The MeatEater

Question: Should I use a mechanical or fixed blade broadhead, and what brands do you recommend?

Answer: If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked this question, I could probably start manufacturing my own broadheads. Back when I was more of a fixture on the seminar circuit, I fielded this inquiry during every single show. My answer used to be pretty simple and straightforward: Shoot a sharp, durable, fixed-blade head.

I started hunting before mechanicals became a thing, and was slow to adopt any broadhead with moving parts. When I got the job as Equipment Editor for what was at the time the largest bowhunting magazine out there, I no longer had a choice. I had to shoot everything and was lucky enough to get to test a pile of broadheads at the range and in the field.

Over the years, I noticed that my affinity for fixed-blade heads became more and more situationally specific. Animals like turkeys, antelope, mule deer and whitetails all started to fall into the either-or category, with mechanicals eventually winning out. I held true to my roots in Africa or when I found myself targeting bigger quarry like elk.

Now, I feel like it’s more of a matter of choosing a well-built head that you have confidence in. This is true for all critters but something I truly believe when it comes to whitetails.

The broadheads I’ve seen that have failed in the field almost all shared a similar trait–they were cheap. I had fixed-blade heads break at the ferrule on deer, and mechanicals nearly disintegrate on run-of-the-mill shots. I also had both styles blow through shoulders and stay intact, which tells me all I need to know.

More expensive heads generally utilize better materials and offer better designs. This translates to sharper blades, bullet-proof ferrules, better arrow flight, and better survivability on all hits. I know even writing this, that some readers will say it doesn’t matter and you’re just paying up for better marketing and a brand name. That just hasn’t proven true in my experience, as fun as it is to complain about.

So what broadhead is best for you? Well, what do you have confidence in, and how well do you shoot on animals? The tradeoff with fixed versus mechanical is often framed upon whether you would rather have great performance with a shoulder hit (fixed) or a gut shot (mechanical).

I don’t think it’s that simple, because anyone can shank a shot. Instead, ask yourself what you value the most. If getting through bones is it, then you’ll probably want to lean into compact, extra sharp, durable fixed-blade heads. There are plenty on the market, and my personal preference if I can find them is a four-blade options with replaceable blades (because they are always crazy sharp).

If you like great big wound channels, a mechanical is probably better for you. In this category, I don’t shoot jackknife style heads that open from the front anymore. I want them to have rear-deployable blades. I also like two-blade mechanicals that don’t offer anything more than a two-inch cutting diameter.

These are just my rules, yours may differ. Just remember this cliched but true reality–the best ones are the ones that hit where you’re aiming. Shot selection and execution do wonders for broadhead performance. Take full-confidence shots, and then pay close attention to how your broadheads performed with every one. This will shape your future broadhead choice selection much more than any advice I can give you.

–Tony Peterson

Have a whitetail related question? Send it to [email protected] and check back weekly to see if we cover it.

This is the second of two articles on the haunting disappearance of two Wisconsin hunting/fishing buddies who vanished in February 1961. Their remains weren’t found until July 2006, trapped inside their upside-down car on the bottom of Lake Waubesa near Madison.

After two Wisconsin hunting and fishing buddies vanished into the early-morning darkness of Feb. 21, 1961, searchers across the Madison area tried everything to find them, including financial rewards, a famous psychic, scuba diving teams, and volunteers dragging grappling hooks across area lakes.

The Madison Police Department and Dane County Sheriff’s Department only knew that Ronald Wick, 19, and Carl Stolz, 21, likely died soon after leaving an all-night bait shop a mile north of downtown Madison around 2 a.m. A man identified by store owners as Stolz paid $2 for mayfly larvae while asking, “Aren’t we crazy to go out on the lake fishing at this hour of the morning?”

The problem was, the man didn’t specify where they were headed. The bait shop was within a half-mile to 5 miles of four lakes in the Madison area, and 19 miles of the chain’s fifth lake. They also didn’t tell any friends their destination. In fact, they never went fishing. After a Madison angler/diver named Rick Krueger found Wick’s car July 21, 2006, and the MPD inventoried everything inside it during the next month, investigators didn’t find even one hook, split-shot, or jigging rod inside the car.

