Three weeks on the road, deer hitting the dirt, and camp stories stacked from Missouri to Michigan. The Winchester camp brought all-day sits, tight setups, and the kind of buck action that turns a quiet timber into chaos. Rattling pulls, missed windows, clean kills, and a sweepstakes winner who brought the antlers—and the heat.

Then we break down the tool that changed everything this season: thermal drones. Marginal hits, standing corn, coyotes in the mix, and finding deer in under two minutes from four hundred feet up. No disturbance. No guessing. Just truth. What that means for outfitters, neighbors, and doing right by the deer is laid out plain.

We close with the state of whitetails across the Midwest—Michigan pressure, doe-heavy ground, pockets of giants, and Ohio loading up for gun season with cold weather, 350 Legends, and the Grizzly blinds finally in the right spots.

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