Funny how quickly a hunter's thoughts can change from, "Next deer season will never get here," to, "Uh-oh, I'm behind on setting up my bow, hanging my tree stands and getting my food plots ready to plant."
All across North America, I'm sure that realization is setting in with hundreds of thousands of whitetail hunters. There's something about the calendar flipping from June to July that makes autumn seem much more imminent. And with quite a few deer seasons now opening literally before summer officially ends, the urgency to wrap up preparations is suddenly obvious.
If it's any comfort, I can assure you those of us at North American Whitetail are scurrying every bit as much as you are. As we put together some of the biggest magazines issues we've ever produced and wrap up NAW Television editing for this year, our first hunts of the year are rapidly approaching.
The start is set for the last week of August, when I plan to head to western Alberta for a whitetail bowhunt with Todd Bunnage of Rugged Outfitting (www.ruggedoutfitting.com). And you can be sure there are many more early-season hunts to come, including Stan Potts' annual early-September bowhunt with Mike and Esther Watkins of Trophies Plus Outfitters (www.trophiesplusoutfitters.com) in northeastern Wyoming. Immediately after that, Stan will be heading to northern Alberta, where he'll hook up with Don and Kandi Kisky on a bowhunt. NAW editor Duncan Dobie, Dr. James Kroll ("Dr. Deer") and I are also in the final planning stages of September muzzleloader hunts in Kansas. By the traditional October start of whitetail season in most places, we hope to have a lot of nice bucks already on videotape (and, if all goes according to plan, several in the taxidermy shop).
In the meantime, there's plenty of work left to do. And, if you're an NAW subscriber or newsstand customer, plenty of reading. Our just-published August issue is one of our fattest magazines ever, and it's now on its way from the printer to you. But as big as that issue is, it pales in comparison to the September issue we're now preparing to print. That one will be our biggest issue yet. And the October issue, now in final stages of editing, figures to be roughly that size as well.
Well, enough talk about those magazines -- time to get back to the job of making them happen. You're not the only one who has to get his work done before he can go deer hunting!
North American Whitetall North American Whitetail is designed for the serious trophy hunter. It provides authoritative coverage of world-class whitetails, the latest approaches to deer management and advanced hunting techniques.