In addition, ice conditions in late February 1961 didn’t help searchers. The weather had been warm in previous days, which weakened the ice on area lakes; and melted snow atop the ice, which hid or obscured holes, cracks, and thin spots. Searches the next week by the MPD, sheriff’s department and Air Force helicopters from Madison’s Truax Field found no sign of the men or Wick’s car, a 1950 Ford coupe.

In the weeks that followed, divers searched large parts of the lakes, and crews in boats grid-searched by dragging grappling hooks across the bottom—a cold, monotonous, usually-futile process. After all, GPS was still 30 years into the future, so grid searches on lakes were usually inexact and inefficient. Likewise, portable side-scan sonar equipment small enough for fishing boats wouldn’t arrive for another four decades.

Still, Madison officials did their best to find Wick and Stolz. In late March 1961, the Air Force again helped police search the five lakes with a helicopter and crew, hoping to take advantage of early spring’s clear water, which provided up to 30 feet of visibility. Investigators also checked every hat, glove, shoe, or car tire that washed ashore on area lakes.

Then, in July 1961, businesses and Wick’s friends in Madison and nearby Wisconsin Dells offered a $1,000 reward to spur boaters and recreational divers to keep searching. Newspaper articles reported hundreds of hobby divers combing possible areas, while the University of Wisconsin-Madison volunteered its high-tech experts, sonar gear, and an underwater magnetometer capable of detecting car-size metal objects from 50 yards.

Days became weeks, and weeks became months without one solid clue. Still, the volunteers and law-enforcement agencies persisted. In April 1963, when the Madison lakes were unusually clear, the Air Force again provided a helicopter for another search.

As the futility grew, rumors and gossip boomed. Some people believed Wick and Stolz had run off to start new lives, but detective Robert Ferris of the MPD never believed it. He had worked the case since the morning Wick’s older sister, Janet Hall, reported him missing, Feb. 22, 1961. In February 1963, on the two-year anniversary of their disappearance, Ferris told The Capital Times newspaper the men probably had $5 between them when they vanished. Ferris also said Stolz never again touched his two bank accounts, and neither man had used their social security number. And if they had intended to run off, Ferris wondered why they used Wick’s unreliable, oil-spewing 1950 Ford when Stolz’s 1953 Pontiac was in better condition.

And so Ferris and the MPD kept looking. Stolz had served six months in the Army in 1958, and had remained in the Army Reserve, so the MPD requested his fingerprint file from the FBI. When the FBI replied, Director J. Edgar Hoover himself signed the letter accompanying Stolz’s fingerprint files, and said the bureau had listed Stolz on its nationwide missing-person alert.

Meanwhile, Stolz’s older brother, Larry, regularly wrote to Madison Police Chief Wilbur Emery seeking updates. When Emery replied Dec. 26, 1962, he assured Larry Stolz the MPD was doing everything possible to locate his brother. In fact, Emery said he was considering bringing in a clairvoyant, though he conceded some people thought it “a ridiculous approach.”

Chief Emery apparently got that idea from MPD Inspector Herman Thomas, who was checking out Milwaukee’s Peter Hurkos, a nationally known psychic who had immigrated from the Netherlands. Besides demonstrating his divining skills at theaters and other venues, and claiming an 85% success rate in newspaper interviews, the famed Dutch psychic had appeared three times on The Steve Allen Show—The Tonight Show’s forerunner. Hurkos wowed Allen’s studio audience members by holding their hands while asking questions, and then revealing personal insights he couldn’t have learned in advance.

More importantly, Hurkos had helped Chicago police and the Miami Police Department solve several crimes. In a July 1963 interview with the Wisconsin State Journal, Inspector Thomas said his sister was the Miami police chief’s secretary, and she told him Hurkos was “right more times than wrong” during the Miami investigations. Thomas also said he had witnessed a psychic moment himself during a dinner at age seven. He said his father looked troubled when their house started shaking, and said in German, “Mutter ist dodt,” or “Mother is dead.” Two weeks later, a letter from Germany said his father’s mother had died at that time and date.

And so Thomas and a Wisconsin State Journal reporter, John Newhouse, met with Hurkos at his Milwaukee home before he visited Madison on July 30, 1963, for two shows at the Orpheum Theater. Hurkos agreed to help the MPD find Wick, Stolz, and the car. Before leaving Hurkos’ home, Inspector Thomas gave him a bag of clothing items worn by Wick and Stolz. Hurkos told Thomas and Newhouse that when it got quiet that night, he would turn out the lights, hold the clothing, sit still, and “go to work with it” for several hours.

