Let's just cut to the chase: there are a lot of books out there by self-proclaimed "experts" on how to hunt the wily whitetail. Most of them are just re-hashed information that any serious deerhunter already knows (or should). The number of really interesting and innovative books on this subject is low.
In this book, Charles Alsheimer gives us some truly helpful advice--whether or not you buy the moon theory. This is a good book and well-written, to boot.

I believe Mr. Alsheimer is on to something important regarding the autumn cycle of whitetail life, but I am not sure that he has the whole story. The book is based on anecdotal evidence and observations of penned deer. Another author, John Ozoga, writes concerning the effects of age, nutrition, social status, habitat, and population dynamics among the factors influencing the onset and duration of the rut. I do not wish to disparage these observations and anecdotes, he gives sufficient from wide ranging areas to bolster his point; and; anecdotal evidence can, and sometimes does, have the force of experimentation. But then, how would one design more rigorous experiments?

I think that Mr. Alsheimer is a biological pioneer for this theory. He has shown himself to be a keen observer of whitetail life, and has made an important contribution to our understanding of the rut.

This book is, without question, well worth reading.

Charles Alsheimer coveys good usefull information on how the Moon effects Whitetail deer movement and breeding activity. The book moves along a well managed path documenting the ideas based on countless hours of research as well as observation from many an expert hunter. It covers the stages of the rut for North America and suggests times to focus hunting efforts and stratagies to use at these times. I think it's a great addition to any hunter or wildlife enthusiast's library and I can't wait to use some of the information I've learned. Two thumbs up!

I am the guy Pat talks about at the beginning of "Outdoor Burnout" At the time I wrote to him I was sick of the outdoors and nature in general, Pat put it all into perspective for me. Now when I get fed up with bad weather, balky lanterns, leaky tents, and all the other hazards of the great outdoors, I stop and think, "Pat could make a great story out of this".

If by chance you haven't read any of Pat McManus' books yet, I might suggest you start with this one to insure you get hooked for life. If you didn't think that life in the panhandle of Idaho could be funny, your in for a real treat. Here's to you Miss Deets.

Did you know that wolves hoot? Did you know that the deadliest weapon a fisherman can have is a banana? Did you know that unfileted bluegills multiply as the night wears on? Did you know that the best way to avoid a whipping is with a bouquet of buttercups? Did you know that a car roof is the black hole of fishing? Did you know that you can get out of a reckless driving charge if you're stuffing pigs in a sack? It's all true, and if you don't believe it, read this book and see for yourself!

Greg Miller's writing is sure to inspire even the most seasoned veterans of the deer woods. Spending the last 20 or more years studying the link between big buck travel patterns and rub-lines, Miller is able to communicate his findings and strategies in a clear,concise manner. With the insights gained from Rub-Line Secrets, hunters will be better able to locate and to analyze rubs left by individual mature bucks. Most importantly, Miller relates effective rub-line hunting strategies to specific time periods throughout the season.

Greg Miller has done it again with his latest book Rub-Line Secrets. Once again he gives the reader insights into big buck behavior that will increase their chance at getting that shot of a lifetime. Miller explored the topic of rublines in his book Aggressive Whitetail Hunting, but delves more deeply into the mystery of rub lines in his latest book.

Back in the early 80's Miller first began to notice that deer rubs were more than just random places where bucks rubed the velvet from their antlers. He began to notice, through countless hours of scouting, observation and hunting, that bucks used rubs to mark travel routes and that you could in fact find rub-lines, or a series of rubs that when connected together with an imaginary line create a line from a definate point A to a definate point B.

Miller describes how, by deciphering rub-lines, you can determine a bucks prefered travel route. He also describes how you can tell which time of day a buck is using a rub line that runs either to or from a feeding area. This is invaluable information for any hunter who wants to increase there chances at taking a quality buck.

In just a few hours of reading you can learn what it took this accomplished hunter years to discover -- rub-lines hold the key to harvesting a trophy whitetail.

As a northern deer hunter I am delighted with this book. Most of the whitetail deer books out there (at least the managment ones) are based in the south. Ozaga's book rings home with this Michigan guy.
The book is packed with great info on northern deer behavior. The photos are good and the research is sound. I wish there were more out there like it. So far, next to Alsheimer's deer books this is my favorite. I also just found a great northern food plot and habitat book called "Grow 'Em Right" by Dougherty and Dougherty which is right on the money up here in cold country.

It is not often that one encounters a book that answers long standing questions, especially those that arise from the contradictions found in the popular deer hunting press. There is nothing Gee Whiz about Mr. Ozoga, he tells it like he sees it. When he doesn't know he tells you that too. This book is based on 30 years observation and experimentation on white tails at the Cusino Wildlife Research Station and dispels many of the myths and folklore regarding deer.

Be aware, however, that this book is not easy reading, but seems to be based on the discussion and conclusion sections of his research papers. It is approachable and yields to the diligent reader. It is well worth the effort and the price.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Barton's review.

