The MeatEater

Spencer Neuharth hosts MeatEater Trivia with Janis Putelis, Brody Henderson, Randall Williams, Laura Mascari, Brianna Stroebe, and Dane Williams.

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This week on the show I'm joined by Hal Herring, longtime outdoor writer and environmental journalist, to discuss whether or not hunters and anglers are living up to their conservation legacy during this interesting moment in history.

Thanks to our sponsor, Conservation First Bank.

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It's Whitetail Week at MeatEater! Host Clay Newcomb is joined by hunting icon of his youth, Aaron Stanphill. They talk about growing up hunting whitetails in Arkansas before trail cameras, feeders, and the technology that has transformed deer hunting. Aaron and Clay reminisce about learning to read the woods, studying deer sign, hunting public land, and figuring things out through trial and error. Aaron shares the story of finally killing his first Pope & Young-class Arkansas buck after 30 years of hunting, along with some of the legendary characters and lessons that shaped him as a deer hunter, with no shortage of additional entertaining stories to boot.

The conversation turns back to the Bear Grease Con Man series on Asa Carter, exploring the contradictions of a man who could write with extraordinary empathy while also becoming one of the most notorious voices of segregation in the American South. The crew shares their opinions on questions like: What does it mean when a person changes? Can a man's later life tell us anything about who he really was?

And don't forget to check out the Ultimate Whitetail Giveaway. Go to the Meateater store and sign up to win a pile of amazing gear along with a hunt with Mark Kenyon and Jordan Budd.

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Most deer hunters dream of having their own, or at least joining, a good hunting camp. It’s where formative hunting memories are made, and logistically they just make things more convenient. I’ve been to hunting camps with multiple bunk rooms, flat screens, and fully furnished kitchens. Another had nothing more than a pin-out board, skinning rack, and dilapidated camper where the first to arrive had the privilege of starting the coffee pot. In other words, it takes a lot less than you think to make a hunting camp.

Sure, it might be hard to do if you only have a couple acres, but small(ish) properties of around five acres or more can still feel like a hunting camp even if you don’t have thousands of acres outside your backdoor. Luckily, these three improvements can make your property feel more like a hunting camp.

You can always skin a deer on the ground or your tailgate, but a simple skinning rack can give you more room to work and even keep you out of the conditions. You can make your skinning rack as basic or as extravagant as you wish. Some require little more than three 4x4s and an inexpensive winch. Others might include a sink, covered roof, concrete slab, butchering table, etc., but that all depends on your budget and access to utilities.

Regardless, having a skinning rack makes it easy to quickly clean your deer when it’s on the same property. If you have a good drive from your hunting property to home, getting your deer cleaned and on ice before you get home saves a lot of time and work.

Aside from the convenience that skinning racks offer, they provide a natural gathering place after someone’s killed a deer. You can hang your deer, chum it up with your hunting buddies or family members, and revel in the fact that you harvested a deer on your own property.

You should always reevaluate your stand locations to make sure you aren’t trying to relive successful hunts. However, there are some locations that naturally funnel deer every year all throughout the season. If you have such a spot on your hunting property, you should put a permanent stand in that location.

That permanent stand might be a lock-on or a comfortable two-man ladder stand. It should be something you can access quickly and quietly. This is the type of stand location that usually gets named after a family member who killed a big buck there, defining terrain feature, or even the most famous buck that fell in that spot.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure you aren’t just blowing out this stand by disregarding the wind or overhunting it. The goal isn’t to beat it to death. Instead, it’s good to look at it as a reliable spot when you don’t have a specific game plan, or maybe you have a friend joining you and you don’t want to gar-hole them.

These permanent spots aren’t meant to limit you, and they shouldn’t be viewed as the only places you can hunt; they’re meant to give you and others options. In essence, they’re sort of like pin-out spots in a hunting camp. Naming them will certainly make it feel that way.

The most obvious way to make your hunting property feel more like a hunting camp is to, well, set up camp. I know folks who simply park their camper at their property, but adding an affordable cabin or shed feels more established than a camper or RV, even on small properties.

