Steve Gruber

Over the past couple of weeks I have spent several hours flying just above the treetops in a Buckeye Powered Parachute. The powered parachute is a unique flying machine that moves at only about 30 miles per hour and offers viewing opportunities you can only imagine. The view from a few hundred feet is exhilarating and will change the way you look at the world but that is a story for another day. What I found truly amazing is the number of deer I have seen from the air and the tremendous number of antlered bucks.

This of course is the time of year you can see those beautiful bachelor groups and it is certainly the time of year to get started looking for the bucks you’d like to get close to during the upcoming hunting seasons. A couple friends of mine call this ‘making the list’. They spend scores of hours driving, glassing and checking literally thousands of trail camera pictures trying to make the critical decision of where to put in their time when the time arrives. This is the time of year they get acquainted or hopefully reacquainted with deer in their hunting areas. Getting re-acquainted is great news because it means the deer have been in the area for a few seasons and have finally qualified for the coveted list.

This year the upper Midwest has been blessed by almost perfect conditions to promote better high end bucks. Heavy rains have been consistent for the past 8 or 10 weeks and unlike other years the water has come in big doses but not all at once. From the time I really began transforming into a Whitetail addict in the late 1970’s I’ve listened to farmers, friends and long time hunters and the old timers have always said the same thing; heavy rains in April and May mean big bucks in the fields come October and November.

From the air and from the ground I have seen as many as 25 bucks on just a few acres. Oh be still my pounding heart this really could be the year! I have over the past few years seen 6 legitimate 200 inch deer alive. I’ve never had the chance to cut a tag on such a deer but just to be in the field with deer of that magnitude, deer of that caliber is a blessing no matter how you look at it. Maybe this will be the year I finally have my chance and well maybe not. I will say without question 2010 in the upper Midwest will be the best year ever for producing bucks that measure 200 inches or more. Its true in southern Michigan where I live and it’s apparently true in other states like Iowa, Illinois and Ohio. At least that is what I’m being told by everyone I’m talking to in those states as well.

Seriously can you imagine sitting here talking about numerous 200 inch or better bucks? A few years ago you’d have been written off as a crackpot or a liar. I’m here to tell you without question more hunters have a legitimate chance of seeing and therefore tagging a 200 inch deer this year than any other year in the history of hunting in North America. I will go one step further and tell you most of those giants live in urban areas all around the United States and Canada.

A few weeks ago I held a Whitetail rack that was taken in Wisconsin in 2006. Two official state measurers put the final typical score at just over 215 inches. Boone and Crockett didn’t see it that way but the fact is the deer was a contender to knock off Milo Hansen’s buck from the number one position and guess what? It came from a heavily urbanized area from a tiny woodlot and to the best of anyone’s knowledge no one had ever seen the deer before.

This year will be better! You need to get your cameras out now if you haven’t already and you need to dust off your binoculars and start looking. I’m seeing bachelor groups at all times of the day drifting through the seas of green but the best time of course is still the last couple  hours of daylight.

If you’re looking for an advantage you may want to try a couple of things. First this is a great time to put in a food plot that will still be young and sweet well into the fall months. One of the best things to plant without question is soybeans. That’s right soybeans because after all the nearby fields have become brown and hold little appeal for the local deer your beans will just be getting sweet and succulent. Fresh young clover is another excellent choice to bring in the deer when they are looking for a meal. And here is my tip of the decade; Gatorade. You read it right, Gatorade. I learned this from some local horse owners. It seems that after you trailer a horse for a few hours they often become perturbed and are hard to handle. This was news to me because to be honest I really don’t care that much for horses but it seems no matter how hot it is the horses will often refuse to eat or drink. A few years ago these equestrian types realized that if they added powdered Gatorade to the water not only would the angry horses drink they would relax and all their horse friends and other barnyard pals would join them at the Gatorade bar. Last year I buried a hard plastic watering tank like you can find at any Tractor Supply or Farm and Fleet. I left it so only about an inch was above the ground. I put the tank in the middle of my clover patch near my Shadow Hunter Blind and filled it with clean water and a good dose of Gatorade. Guess what? The horse people really know what they’re talking about and the deer really love Gatorade too. For the record it seems they prefer the original green over any other color or flavor. In my home state of Michigan baiting has been banned but offering your deer a drink remains perfectly legal. You’ll need to check your local regulations to make sure you’re legal as well. Remember where you heard this and let me know if it works for you as well as it works for me.

I will predict here that I believe a new world’s record will fall this year (with or without Gatorade) because of the ideal Whitetail weather and I believe it will be an urban deer that takes the crown! I just checked the calendar and realized most bowhunters will be in the woods looking for the deer of a lifetime in less than 90 days. If you just can’t wait that long and prefer a smoke pole South Carolina’s rifle season opens as always on August 15th.