I have been studying and hunting Whitetail deer for over 30 years and this book actually contains useful information. Too many times books of this sort are centered on some gimmick to kill the big one. This is not the case with Ozoga's work, you will come away with a deeper understanding of the deer's habits, social order and habitat requirements. Especially for the northern deer herd. For anyone who has an interest in Whitetails this is a must read.

Riders in the Chariot is a supreme work of art. At least a dozen times, I found White's writing so moving and beautiful that I had to put the book down and reflect on what I'd just read. All too rarely has a book prodded me to deeply examine my own life and priorities -- this book is one of them. Riders in the Chariot provides a reaffirmation for the jaded 21st century reader: humilty over arrogance, beauty over ugliness, good over evil.

This deceptively complex and tension-filled Australian novel begins as the straightforward story of Mary Hare, a strange, half-mad spinster who lives in Xanadu, a crumbling "pleasure dome," with the busybody Mrs. Jolley, a servant she fears. At various times in her meanderings, Mary meets a kind laundress named Mrs. Godbold, who lives in a shed with her nine children; Alf Dubbo, an often-drunk aborigine artist; and Mordecai Himmelfarb, a Jewish concentration camp survivor who has emigrated to Australia and now works in a machine shop.

In succeeding sections, in which these characters overlap, their intricate interior lives are developed in colorful, memorable detail, and the reader quickly sees that each is a lonely survivor of some traumatic experience which has made him/her question the nature of good and evil. Each hopes to unravel some of the mysteries at the center of the universe. Remarkably, all of them have experienced the same apocalyptic vision of a chariot being drawn by four horses galloping into a shimmering future.

In the hands of a lesser writer, the characters, their daily lives, and their vision of the chariot might have been presented in a sentimental or romantic way, or even been used to illustrate the author's religious views. But White's view of the chariot and its importance is far subtler--and more enigmatic--than that, and its role in the lives of these characters is both unsentimental and haunting. Tantalizing parallels between the vision of the chariot and the mysteries of Revelations, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the Seven Seals, along with Biblical warnings about blood, fire, and destruction will keep a symbol-hunter totally engaged. At the same time, more literal readers will find the stories and characters so firmly grounded in the reality of 1960's Australia, that they are captivating in their own right and may be taken, and thoroughly enjoyed, at face value.

This is a huge novel, an old-fashioned saga of fascinating characters living their lives the best way they can, while wrestling with issues of epic significance. The author's primary concern with telling a good story never falters, despite the overlay of mysticism, and the leisurely pace and fully realized dramatic action make this a totally fulfilling reading experience.

The poetically writhing words of Patrick White's Voss imbue the novel's inanimate world with a life commonly attributed to humankind alone: darkness strangles, the sun cauterizes, leaves slash at one another, rain sighs, and dawn shrieks with jubilation as red light flows out along the veins of morning. Such anthropomorphizing imagery reinforces a view of the protagonist's voyage of discovery into Australia's heart as a metaphor for the inner journey beckoning us all.

Few, however, much less those seeking consolation in worldly achievements and society's pretensions, dare venture into the uncharted desert that illumines the soul. Johann Ulrich Voss, a proud, resilient and fiercely independent German with the first touches of grey in his beard, is obsessed by a long-held ambition to cross the immense island-continent. To this misanthrope possessed of seemingly unshakeable belief in his own divinity, the future is nothing but will, its antithesis compassion, grace, humility, repentance, human frailty.

Before escaping the strictures of Victorian Sydney, by chance he meets his sponsor's niece, Laura Trevelyan, a sensitive young woman vacillating in the darkness between atheism and faith, rationalism and God, pride and humility. Despite their few encounters, when the explorer leads his expedition up the coast and turns one morning to follow his shadow into the searing unknown, he is embarking on a voyage leading ever more deeply into an inescapable love between Laura - the feminine side of his Jungian subconscious - and himself.

Their mystical journey together, stripped bare of obfuscating flesh by the tyranny of distance, penetrates into a vast land. As unforgiving as the outback, this unfamiliar realm is governed by an irrationality that confounds human plans and perceptions, and erodes hubris and obstinate self-belief. United by a love born high above the expedience of mundane coupledom, as their physical separation increases, and long after correspondence by letter has become impossible, they draw ever closer. It is testament to the author's imaginative powers and his skill as a novelist that their transcendent union, despite the hundreds of miles between them, is consummated with a wedding and newborn child.

Without marching towards one's own destruction, there can be no humility and therefore no love. Voss and his small party are gradually worn down over the months by the rigours of their journey and the hidden allegiances unearthed by their tribulations. Laura's love, burning with anxious awareness of the leader's fallibility, spreads into the fissures appearing in his beleaguered resolve, prising cracks still wider in a series of dreams shattering erstwhile convictions. In striving to cross these landscapes of land and love, in which all are destined to suffer and fail, the human soul is ultimately liberated to return into a God omnipresent in the very physicality of the earthly environment itself.