Inspector Thomas, meanwhile, assured Madison officials he would use vacation time while working with Hurkos, and that Hurkos wouldn’t bill the city for his time or expenses. Hurkos, in turn, told reporters he had no doubt he would find the missing men.

On Aug. 1, 1963, Hurkos stepped aboard a boat with searchers and a local dive team on Lake Monona near the Madison Gas and Electric Company’s power plant. This area remains open year-round because of warm-water discharges from the facility, which caused many locals to speculate Wick drove into the open water after checking the ice in two nearby locations earlier that night.

Hurkos told reporters he sensed Wick and Stolz were on the bottom in the general area, and would soon be found. At one point, Hurkos lowered magnets on a string, and the magnets clung to something large. When divers checked it out, they found only a heavy steel bar.

Hurkos expressed confidence before returning with the searchers and divers the next day, Aug. 2. When that daylong search also failed to find Wick and Stolz, Hurkos told reporters he remained confident, but had to leave for another appearance on The Steve Allen Show. In the meantime, a Madison cab driver told police he had seen a car’s headlights spin on Monona’s nearby ice the night Wick and Stolz vanished.

The UW-Madison’s magnetometer experts joined the search for its third day, Aug. 3. Though the device identified a large steel object on the bottom, divers only found a 50-gallon steel drum and several beer cans. The search continued, because the magnetometer had detected something larger than the steel barrel. Whatever it was, it had to have sunk beneath the lakebed.

Therefore, a week later on Aug. 10, a Navy team searched the site with its state-of-the art sonar equipment. They found nothing on Monona’s bottom or the top 5 feet of lakebed muck their sonar signals could penetrate. All the while, the volunteer divers futilely probed the lakebed by hand with long metal poles.

On Sept. 4, MG&E officials ended the 5-week effort after finding old company photos and documents that identified the unknown metal mass as a huge I-beam. MG&E engineers had driven the I-beam deep into Monona’s bottom 150 yards offshore to anchor an underwater fence that protected the power plant’s intake pipes.

Hurkos, meanwhile, had claimed on The Steve Allen Show that he had found Wick and Stolz, and that Madison police were in the process of recovering their bodies. When learning Hurkos’ taped segment would air Sept. 6, the MPD asked the local TV channel to let Inspector Thomas appear minutes after to “clarify” they had found neither a car nor bodies.

Hurkos never returned to Madison. News reports from Milwaukee on Sept. 11, 1963 — a week after MG&E identified its I-beam—perhaps explained his absence. Hurkos had testified during recent divorce proceedings that he was broke, deeply in debt, and could no longer demonstrate his extrasensory powers because he was a “nervous wreck.”

That high-profile failure humiliated Inspector Thomas. The Capital Times, Madison’s afternoon newspaper, published an editorial that called the Hurkos search a stunt, a farce, and “crystal ball sleuthing.” The newspaper’s editors also said officers within the MPD referred to the psychic-driven search as “Thomas’ Folly.”

The Hurkos fiasco ended organized searches for Wick, Stolz, and their presumed coffin, Wick’s 1950 Ford coupe. Though individuals and small groups occasionally dragged or dived sites on Madison lakes the next four decades, the two-door Ford lay undisturbed on Lake Waubesa 5½ miles southeast of the MG&E I-beam on Lake Monona.

More precisely, Krueger found the car 600 yards east of Brams Point on Waubesa’s western shoreline. Coincidentally, he found it July 21, 2006, exactly 45 years and five months after it sank Feb. 21, 1961.

Krueger stayed ashore once the Dane County Sheriff’s Department dive team deployed July 23. After crafting a salvage and recovery plan, the dive team anchored a barge over the site with two water pumps. Starting Aug. 1, 2006, three two-diver teams took turns collecting bones, personal effects, and car parts from Wick’s car 35 feet below.

About 1¼ miles to the north, the Sheriff’s Department also set up a command post for press conferences and processing work at the end of Libby Road. The boat launch there is part of what’s now the William G. Lunney Lake Farm Park. It’s the same site where Detective Ferris thought Wick and Stolz left solid ground, crossed the sandy shoreline, and drove onto Waubesa’s ice to their doom.