Shoot straight my friends and keep the faith.

My father was a significant force in my life. That is the definition of understatement. He kindled in me a fire and a passion for life beyond the concrete that is hard to define with mere words. My earliest memories all involve my dad coming home with his friends and showing off King Salmon from Lake Michigan, pheasants from Iowa and my favorite a 13 point whitetail from Saskatchewan that until the age of about 14 I was convinced was the biggest deer anyone had ever killed.

My father also had the ability to rearrange my emotions in a cold and calculating pattern that would often result in uncontolable rage. He knew me well and could entice the very best or the very worst from me and often in the same moment.

The lessons I learned from my father are many. Today I am relying only on the fact that I trusted him. If he told you how things were, well that’s how they were. So when he told me Argentina was a place of spectacular beauty, amazing people and tremendous hunting and fishing I believed him. I’d always figured I would go there with him on one his adventures filming for Benelli’s American Birdhunter. Sadly that will not be the case as he died in an accidental fall a few years ago and it was a trip we never made.

I will travel with him in my heart and on my mind in a few days and I will celebrate his life by taking his grand daughter, my oldest daughter with me. We both miss his singular pearls of wisdom these days but we both know our passion for life, for the outdoors and for telling stories flowed and still flows from him. So we will celebrate his time and the special relationship we all had the only way we know how. We will shoot until our barrels are hot and doves litter the landscape and we will hoist a toast and say Dad… Grandpa thank you for giving us the time you did. “Shoot straight sonny… now pull up your pants and get back to work.” I couldn’t resist the chance to post just one.

Steve Gruber and his 176 inch urban whitetail

A little more than ten years ago, I moved to Columbus, Ohio and my perception about where to find big deer began to change and it began to change dramatically. On numerous occasions, on my way out of town and into the country to hunt, I saw big deer and even trophy bucks behind houses or small businesses, just standing there. For many people, myself included, that can be an unexpected sight. We expect animals to hightail it out of town as development occurs. However, the whitetail deer is one of the most adaptive creatures God ever created and it will tuck itself into a small piece of brush, live behind a house, even live in a subdivision if it just has food, water and a place to sleep. Deer in town need the same things as deer in the country.

Many new developments, like in Michigan where I live, actually provide a very livable habitat for deer in their effort to create an appealing landscape for humans. When they build twenty or thirty new houses they always include green spaces—an excellent bedding area for the whitetail. Frequently they also provide a water feature, as they call it, creating a water source for whitetails. Additionally, much of the ornamental shrubbery, flowers and landscaping become a tremendous food source for these deer. Thus the whitetail adapts and instead of leaving, they flourish. Moreover, in many urban areas these deer have little to no hunting pressure. It is frequently so low that deer get to be four, five or six years old.  Add this to the genetics from Michigan to Massachusetts, from North Carolina to Illinois and Iowa, plus great bedding, food sources and water and what do you end up with? Great big whitetails living in town.

But for most of my adult life I didn’t really think about hunting in those areas. I drove by them because I have always had the perception that in order to kill a big deer I had to go out in the middle of big fields and big farms. Every time I passed deer on my way out of town, though, I wondered How is it that a 150, 160, 170 inch deer is standing in town and I’m driving by that deer on my way to go find deer? My father always used to say, “you don’t leave fish to go find fish” and I think the same is true for whitetail deer; you don’t leave deer to go find deer. Thing is, I, like most of us, always made the assumption that you just can’t hunt in town but you never know if you never ask. So finally I took it upon myself to find out, Can I hunt here? The truth is, in Columbus, Ohio, the answer is yes. Since that time I found that the answer is yes in a lot of other places, too, if you use the available resources.

Great resources available today include things like the internet being that every small town, every community, every municipality has a website. It’s a great way to find out ‘Can I hunt in this town?’ Whether it’s a small town or a big town like Columbus, you can get the city ordinances to determine how hunting is controlled. If that doesn’t answer your question, you can move on to local law enforcement. The local chief of police is a great resource to find out what’s legal and what’s not.  In many of these communities, especially in the eastern United States because whitetail deer have overrun so many communities, loads of places are desperate to find a way to control the populations. And as we all know, hunting is the number one way to control whitetail deer populations. You may also find, as I did, that in many suburbs you need a special permission slip to hunt in urban areas but once you have that, you will have access to some of the most amazing whitetails anywhere.