Who hasn't rejoiced before a field, a river, an expansive sky, and perhaps tried to capture its essence in words or paint, on film or even as music, just as Voss, albeit more disturbingly, endeavours to take the entire country within his stride? Earth, trees, rocks, sky, air, and indeed all physical forms, are objects of love, illimitable repositories of the all-encompassing whole that is our dreams and our struggles to live as human beings. They absorb and preserve our spirit. To try to depict our physical environs, to strive to encompass them in a journey itself destined to failure, is to create a self-portrait.

This is an ancient wisdom possessed by the many aborigines the party encounters, peoples who in their veneration for the harsh land they inhabit recognize this terrain as their history and all that they are, as the terrestrial home of their revered Great One. To push into the interior in a vainglorious and inevitably futile attempt to conquer the exalted residence and all it signifies is to invoke His wrath, to bring the Great Snake down from the sky in anger.

We all have deserts to cross. Voss grapples in the Australian wilderness with the rocks of his own prejudice and hatred. But he himself is also a desert, vast and ugly by Laura's accurate reckoning. Immured in hide-bound Sydney, capital of coin and kindly conceit, itself no less a desert than the country's scorching centre, she travels the path of love into this man possessed. Only through setting off on such voyages of discovery into the interior, in the final analysis into our own misunderstanding, do we bring life and love to deserts real and metaphysical - to life and love themselves. As a sage Laura senses long after the expedition is over, 'perhaps true knowledge only comes of death by torture in the country of the mind'.

As White acknowledges in his autobiography, Flaws in the Glass, this novel has a basis in the nineteenth-century expeditions led by the German explorer Leichardt. And years before Voss was written, the seed of its eponymous character was sown in the mind of a sexually repressed wartime intelligence officer unhappily required to censor his own men's letters in the isolation of the Egyptian desert, at a time when all lived in the shadow of 'that greater German megalomaniac'.

But moving irretrievably beyond history, the novel is the product of a creative act to which the spurs are many and various, not least White's frequent respiratory afflictions. Writing the shocking denouement in the desert was fuelled by bronchitis, Bartok's Violin Concerto and a scathing review of the author's most recent book.

Although White did not rank Voss among his top three novels, this best-known of his masterpieces is but one offering from a man who dared to set off into the unmapped desert. Like the struggles of the painter in The Vivisector, the settlers in The Tree of Man and the author himself, Voss's is an epic journey deep into the human condition. On this enlightening voyage, it seems ever less extraordinary when dresses, too, sigh, muscles and hair dream, spurs and complexions accuse, men glimmer or glitter coldly, even kindness cauterizes, and the arches of one's feet become exasperated.

White has done it again: rich characters, indulgent language play, fascinating setting, gentle Australian imagry and beautifully balanced overall. For it's elegance and surprises, this book belongs in the poetry section. If you've a fan of White, this is his masterpiece; if you're new to White, what took you so long?

Theodore was not like other women. She had no time for all the niceties that many take for granted. Afterall, she was stuck at home caring for her bitter,and senile Mother. On the eve of the Mother's death, Theodore begins an odyssey to discover the meaning of life and existence itself. A haunting tale that grips the reader with all the intensity and anguish that a book can muster. A quality book suitable for the thinking reader

This book is the best deer hunting book in print for the Northeast still hunter. Written in the 40's, not much has changed. Big bucks still live the way they always have in these woods and the hunting tatics have not changed.

If you are a tree stand hunter hunting in farmland or small tracts, this is not the book for you.

If you hunt in the big woods, this is an excellent resource.

The best analysis of the information age I have ever read. White ties a variety of sources into an exposition that is innovative and convincing. The author is bright, resourceful, thoughtful--a persuasive writer. A stimulating guide to the coming information boom.

It is one thing to shoot a trophy buck. It's even more amazing to shoot them year after year. This is just what the Benoits do and keep in mind it is being done in Maine. This makes it an even bigger accomplishment. If you have hunted Maine like myself, you know what I'm talking about. The big bucks up there are far and few, yet the Benoits are able to "read" the area and thus find moss backs every year. Even if you are an experienced hunter, you can be humbled quite quickly when hunting in Maine. This book details hunts in which bucks were tracked for many miles, offers many tips on how to read tracks, and when and where the bucks are going. If you want to learn more about big woods bucks, this book is for you.

This book is one of the best true hunting books I ever read! The Benoits are the True first family in deer hunting and as a north woods hunter myself I have learned lots from reading this book. This book is not about sitting in a tree stand all day or electronic trail timers or other high tech deer hunting ambush aids its about true hunting...tracking the most wise buck in the world..the northwoods buck !

i have read big bucks the benoit way at least a dozen times.the best deer hunting book i have ever read.i live and hunt in north dakota no matter where you live and hunt you can learn from this book.as far as i am concerned larry and his family are the best deer hunters in the country they hunt in the toughest whitetail country there is out there tracking no matter what the weather is doing. HUNTING HARD EVERY DAY .taking home the biggest 200+ bucks they can find. bryce towsly and the benoits done a great job putting this book together. im hoping there will be more from the first family of deerhunting thankyou and keep bringing home those big bucks.