Scott and I have managed to get out to film some velvet a few times this summer. What a great past time it is! We've managed to film several nice bucks this summer and we've still got a month and a half left to gather more footage. We've seen some pretty good bachelor groups running together, and one particular threesome has us really excited. "Weight", "Tilt", and "M&M" are regular evening visitors on a farm that is new to us this year. All 3 bucks appear to be at least 4 years old and are very healthy. At this point, we're fairly certain that all of them will go over 140". Scott captured a few still images from some of the footage, but you'll have to wait for the good close ups and footage on our midwestwhitetail.com Great Plains Show prostaff page. Look for it next month!

a fleeting glimpse of "Weight" and "M&M"

"Tilt" posed for us for a little while

"Tilt" got his name due to the way that his rack appears to be tilted back. He's going to carry some great mass!


We've been noticing quite a bit of antler growth in the past few weeks as well. "Right Hook" has come on strong in the past 3 weeks and is ending up where we hoped he would. He may even have a few more inches yet to grow. We're really liking the looks of his main beams. He reminds us a little of a KS hit list buck that we know very well.


"Right Hook" is under debate right now. We know another year would do him a lot of good, but he'd make some nice wall art this year. I just keep remembering what "First Pull" did when I passed him last year. What do you guys think?



Speaking of KS, we haven't even started that hitlist yet. We had camera/squirrel trouble the first go around, and we still have 3 weeks before our next trip to the farm. We've got our fingers and toes crossed that the next card pull down there produces some shooters for us.

Over the years we've gotten numerous trail camera photos of single fawns with their mothers and even the set of twins every now and then.  But this year, we were lucky enough to get multiple pictures of a set of tripletts.  I'm not sure how rare this is, but on this particular property, this is the first time I can remember seeing tripletts.  Hopefully all three are bucks with good genes!

We also got a couple different pictures with a set of twins in the same area.  With all of these new mouths to feed, either the farmer is going to need to plant more crops or we're going to have to practice some QDM this fall.......my vote is for the latter....fresh backstraps!!

During the past week we have pulled a few more cards and been very pleasantly surprised to see "First Pull" show up on a new salt like and hitting it multiple times.  "FP" is a buck we had nicknamed "Big 7" last year.  Bo and another hunter on our property both had encounters with this buck during last years season, but decided let him walk.  He had the body of a mature whitetail, but his rack last year just did not seem to match his body.  We were really hoping he would hit his potential this year.....and it's amazing what a difference a year can make.  Here are a few pictures of FP during the 2009 season.

Bo and I are fortunate enough to have a couple new properties to archery hunt this year.  All of which just happen to be within 15 minutes of both of our homes, so we'll be spending quite a bit of time on each of the properties over the course of the season.  But as we all know, running trail cams on a brand new piece of land is exciting......you just never know what to expect!  Our main goal is to simply get a glimpse of the herds.  In the coming months, we will move cameras around to help give us some insight on stand placements, but for now, we're having a great time just getting an idea on the type of deer we can expect to see during season.

Well on one of the properties that is actually only a couple of miles for each of our houses, the first card pull only yielded does.  But the second card pull was MUCH different.  Between the two cameras, we ended up getting pictures of at least 10 different bucks in four days, most of which were two years old and older.  Out of the nearly 200 pictures, we got two potential target bucks for the upcoming season.  The first buck has been named "Right Hook" due to the hook on his brow time and the second buck is currently unnamed (but if he keeps growing, he'll get named awfully quick!).

Right Hook definitely likes the camera.  We got multiple pics each day and night of this buck.  Hopefully he will stick to his daylight movements into September and we can get a really close look at him on stand.  He looks to have good length and mass for this early in the season.

A few weeks ago Bo and I put a freshened up a few salt licks on one of our Missouri properties and hung a few cameras on the licks.  Yesterday, Bo had a few hours to run out in the ~100 degree temps and check two of the cams.  The first cam was put on a lick that hadn't be freshened up in nearly three years.  But every year I usually see signs of pawing at the lick.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any deer hit this first lick during the first couple of weeks.  But I'm positive it's just a matter of time before the deer find this fresh lick again and we start to get a few more pics on this portion of the farm.

The second lick was another story.  This area is always a hot spot during the summer and early season.  It always seems like the bucks really swarm to this area for some reason.  With the first picture on the camera, we started off the preseason with a new target buck.  The first pictures of him weren't the best, but as the weeks progressed, he visited the lick multiple times and we were able to get some decent pictures of him.  This buck has been named "First Pull" since he was the very first deer we got on cam this year.