One of the challenges you will face in hunting in an urban area is what to do once you arrow a deer. Often times you are going to be hunting on a piece of property that may be less than an acre, and if you arrow that whitetail and he runs onto the neighbor’s property, it is very important to know the laws of your state. States like Ohio mandate written permission to go and get that deer. So make sure you understand the laws and make sure you work with the landowners because once you find this goldmine, you are never going to want to leave. If you are like me, you’re going to say, Why would I drive way out in the country if I can hunt in town and see more deer, more big bucks, and have a chance at a Pope & Young or a Boone & Crockett trophy? Why would I do that?

I had begun in earnest re-learning my approach to hunting trophy class deer. One thing I noticed was the deer in urban settings live in smaller home ranges. It took me quite a while to accept what I was watching. It did not make sense to me that these big bucks would stay in a much smaller area but I was sure of it. Once I found a big deer and began to see a pattern, I saw the deer regularly. In fact, once I found a big deer in town it seemed I saw them almost every time out. I wanted to know if what I was seeing was the norm so I asked leading biologists and experts. Brian Murphy, the Director of the Quality Deer Management Association, confirmed my observations that deer in town do in fact travel far less as a rule than their country cousins. The same has been observed by biologists and wildlife professionals with the Georgia Dept of Fish and Game, the Ohio DNR, the Michigan DNR and others. The revelation was important because it meant once I was able to find and identify where these big bucks were living, I was able to focus my efforts exclusively on that area and hopefully get lucky enough to make the shot. Another interesting point– in one small area in central Ohio I hunt that shall remain nameless, I can verify that in the past seven years or so, at least six 200 inch deer have come out of the same area proving that if these deer get old enough, they become the kind of deer that we dream about- the deer of a lifetime.

I have also put to rest, at least in my own mind, other misconceptions about hunting deer in town. I have heard people say “hunting deer in town is like hunting in the zoo”. I am not certain about that as I have never actually hunted in a zoo but I do take exception to the implication and I can tell you without question it is just not true. Because these deer live in smaller home ranges they seem to be much more in tune with their surroundings. Sure they hear the dogs barking and the children playing. They see the school bus, the garbage man and the ice cream truck but just walk in and hang a tree stand and they will vanish like a big buck anywhere else. In fact they may do it more quickly. The urban deer in my experience will pick up on something out of place faster than those living in the middle of Iowa. This also means that scent control is every bit as important when hunting in town as hunting anywhere else. I have many friends with years of urban hunting experience and they preach the gospel of scent control more than any other group of hunters I have ever met. Of course these are also the guys who know on any given night they could have a 200 inch monster cruising in at twenty-five yards so they take every step of the bow hunting process very seriously. I know several hunters who have 200 inch deer on their walls that were taken in town. Some of the names you would know but mostly they are people, just like you and I that took the time to figure out where the big boys are living. They took the time to find out what was legal, knock on doors, put in the time and trust their own hunting instincts and not rely on their friends who kept saying, “You can’t hunt there”.

As a result of my changing attitudes about where to hunt for big whitetails, I have had the great blessing of taking the two biggest deer of my life in urban settings-both in central Ohio. One deer scored 187 inches, the other the other 176 and I have learned a lot along the way.

So before you leave the crowded, noisy city and drive out in the middle of nowhere, before you go to the secluded farm or into the deep peaceful woods, take some time, look around, smell the flowers (no really, big bucks love flowers) and maybe, just maybe change the way you think about big deer and you might find the deer you have been dreaming about has been living in the backyard all along.

Scott Esker and his 155 inch urban whitetail

Welcome to my new site- SteveGruber.com

I have had the great blessing of traveling the world for more than 25 years most often with a camera somewhere nearby. My journey began in Lansing, Michigan with a microphone in a radio studio at Lansing Community College. From there the wind blew me 1600 miles to Bozeman, Montana. While attending Montana State University I was hired by the local ABC affiliate KCTZ-TV. Soon I was the weatherman and a few months later returned to Lansing as a main news anchor for the NBC affiliate WILX-TV. During my time back in Michigan I launched Wolf Creek Productions with my close friend and genius photographer Tom Nichols. While Tom and I began building the business I continued on the road as an investigative reporter and landed in Columbus, Ohio with WCMH-TV… NBC4.

I knew however that my days covering news were numbered. I longed to be exploring new cities, counties and countries. I have logged more than a million air miles with Wolf Creek, visited just about every U.S. state and Canadian province, numerous foreign countries and hosted hundreds of hunting and fishing shows on TV. Like I said it is a great blessing and make no mistake it has been and continues to be great fun!

SteveGruber.com is designed to help you join me along the way. I will talk about the places I’ve been, the places I hope to go, my thoughts on politics and people and just about everything else.

I welcome your feedback and yes even your criticism. This site is designed with you and mind so I hope we can work together, have an open conversation and maybe learn something while we’re here.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope you will do so often.

Keep the faith and shoot straight!

Steve