Rick Krueger, however, said a then-little-known boat launch at the end of McConnell Street a mile south of Libby Street is a better guess for where Wick drove onto the ice. Krueger said Wick’s family members, who owned a nearby farm, also thought he drove onto the ice from the McConnell Street landing, which enters Lake Waubesa about 900 yards northwest of the wreck site. Krueger said one of Wick’s relatives told him he had searched the lake often with a grappling hook, and was surprised he never latched onto Wick’s car.

Whether the men drove onto the ice at Libby Road or McConnell Street, one will never know their exact path to the wreck site, nor how long they drove around before the ice failed. Adding to the mystery, a lakeshore resident told investigators in 1961 that she saw a car on the ice at 6:30 a.m. the day the men vanished.

Whatever the case, when Wick’s car punched through Waubesa’s late-winter ice, its hood apparently slammed into the surrounding ice, likely causing the large dent in the hood’s right front. Water pressure held the doors shut as the car started sinking, rolled over, and plunged nose first into the bottom with the men trapped inside. Police reports in August 2006 described the car as resting on its roof, its bottom angled at 31 degrees with a 7-degree tilt to the passenger’s side.

Jeff Nelson, the lead diver and dive master for the Sheriff’s Department, said the car might still be out there if not for sonar equipment. “It’s the deepest water on Waubesa, and there wasn’t a lot exposed on that car to catch a grappling hook,” Nelson told MeatEater. “Other than snagging a corner of the rear bumper, a grappling hook would’ve slid right past everything. When I started on the dive team years earlier, we dragged sites forever and found nothing. My predecessor, Bob Pavey, said he found something only once by dragging. It’s too imprecise.”

Neither did the divers notice any fouled fishing hooks, weights, or lures on the car, or broken monofilament line trailing across the lakebed, all common finds on many Great Lakes shipwrecks. Nelson and the other five divers, however, searched the site thoroughly Aug. 1-8, mostly by feel because of poor visibility. He said visibility was 4 to 5 feet when first reaching the car, but then fell to 6 inches when their work stirred sediments around the car.

But before launching the search, Nelson consulted his cousin, Tamara Thomsen, a veteran diver who owns the Diversions Scuba center in Madison. Using photos and drawings, Thomsen designed a handheld dredge for Nelson. He then took her plans to nearby Pertzborn Plumbing, where company staff custom-built the dredge from fire hose and PVC pipe.

(MeatEater readers might recognize Thomsen, who is now the Wisconsin Historical Society’s maritime archaeologist. MeatEater featured Thomsen in the July 2024 article, “Archaeologists Find Ancient Dugouts on Bottom of Wisconsin Lake,” which describes how she found the first of at least 16 ancient dugout canoes while diving on Lake Mendota since June 2021.)

Nelson also worked with Josh Ripp, an assistant fire chief at nearby Maple Bluff, and Dane County Public Works to anchor the barge and two large water pumps over the site. Ripp helped build the dredge and operate the pumps, which pulled water, mud and silt through the dredge while filtering solid objects into a mesh bag on the dredge’s far end.

Nelson said the two-person dive teams would descend, dredge about 30 minutes to fill the bag, and then haul it to the surface. Their air tanks would be almost empty by the time they returned to the barge, and so the next team would take over. At the end of each day, they had to scrub mud from all their gear and dive suits.

Soon after beginning their search, the divers found small hand bones from Stolz just outside the slightly ajar passenger-side door. Later, the divers also found hand bones from Wick wedged between the driver-side door and frame.

To get inside the car, Nelson said the divers excavated for several days around the drivers-side door before removing enough mud to open it with a crowbar. The door opened more easily than expected. When the divers reached inside, they found a large bone just inside the door. Space didn’t allow them to safely swim inside the car, so they reached in the length of their arms to search the interior by hand.

As the work progressed, they brought up larger bones and the skulls, and Wick’s two firearms they found in the trunk: a 7mm Japanese military rifle and a 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun. A forensics anthropologist, and forensics experts from the MPD and county coroner’s office, identified and logged every item, no matter its significance. That included two Old Style beer bottle caps, clothes buttons, two wrist-watches, two hair combs, two leather belts, a hat/cap visor, both men’s wallets, a double-wrapped stick of chewing gum, and a coin purse containing four pennies, three nickels, one quarter, and two keys.

