D&DH-TV Producer Chris Hermans and I just returned from a hunt at Prairie Wings Outfitters in north-central Kansas with Tim Herald of Under Armour and Bill Mitchell of Nikon Sport Optics.

This was my first trip to Kansas, and I finally got to experience first-hand what D&DH subscribers have been telling me for years: It's always windy in Kansas! I also witnessed that wind does not affect deer in this environment as it does elsewhere. Deer are used to the wind ... so much so that they move around their habitat much like deer would here in the Midwest -- even when it's blowing 25 mph or more.

We scored on a very nice 8-pointer during an afternoon hunt that saw us hunting out of a haybale blind overlooking an alfalfa field. The tending phase of the rut was in high gear, and we witnessed that when the buck came out of a nearby river-bottom hot on the heels of an estrous doe. One shot from my 7 mm Mag dropped the buck in his tracks at just over 100 yards.

Chris caught all of the exciting action on video, which will be featured in an upcoming epsiode of D&DH-TV for 2008. Check this blog for more details in the coming months.

We still have some hunting left to do here in WI, and the entire D&DH staff will be in Alabama for a hunt for the Southern rut in mid-January.

--Dan Schmidt