You can build your own cabin if you’re handy enough, but if you don’t have the skills or time, you could go with something like a Stor-Mor portable shed, specifically their cabin-style sheds. If you’re wanting to make your property feel like a true hunting camp. You can go with one of their bare-bones models or customize your own to fit your needs.

They’re not huge, which makes them ideal for smaller properties. Their compact footprint gives you plenty of options when it comes to placement, and while it can certainly be a permanent fixture, you can always have it moved if you wish.

The Stor-Mor cabins offer plenty of space to get out of the rain, warm up, and have a hot meal between or after hunts. Those simple things can feel like a luxury after a long day of hunting.

You might not have grown up around hunting camps, or maybe you experienced a few bad ones. Starting your own, even a small one, can give you, your family, and friends a deer camp experience that leads to good times, cool experiences, and a lifetime of hunting.

Your old man may have killed deer with a .30-06 or .30-30 Winchester, but you’re charting a new course. Whether you’re choosing a trail cam, a pair of bibs, or a rifle cartridge, you’re looking for the latest and greatest that will give you an edge in the field.

If that describes you, you’ve come to the right place. My colleague Adam Moore has already broken down some of the best classic whitetail cartridges, but we’re putting the old ways behind us. In this article, I’m pitting three of the best new-school cartridges against one another–and you get to choose who comes out on top.

These aren’t the only good whitetail cartridges to be released in the last 20 years. Far from it. But they are some of the most popular, and these three cover a wide range of ballistic capabilities and in-the-field applications.

So, without further ado, check out the info below and then cast your vote in the poll at the bottom. The winner will face the victor from Adam’s article in the definitive matchup between classic and new-school whitetail cartridges. Be looking for that on Friday.

Happy Whitetail Week!

These cartridges are in three different classes, ballistically speaking. The one you think is the best will depend on how you hunt, where you hunt, and whether maximizing velocity and energy is most important.

For anyone wanting the ability to make a shot beyond 400 yards, the 7mm PRC is the clear winner. It launches a 175-grain bullet 3,000 feet-per-second (fps) and stays above 2,000 fps out to about 600 yards. That velocity means it only drops 41 inches at 500 yards and with a 10mph cross breeze, only drifts 12 inches. That’s incredible performance for any cartridge, but especially when compared to the other two on our list.

The 6.5 Creedmoor has earned a reputation as a long-distance killer, but you can see how that reputation might be overblown when compared to cartridges like the 7mm PRC. At 500 yards, that 140-grain projectile has dropped 32% more than the 7mm PRC (54 inches). With a bullet going over 2,000 fps, it’s still perfectly capable of killing a deer at that distance. But its greater drop and wind drift (15 inches) introduce more variables.

The 350 Legend was never designed for long-range shooting, so it’s not fair to compare it to the 7mm PRC and 6.5 Creedmoor in that respect. It has other advantages, which you can read about below, and I think it’s one of the best straight-wall cartridges, which is why it’s on this list.

And if we’re honest about the distance we’re most likely to shoot a deer, it still offers plenty of performance. At 200 yards, it only drops eight inches and is still cooking along at 1600 fps. Pushing it out to 300 yards might be a stretch–both for reliable bullet expansion and bullet drop/accuracy–but at the ranges most deer hunters actually take a shot, the 350 Legend can get the job done.

Bullets Used: 7mm PRC –175g ELD-X; 6.5 Creedmoor – 140g Platinum Hunter; 350 Legend – 165g FTX

“Shootability” describes a cartridge’s recoil and cost/availability. It’s my favorite Caliber Battle category because it’s so often overlooked, but it largely dictates our experience using any particular cartridge.

You’ll be unsurprised to hear that the 7mm PRC is the least “shootable” of these three new-school options. It doesn’t have “magnum” in its name, but it probably should. It hits with about 29 foot-pounds (ft.-lbs.) of energy, depending on the load you use and how heavy your rifle is. That’s a little more than the 7mm Rem. Mag. and a little less than the 300 Win. Mag.

