I have bow hunted since 1967. I have read as many magazine articles on whitetail deer as possible for 50 years. It seems like I've read a million articles about the rut and at times, most of them are redundant. However, they do two things for me...... one, they keep me enthused about hunting and two, sometimes I read an article that seems like I've read it before but the author changed the wording just enough that I actually realized something that I hadn't thought of before. It gives me a different perspective to try out. You just have to weed through all the things you've seen or heard before. When you finally come across an article that is well written that gives you different perspective it makes it all worth it.
Fully agree... guys my writing WAS NOT intended to be an attack on the rut type articles out there or any others along those lines. My comments were a poke in jest simply due to every time I scroll my FB feed it seems that every other link is a post to some "Rut Tactics" article or some product that I'm gonna have to have in order to fill my tag.... ( and FWIW I am guilty of promoting products, JS It just got me thinking that we so easily get caught up in all these things at times, I am guilty as well. There was a time I couldn't digest those articles fast enough and I still read many of them.... My thoughts this AM were nothing more than to remind folks to slow down, enjoy their moments afield, and appreciate the luxuries of the woods we enjoy as bowhunters / hunters.
I do appreciate the conversations this article has provoked today. I posted it on multiple platforms and the feedback both publicly and privately has been quite remarkable....
Excellent question. Take a look at Deer & Deer hunting magazine for example. They used to be known as a magazine that covered a lot of science of whitetails. Their content was heavily skewed towards the biology of deer hunting. That is something that is needed and no one in print magazines is really focusing on it right now. Deer and Deer hunting is running articles about country western singers who like to hunt. Who cares? Not me. What a waste of space. North American Whitetail is and always has been about giant bucks. It runs about half content about huge bucks that have been killed around north America, stories that I really enjoy reading and writing. (Spoiler alert: My story about Steve Niemerg's huge buck shot in a blizzard is a great tale about persistence and dedication. It will be in the next issue). The other half of NA whitetail covers how-to content, with some science and biology when they can get it. I did a story a couple years ago about research on what deer can see, acuity, colors, etc. It was based on research done at the University of Georgian and the University of Washington. It was cutting edge stuff and has been copied over and over again in the three years since it came out. It's hard to find new cutting edge stuff. That's the kind of thing magazine readers gobble up and want more, but it's hard to find, research and explain in ways that the average hunter can understand, plus take something away that he can use to better his hunting. So I guess that's the real key, trying to offer something in each article that the reader can take away and try where he hunts. And that seems to be what most people are missing when they read today's magazines. Keep in mind that magazine editors today are getting more and more pressure from the advertising departments. The advertisers are driving the bus and sometimes they want to push pretty hard, magazine editors have to hold the line so content doesn't cross over into advocacy for a product, because when they do, you start to lose the reader's trust. My trust level is very thin these days and I bet most of the people reading this can say the same.
