Image: whitetail_rub

Research from the University of Georgia indicates that at night, deer likely see a blue or purple light shining from fresh rubs. Photo by Tony Campbell.

The 2025 season was a winner. The weather was cool and cooperative in most regions, so hunting was good almost everywhere. Many big bucks were shot in many states. Some highlights:

  • Kentucky hunter Jeff Fogle hadn’t shot a buck in six years. On Nov. 17, 2025, he made up for it big time by shooting a gnarly nontypical that scored 190 inches green.

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  • Preliminary figures show hunters registered 182,084 deer during the 2025 gun season in Wisconsin, including 86,068 bucks and 96,016 antlerless deer. Compared to 2024, the buck harvest was down 2.6%, and the antlerless kill was up 1%.

  • Dwayne Jones killed a 196-inch buck on his 38-acre Illinois property, proving it doesn’t take a lot of land to shoot a giant whitetail these days.

  • Fascinating research from the University of Georgia Deer Lab revealed that in the night woods, a deer’s eyes likely see a blue or purple light shining from fresh rubs like glow sticks, producing visual clues that help deer see, locate and learn more about the behavior of other deer.

  • Hunting a low-fence property in southeastern Georgia this past October, 12-year-old Jase Barry shot — wait for it — a red stag. Where did that thing come from? According to Georgia Outdoor News, one theory is that Hurricane Helene in 2024 created havoc with high-fence properties in Georgia, and some exotics escaped into the wild before fences could be repaired, making them fair game. Anyhow, young Jase shot a once-in-a-lifetime trophy.

  • For many years on the farm I hunt in Virginia, the landowner had planted 300 acres in corn. In 2024 and again this past spring, he rotated crops and replaced all the corn with soybeans. After two years of chowing on beans, the body weight of local deer increased some 20%. We shot two thick-chested 4-year-old bucks, and one 5-year-old that pushed 170 pounds on the hoof, which is a giant for our area. The bucks’ extra weight made them easier to field-judge for age. The racks taped about 130 to 151 inches, up from the typical 120 inches when the bucks fed heavily on corn. If you want to grow bigger deer on your land and do it quickly, plant soybeans, which have 30% crude protein, compared to 9% for corn.

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  • In spite of a severe outbreak of EHD that killed a lot of deer in several southern counties this past summer, Ohio was the hottest big-buck state of 2025. Hunters tagged thousands of big, mature deer across the Buckeye State, including a 228-inch nontypical giant in Champaign County.

  • On Nov. 8 in Fleming County, Kentucky, Chris Smoot shot a 185-inch 10-point that had lived a tough life. The buck had one blind eye and damaged hooves that marked it as a likely EHD survivor.

  • One day this past December in Arkansas, Cheyne Matzenbacher shot a doe that ran down a ridge and pitched off an embankment. After looking for blood for an hour and finding none, Cheyne decided to back out and hike back to his truck, which was parked at the bottom of the hill. Upon arrival, Cheyne spotted his doe lying just off the front grill of his Ram. “I noticed … the driver’s side of the windshield was completely smashed in,” he told Outdoor Life. “The deer had done a can-opener off the top of the 16-foot embankment and landed smack-dab on top of my windshield. … Her head hit the top of the cab, and that was the only blood I found the entire time.”

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  • In big chronic wasting disease news, the Missouri Department of Conservation announced in December a pause to all CWD management efforts, including mandatory testing and the controversial mass culling of deer. Although MDC officials say the disease is still present in some deer herds, they acknowledge that overall infection rates remain low across the state. Only about 1% of tissue samples tested in 2025 came back positive for CWD.