Online retailers list the cheapest 7mm PRC cartridges for about $2.40 per cartridge while the most expensive clock in around $5.50. The good news is that the 7mm PRC has become an incredibly popular cartridge among hunters, so it should be available at your local sporting goods store. It’s also a dedicated hunting cartridge, which means pretty much anything you find on the shelf will be good for whitetail.

The 6.5 Creedmoor is famously pleasant to shoot, and certainly more so than the 7mm PRC. It hits with about 15 ft-lbs of energy, which is nearly half the 7mm. Compared to a .308 Win., the 6.5 generates about 25% less felt recoil, depending on the weight of the rifle.

As one of the world’s most popular hunting cartridges, the 6.5 Creedmoor is also relatively cheap and available almost anywhere. Cost-per-cartridge ranges from $1 for cheap plinking ammo to $5 per round for souped-up loads from bougie manufacturers. But you can find high-end loads, like these Platinum Hunter pills from Sig Sauer, for $2.60 per round–which equals the cheapest 7mm PRC.

The 350 Legend might not be able to take down a deer at 500 yards, but it’s more pleasant to shoot than the 7mm PRC or the 6.5 Creedmoor. It only hits with about 10 ft-lbs of energy, making it the easiest-shooting rifle in this matchup. That’s comparable to the .30-30 Win. from Adam’s classic cartridge comparison, and far less than other common whitetail cartridges like the .308 Win. or .30-06.

Cost is excellent, with the cheapest options costing less than $1 per round and good hunting ammo available for less than $2 per round. But it struggles in the availability category. It’s become a popular option for whitetail hunters in the east and midwest, but it hasn’t taken the world by storm like the 6.5 Creedmoor. It’s readily available online, but you might not find it at a small local sporting goods store.

In a standard Caliber Battle, “versatility” means the range of game animal species a cartridge can reliably take. Since that’s not a factor here, we’re using this category to talk about the range of landscapes on which each cartridge can hunt deer. All three could hunt whitetail anywhere in the country, but some are more suited to certain areas than others.

Obviously, the 7mm PRC and the 6.5 Creedmoor would be better choices for open landscapes where a longer shot is more likely. Those superior ballistics aren’t a disadvantage in the Big Woods, but they do require a barrel that measures, at minimum, 22-inches.

The 350 Legend, on the other hand, only needs a 16-inch barrel to maximize velocity. You might be able to squeeze a few extra fps out of a 20- or 22-inch barrel, but the data I’ve seen suggests that 2200 fps is perfectly attainable with a 16-incher. That makes for a short, maneuverable rifle, perfect for following narrow deer trails or swinging in tight blinds. The legend also uses a .223 Rem. as its parent case, so it’s easy to find lightweight AR-platform rifles in this cartridge.

The 7mm PRC offers whitetail hunters superior ballistics–there’s no question about that. The question is: do you need that kind of ballistic performance to hunt deer? Are you looking for maximum velocity when you head out into the whitetail woods, or are there other factors that matter, too?

That’s the question, but I’m not going to answer it for you. Cast your vote below for the best new-school whitetail cartridge, and let us know in the comments why you made your choice!

A lot of hunters skip morning hunts for most of the season, but that's a mistake. This week Tony lays out a better strategy for how to make the most of those early alarms on your quest to kill a mature buck.

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Join author Bryan Burrough as he delves into the little-known stories of the first notable Old West gunfighters, from the Texans who popularized the first revolvers during the 1840s  to the outlaws of Gold Rush California and the first gunfighter to achieve literary acclaim — thanks to a young Mark Twain.

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If I’m being honest, the whole idea for this article came from something that is totally understandable but also kind of annoying. People love to ask me what it’s like to hunt with Steve Rinella, and I get it. He’s one of the biggest names in the sphere, and he has a wealth of experience.

