The Hunting Trail
About The Hunting Trail
Deer hunting, scouting and field care, reported from Utah rimrock, Arizona high desert and Pennsylvania hardwoods.
Why does another deer site need to exist?
Because most hunting content is written for the sponsor, not for the season. We are not owned by a gear company and we do not run affiliate stores.
This site has been through a few lives. It started as a place to post season reports and deer call reviews, went quiet for a stretch, and is being rebuilt now with the idea it began with: write down what happened, in enough detail that somebody else can use it.
The three of us hunt units anyone can draw or walk into. We fail regularly, on ground that is open to everyone, with tags that are not hard to get. That turns out to be more useful to read than a guided hunt in a place most people will never see.
Covers
Public land deer hunting
Regions
Utah, Arizona, Pennsylvania
Written by
Three hunters, no staff writers
Seasons afield
Seventy plus, between them
Comments
Closed. Email instead
Who writes here
Three hunters, three regions, three different routes into this. Each name goes to a full biography.
Public land editor
Curt Bellamy
Northern Utah
Thirty one years as a range technician on Utah public land. Mule deer, high benches, and a paper notebook he refuses to give up.
Field care editor
Delia Rourke
Southern Arizona
Eleven years as a large animal veterinary technician before she wrote a word. Coues deer, and no patience for wasted meat.
Big woods editor
Nathan Kestler
Pennsylvania
Cruises timber for a living and hunts the same ridges on his own time. Open hardwoods, nothing to hide behind.
What we will not do
A short list, because it is easier to trust a site that says out loud where its limits are.
01
Review gear we have not carried
Nothing gets written up until it has been through at least one full season in the field.
02
Publish regulations
Season dates and rules come from your state agency, and they change every year.
03
Name specific spots
Public ground gets ruined that way, and it is unfair to the people already hunting it.
04
Dress up a bad hunt
The seasons that ended empty get written the same way as the ones that did not.
Why does a deer site keep writing about knives?
Because the hunt does not end at the shot, and the tool that finishes it is the one most hunters think about least.
Between us we have taken apart a few hundred animals. Delia came to it through veterinary work. Curt learned from a rancher who did it fast and clean. Nathan learned by ruining his grandfather’s knife and then thinking hard about why.
So blades come up here more than they do on most deer sites. Not as a product category, but as the last piece of equipment standing between a good shot and wasted meat.
Field care is not the boring part of the season. It is the part that decides whether the animal was worth taking.
Delia Rourke, field care editor
Corrections are welcome, and they go first
If something here is wrong, say which part and why. We fix the article rather than quietly deleting it, and we note what changed.