Nelson said the divers removed so much silt and muck from around the car’s front end that they carved out a wall nearly 5 feet high. By that time they had recovered all the bones and personal effects within reach and were growing nervous the mud wall might cave in on them. Therefore, they secured the car doors to reseal the interior and began attaching straps and aluminum boards to lift the car to the surface on Aug. 9, 2006.

The divers needed fire hoses to break the suction between the car’s engine compartment and mud below. A crane then lifted the car far enough off the bottom for divers to fit it with air bags. Next, they turned it right-side up, and rigged chains and other gear to allow two cranes to lift the Ford from the lake and onto the barge. Once secured on the barge, the MPD’s forensics investigator, Marie Burgette-Bach, searched the deck around the car and picked up one bone, one slip-on shoe, two .22-caliber rounds, two clothes buttons, and a piece of metal car trim.

Burgette-Bach and the forensics team then wrapped the car in plastic sheeting to ensure nothing fell out while it was towed ashore, loaded onto a flat-bed trailer, and driven to the MPD’s evidence facility. The next day, divers scoured the lakebed a final time to ensure nothing dropped or got left behind.

Burgette-Bach let the car dry five days before conducting her final forensics search and examination Aug. 14, 2006. She noted 6 to 8 inches of mud and pieces of seat frames on the car floor, and found three more bones. She also noted many everyday items, such as Wick’s car keys hanging from the ignition switch, a Kodak Brownie 8-mm movie camera with its leather strap still attached, two tire irons and a spare tire in the trunk, and a plastic ice scraper from the Firestone Schlimgen’s Texaco “Complete Motor Clinic” at 301 N. Sherman Ave. in Madison. The business’s old-time phone number was still visible on the scraper: CH4-1229.

After Burgette-Bach finished her examination, she released the car for transfer to a salvage yard to be crushed into scrap metal, as Wick’s family requested. Before workers towed the car away, a MPD detective met Ron Wick’s brother, Dennis, and Dennis’ two daughters at the facility to view the coupe. The detective also gave Dennis Wick the car’s rear license plate, which Krueger brought to the surface July 22, 2006. In addition, the MPD returned the Japanese rifle and 12-gauge shotgun to Wick’s brother Bob, who had restored the rifle before giving it to Ron nearly a half-century before.

Stolz’s brother, Larry, told newspapers he wished their father could have known Carl’s fate before dying in 1964. Larry told reporters he and Carl never really knew their mother, who left them with their father when they were infants. After settling in California, she lost contact with the Stolz family.

Carl Stolz’s wife, Nancy, remarried a few years after he vanished, and her new husband adopted her two young sons. In May 1961, her attorney filed a life-insurance claim on Carl after courts declared his insurer insolvent.

Likewise, in April 1968, after meeting Wisconsin’s requirement to wait seven years before declaring a missing person dead, Wick’s family claimed his life-insurance payment. They gathered June 2, 1968, at Immanuel Lutheran Church on Spaight Street for his memorial service. Both men’s remains were buried beside other family members.

Scouting and hunting bachelor groups seems simple enough, but a lot of hunters don't understand how much can go wrong when you've laid down a good early season plan without thinking through some backup options.

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Since the 1903 showing of The Great Train Robbery, film has steadily become our primary way to tell the stories of the American West to the larger world. More than a century’s worth of movies and television shows later, in this episode of The American West Dan, Randall, and guest Dr. Sara Dant reveal their favorite films about the West.

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Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men"

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Steve meets up with Clay Newcomb and his mules to hunt bears and turkeys in Western Montana. They’re a feisty combo but, when they split up, their hunting luck doubles. Presented by Busch Light

Steven Rinella talks with Eric Odell, the recently retired Colorado Wolf Reintroduction Manager, about politics, predation, and the realities of living with wolves.

Presented by Can-Am, the leader in ATVs, SxS, and Utility Vehicles www.can-am.brp.com

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What would you think of a whitetail deer herd that jumped from 1200 to over 1.5 million in less than 100 years time? That is exactly what happened in the state of Mississippi. We are joined by Mississippi Deer Program Coordinator, William McKinley who knows all the wild tales that make up this incredible wildlife conservation story.