But, I never know if they are asking me what his personality is like, if he’s a good hunter, if he tells amazing stories around the campfire every night, if he’s a considerate cuddler in a tent, or what. I’m not going to address all of those, but I’ll say this—he has some deeply engrained attributes that all of the best hunters have, even whitetail hunters.

Allow me to explain.

In whitetail hunting, we strive to take the mystery out of the game as much as possible. The primary method you’ll see portrayed in a hell of a lot of whitetail hunting content all involves taking the what-ifs off the table. Plant a food plot to make them come to you, or put out an automatic feeder that spins a cupful of corn onto the ground at exactly the same time every day.

Make a mock scrape and hang a cell camera on it. Whatever we can do to reduce the unknowns, we will do. Look, you do you, Boo, but the truth is that if you want to be a good hunter, you have to not only be curious, but foster curiosity in yourself.

I’ve had the good fortune of getting to ghost-write for a couple of extremely successful guys in the outdoor space who are self-made millionaires a few times over. They are both crazy curious people, and so is Rinella. If you aren’t asking yourself questions and then trying to answer them, you’re at a huge disadvantage. When it comes to whitetail hunting, asking yourself why a buck did this and not that, or why they always use that trail and not another one, or why this camera is dead but that one is just full of activity, you’re not growing as a hunter.

Think about the folks who just always get it done on public land, and ask yourself if you view them as generally curious people. They are, and it’s one of the main ingredients in being a successful hunter, but it’s not the only one.

This week you’ll have the chance to watch the film Steve and I made with his buddy, Pat Hoffman, down on Pat’s family ranch in Nebraska. I was tasked with being the setup guy for that hunt, so I had to scout it and develop a rut plan. After e-scouting it, then walking the property for a couple of days in July, I knew one thing—we were all about to decoy in big bucks during the rut.

When I went back in August to hang stands and put up blinds, I felt even more sure that the doe decoy factor would be huge. The ground on that working cattle ranch is mostly open, and that visibility paired with cruising bucks, would seal the decoy deal.

We ended up shooting three great bucks in four days, and never once took a decoy out. What I was so sure of, was just dead wrong. This happens to me a lot when it comes to whitetails, and it’s always a moment where my ego is forced to wrestle reality, and if I’m lucky, reality wins. The best hunters out there learn to develop a plan, but to also go with the flow. Hunt with conviction, but also be very open to new information, and how that can alter the best strategies.

This mindset works, but only when it gets paired with more and more experience. This is the key to finding the balance between trying something for enough time, but pivoting if it doesn’t work instead of riding a dead program right into another buck-less season. It’s not easy, but that’s why it works.

If you watch that Nebraska film, you’ll see Steve out setting traps, during the first week of November, while Pat and I find ourselves in bow-range of great bucks. I’ve written a ton about patience in the whitetail woods, so I won’t go too deep here, but I’ll say this: If you aren’t patient, you’ll never be good at this stuff.

It is, without question, the most crucial skill to develop as a hunter. Second guessing is the enemy, and time on stand is your friend. No one talks about how hard it is to do dark-to-dark sits, or spend hours on a spot with no deer activity because you believe one will show up, but it is truly difficult. I hunt a lot of public land, and I often see parking lots clear long before the morning is done. There’s a good lesson in patience there.

If you learn to trust the process and put in enough time to see a plan through from day to day, you’ll string together something that will lead to success. This is something Rinella is really good at, and I have no doubt it at least partially comes from his penchant for trapping. There is a process to it that involves reading the land, putting in the physical work, checking the lines, and deciding if you made the right moves.

Almost all of hunting follows a similar path, and I know whitetail hunting does. Scout enough to build a plan, implement it, and then listen to what the deer tell you. Be patient with them and the process of finding them, and eventually you’ll start to encounter big bucks on a regular enough basis to make those long dead sits completely tolerable because you know eventually something is going to happen.

Click here to watch Steve and Tony’s Nebraska whitetail hunt.

This week Cal brings you the latest on a new border dispute with Canada, a precise valuation of “Natural Wealth,” and a 66-million-year-old feather.

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