant food plots and fruit trees, leave thick cover areas for

Todd Amenrud Managers of small properties (80 acres or less) will most often be lacking the space necessary to house many whitetails. Because of both biological and social carrying capacities, you just can’t fit that many animals into a small area without putting stress on them or causing degradation of the habitat. Densities vary widely throughout the country – anywhere from 5 or 6 deer per square mile (PSM), on up to over 50 animals PSM. There are even some pockets where the density has been

Dana Rogers The “more the better,” or perhaps more aptly we’d like “more with higher quality” when it comes to cover, especially that all-important “edge cover.” That isn’t just for whitetails but many different species. Are you interested in increasing deer populations where you hunt? Deer populations rise and fall, and today, it seems we’re on the downward trend throughout parts of the country. If you’re in an area where the whitetails need a little help, or you simply want to increase the

Mossy Oak ProStaffer Josh Grossenbacher from Sandusky, Ohio, has hunted turkeys for 25 seasons and has been entering turkey-calling contests for 17 years. Grossenbacher was the first runner-up in the National Wild Turkey Federation’s 2018 Grand National Calling Championship Senior Division and won the Head-to Head Grand National Calling Championship in 2017. Josh Grossenbacher | Mossy Oak ProStaff When we get past the obvious items I need for turkey hunting – calls, gun, shells and camo – the

Scott Ellis Hunting turkeys late in the season can present numerous difficulties, yet can be very productive. We will discuss my most successful tactics. There are a few variables that need to be identified to help decide your plan of attack. Once you have done so, put your strategy in place and throw your hail Mary. Breeding Cycle Understanding a little about the biology of a wild turkey can help aid in your overall hunting success. Identifying where the birds are in their spring breeding can

Bobby Cole Let’s say, for conversation, you kill an average of three turkeys each spring. Hopefully that’s accomplished with three shots. Three simple squeezes of the trigger that personify all the effort and preparation that goes into a season. Not to mention the early mornings and lost sleep. That’s a lot of importance placed on those “three squeezes.” Do you trust your shells and your chokes? You probably do, but are they the best you could have or just good enough? In today’s modern world

Don C. Keller | Originally published in GameKeepers: Farming for Wildlife Magazine Over the last 30 years, I have received hundreds of phone calls from landowners requesting Florida bass or tiger bass to be added to their lakes in order to increase the average size of bass caught. Most of these callers feel that by changing the genetics, the size will improve. Although the genetic growth potential of the tiger bass has been well documented, the most important key to rapid and sustained growth of

provided by the NWTF Turkey season is right around the corner, and for most of us in the U.S., going turkey hunting and actually hearing and seeing turkeys is fairly common; actually harvesting one, well, that’s a different story altogether. Regardless, having access to thriving turkey populations is something we get to enjoy as turkey hunters in America today, but it hasn’t always been this way. By the early-1900s, turkey populations in the U.S. were catastrophically low. Simply seeing a turkey

Austin Delano One of the most common mistakes I see in food plot plantings and farming for wildlife is improper timing relative to the crop and region. For example, the growing period for warm season annuals can vary pretty widely across the nation. The northernmost part of the states and on into Canada could have as little as 4-5 months of temperatures conducive to growing spring/summer crops. This is all dependent on how quickly the winter snow melts and soil temperatures rise, as well as when