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This week, Cal covers drain tile setbacks in the Prairie Potholes, a major food failure increasing bear conflicts in Montana, and how pumas are keeping deer safe from cars.

This week’s Calls to Action:

The South Carolina DNR is collecting comments on hunting deer with dogs. More information is here (https://www.dnr.sc.gov/news/2026/Jul/jul21-hunting.php) and you can add your comment to the online form here (https://arcg.is/0zzqv4.)

Make your voice heard on opening Ohio’s only national forest to fracking by writing a paper letter to:
Bureau of Land Management, Eastern States State Office, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041

Presented by First Lite

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The results are finally in from Florida's annual Python Challenge, and one hunter put together a performance unlike anything the competition has seen before. Held July 10-19, the 10 day event drew more than 900 participants from across the U.S. and beyond, all with the same goal: remove as many invasive Burmese pythons from South Florida as possible. At the end of the competition, veteran python hunter Tom Rahill captured a staggering 96 snakes, a new single-competitor record that accounted for more than one-third of the 280 pythons removed during this year's challenge. And the best part–he caught them all in one day.

Tom Rahill’s massive haul (96) outscored the next contestant by 60. Rahill attributed his success to copious amounts of planning and his ‘granny bike,’ he told the Naples Daily News. Because of a bad back and recent hip replacement, the 69-year-old Floridian used an e-bike to get away from the crowds and target lesser-known areas. That gamble paid off.

Rahill and his partner came across a 17-foot female python. After bagging the massive python, they quickly scanned the area for her nest. That’s when they found 98 eggs, only two of which hadn’t hatched (rules for the contest state that only live pythons count toward the total). That one find was enough to win him the Florida Python Challenge.

Started in 2013, the Florida Python Challenge is a 10-day competition hosted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD). Each year, participants from around the country compete to remove invasive Burmese pythons from designated public lands in South Florida for a chance to win cash prizes.

Competitors can enter one of three divisions, Novice, Professional, or Military, and compete for awards recognizing both the most pythons removed and the longest python in each category. Cash prizes are awarded across all three divisions, including a $10,000 grand prize for the Professional division winner who removes the most pythons during the competition.

The competition exists because Burmese pythons have become one of the most destructive invasive species in the Everglades. Native to Southeast Asia, the snakes became established in South Florida through releases and escapes from the exotic pet trade decades ago. Today, wildlife officials estimate that tens of thousands of Burmese pythons inhabit the Greater Everglades, though their secretive nature makes an exact population estimate nearly impossible.

The snakes adapted remarkably well to South Florida because its warm, subtropical climate closely resembles their native range in Southeast Asia. With abundant prey, vast stretches of suitable habitat, and few natural predators, the python population expanded rapidly. Adult Burmese pythons are opportunistic apex predators capable of consuming dozens of native species, including rabbits, raccoons, opossums, birds, deer fawns, bobcats, and even alligators. Researchers have linked their spread to dramatic declines in native mammal populations throughout portions of the Everglades, making them one of the greatest conservation challenges facing the ecosystem today.

With wildlife officials estimating that tens of thousands of Burmese pythons still inhabit the Greater Everglades, removing 280 snakes over the course of 10 days may seem like a drop in the bucket. However, the Florida Python Challenge was never intended to solve the state's python problem on its own.

Year-round removal efforts remain the backbone of Florida's python management strategy. According to the Levy Citizen, contractors working for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the South Florida Water Management District have removed more than 19,000 Burmese pythons from the Everglades and surrounding areas since 2017.

The purpose of the annual challenge is designed to complement those ongoing efforts by educating the public about the threat invasive pythons pose to Florida's native wildlife while encouraging participants to become involved in conservation. The competition also brings together hunters, outdoorsmen and women, military members, and wildlife enthusiasts from across the country in a shared effort to protect one of North America's most unique ecosystems.

Before entering the competition, every participant is required to complete an online training course covering python identification, safe handling techniques, and humane euthanasia methods. The training helps ensure competitors can distinguish Burmese pythons from native snake species and safely remove the invasive reptiles if they encounter one.

