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Hunting
Opening morning of the 2009 turkey season had arrived, and I couldn’t think of a time when I was more eager to start the season. I had scouted the area I would be hunting a couple of days earlier and had found four mature gobblers and a wad of hens roosting on the edge of…
The sound of a dog barking rang loudly through the mixed hardwoods on top of a mountain ridge in north Georgia. A sure sign to Bob Thomas, of Morganton, that his black mountain cur, Moe, had just treed a squirrel and was waiting on him. Carrying a .17 HMR rifle with a high-quality scope, Bob…
The hounds struck soon after being dropped for the first time of the evening, raising a din that echoed across the valley and through the bright moon-lit woods of Oconee County. “Jake strike!” barked Jake Garner, of Zebulon, the elected president of the Georgia Federation of Coon Hunters and the judge of this evening’s cast.…
In a full sprint, I ran through almost total darkness trying desperately to keep up with the man in front of me. A midnight-black pit bull with a grizzly bear’s build was almost pulling him through the woods. Even the choke collar around its neck wasn’t slowing it down. At times I could barely see…
This giant non-typical Upson County buck is said to gross 208 inches and could make the Boone & Crockett record book, if it nets above the 195-inch minimum. Susie Tate, a GON Truck-Buck entrant for Week 12 North, killed the buck just before dark on Dec. 2. Susie and her husband, Billy, spend half the year…
It’s cold, the woods are gray, nothing is growing, and deer season is winding to a close — but my excitement about hunting is still high. That’s because you and I are about to spend a year together talking about ways to improve the habitat where you hunt. Convinced by my own experience, I know…
Levi Garrett trudged through the thick privet hedges on the outskirts of the swamp bottom, an enormous array of 10 incredibly tall and almost perfectly symmetrical dark brown tines weighing heavily on his drooping head. On a cold, clear day, gunshots rang out around the county, and the sounds of thumping hooves and vocal deer…
Last fall, a rainstorm came that kept the pigs pinned to the same sorghum plot Jeff McCrackin had seen them in the day before. When he and his 8-year-old stepson Lane returned at daybreak, the field was still full of pork. They scanned the black pack of feeding squealers for a few minutes, passing over…
The mature doe cautiously exited the Oglethorpe County clearcut and trotted toward the bottom of a deep ravine. Six other antlerless deer and a small 4-pointer followed her. The whole group hesitated before entering another thick cutover. I picked out the leader, converted her to tablefare, bolted in another cartridge and dropped the second largest…
Hunting isn’t just about the killing — but it sure is fun trying everything in your power to get in position to let an arrow fly. Just ask Jake Meyer. Jake, 14, of Neptune Beach, Fla. was the 2008 SEEDS Big-Buck Contest winner. He won the grand prize big-game hunt to Wyoming, where he spent…
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