Rahill's record-setting performance was made even more impressive by the return of Everglades National Park as an official competition site, where he captured all 96 of his Burmese pythons during the 10-day event. While his haul earned him the Challenge's $10,000 grand prize, it also serves as a reminder of the scale of Florida's invasive snake problem. And if this year's results are any indication, there are still plenty of pythons left to find. A complete list of winners from all three divisions is available on the Florida Python Challenge webpage.

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If there’s one disease that needs no introduction in the whitetail world, it’s CWD. Since its first detection in wild deer herds, chronic wasting disease has been a constant source of contention and uncertainty within the hunting community.

Studies have repeatedly shown that a high prevalence of chronic wasting disease can tip population growth rates into the negatives, since CWD is categorically fatal for any deer unlucky enough to contract it. Progression in infected individuals is wildly different from other high-profile diseases like EHD, which makes it particularly challenging to understand the long-term effects of CWD on whitetail populations.

While an EHD-positive deer is likely to be on death’s door within days, a CWD-positive deer might go years without experiencing any symptoms at all and take months to die after going clinical. The long incubation period makes it easy to point the finger at adult mortality as the sole driver of populations declines from CWD. But just because you’re unlikely to come across a fawn in the dazed and drooling state of an end-stage prion takeover, doesn’t mean fawns aren’t falling victim to the epidemic.

CWD does not seem to affect reproductive success of infected whitetails during the pre-clinical phase. A 2025 study in northern Illinois found that positive does were no less likely to get pregnant than negative does, which mirrored a 2012 study out of Wisconsin showing that both positive and negative bucks were equally likely to sire fawns. On the surface, those results seem to offer some hope for continued recruitment of youngsters into high-CWD populations despite the inevitable loss of infected adults.

Yet, the harder scientists look at the offspring of CWD does, the worse the implications get.

It’s not some glaring deformity or systemic failure, but a subtle difference in fetal head development that could be dooming fawns of CWD moms well before they hit the ground. In the 2026 study, fetal skull length and circumference measurements were found to be significantly shorter in CWD-positive does. Although brains of those fetuses were not measured directly, a smaller skull generally indicates a smaller brain. And, according to the study, a smaller brain could mean a decline in cognitive development in fawns birthed by CWD positive does. Those cognitive skills, along with a healthy mother, are imperative for fawn success rates and make it even more challenging for those fawns to avoid predation. For deer in CWD-positive areas, those consequences could pose dire implications for local herds.

Even if the fawn of a positive doe were to overcome its potential cognitive disabilities, the odds that it avoids contracting its mom’s disease appear incredibly slim. Science still hasn’t produced an estimate on CWD transmission rates from doe to fawn, but it has shown that the prions can readily spread both in utero and through direct contact after birth.

Research also suggests that whitetail survival rates tank the hardest from CWD in the 1.5- and 2.5-year-old age classes. This research implies a lot about when and how many deer are contracting CWD, considering the typical incubation period of 18 to 24 months, and flies in the face of the long-held belief that CWD only affects older animals.

Seasoned hunters know that it’s often not the biggest bucks that prove to be the most cagey, but the old does, tasked with rearing the next generation. It’s a hard job, and might be made more difficult by the symptoms of CWD. More research out of Wisconsin in 2012 found that buck fawns with infected does were harvested about a month earlier on average and significantly farther away from their moms.

This is where these waters get murky. A buck fawn that disperses early due to inadequate maternal care and gets shot by a bowhunter or taken down by coyotes is unlikely to be counted as a CWD loss in anyone’s book, similar to a doe producing fewer viable offspring due to infection. Yet, both scenarios are very real ways in which CWD could have population-level impacts outside of direct death from infection. The latter is light on research in the whitetail world, but a 2013 study on Reeve’s muntjac deer in the UK suggests that stillbirth, as well as failure-to-thrive instances where mortality occurs within a few days after birth, could be higher for fawns of CWD-positive mothers.

It’s still hard to say exactly what CWD means for deer and deer hunters as it continues to spread. Every year, researchers and game agencies provide more pieces of the puzzle, none of which paint a rosy picture of the future of America’s favorite game animal. Plenty of folks have written CWD off as just another thing that weeds the old and weak from the herd, but new findings indicate it is much more than that. And if we don’t take those warnings seriously, it’s entirely possible that, eventually, no one with a stake in the cervid game will have the option to ignore this disease.