Showing results by author "John E. Phillips" in All Categories

Using a black magic marker and a gray work jumpsuit, Jim Crumley of Buchanan, Virginia, drastically changed the nature and purpose of hunting camouflage when he created the first sportsman’s camouflage - Trebark. Throughout his life, Crumley has been a constant student of how to bowhunt better, and his desire to learn new and better techniques for bowhunting was one of the reasons he created Trebark camouflage. In this hunting guide, he shares the wisdom that he’s learned throughout his lifetime about how to be a hunter, how to find a deer lease, how to scout for deer, and more.

How do you know if the land you hunt has a trophy deer on it? Wildlife manager Bob Zaiglin, of Uvalde, Texas and Jim Crumley, the father of modern-day hunting camouflage, tells you how to find out. GPS can make finding and taking that trophy buck easier. This hunting guide will teach you how to hunt big bucks where no one else can find them, how to call deer, and how to become versatile as a deer hunter, so that if one deer tactic doesn't work, another one will.

The father of the intelligent design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, thinks the new atheists are right! How? They’ve put serious discussion about God back on the public agenda. Despite their conclusions, folks like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett are asking the right questions. They’re making belief in any religion an issue again, especially in the university context where, for decades, questions about faith and reason have been taken off the table for serious discussion. Open debate is exactly what we need on the topics of God, evolution, and creation.

To be more successful as a deer hunter, learn all you can about the animal, the wind, the temperature and the techniques required to get in close. In this book, you'll hear about some of the best hunters in the nation who know how to hunt deer close, including one of the greatest archers who ever lived, Howard Hill. John E. Phillips shares his own deer stories and hunting tips from 50 years of experience.

Thirty-four of the nation’s best turkey hunters and turkey callers, past and present, have filled this book with their knowledge and wisdom. You’ll learn tactics from some of the early pioneers of the sport of turkey hunting, during the time that wild turkeys were just being reintroduced into many states. You’ll also learn, from some of the best turkey hunters of today, how to deal with too many gobblers and too many hens coming in at the same time, or one old tough tom that no one seems to be able to take.

Anyone who tells you that he or she knows everything there is to know about hunting elk will lie to you about something else. That’s why I’ve written this book, Elk: Keys to 23 More Hunters’ Success, and included more information to follow my highly-successful earlier book, Elk: Keys to 25 Hunters’ Success. The first two men in this new book, Ronnie Strickland and Will Primos, have a combined total of 78 years of elk hunting experience, often calling in several bulls in numerous states for other hunters each year. Not all these bulls have been taken.

In the outdoor world, the elk is the teacher; the hunter is the student. The bull elk, a stunning symbol of strength and power, is one of the most-elusive animals to hunt. The best way to learn how to hunt elk is to learn from the pros who have to take and film elk every year, like the Hunter's Specialties' Pros who produce elk videos every year for Hunter's Specialties' videos and TV shows. Wayne Carlton of Montrose, Colorado, has been hunting and guiding for elk for more than three decades.

The quickest, easiest (if there is an easy way), and safest way to find and take that bull elk of a lifetime will be to hunt with a guide. Chad Schearer, a longtime Montana guide and TV personality, told me, “My hunter is my gun. If I get to the elk, and my hunter isn’t with me, then we don’t take the elk. My job is not only to find the elk but also to help the hunter get to the elk and make the experience as enjoyable as I can for him.” That’s the kind of fella with whom I want to go elk hunting.

Depth Finders: You need the latest and greatest depth finders available, since they’re the brains of a bass boat with maps, GPS, side scanning, down scanning, and forward scanning features that enable you to see underwater structures and fish 100-feet away with a 360-degree view. Today’s competitive bass anglers may have four or five depth finders located on the consoles and the bows of their boats.

To become a "PhD Whitetail", a whitetail deer has to have gone to school on hunters. He knows when to move, where to move, and how to move to avoid detection. Most deer hunters rely on luck to occasionally have the opportunity to see a PhD buck. But the professional hunters in this book have spent their lifetimes finding these bucks-with-doctorates and putting themselves in position to take these monster bucks using hunting strategies that few of us employ. The men who have learned their lesson from the PhD deer are videographers, producers, TV hosts, and/or professional hunters.

You’ll never encounter a more-maddening situation than hunting a turkey you can’t take. Turkeys that have earned their PhDs in the turkey-hunting wars pose problems to hunters because these birds know more about hunter-dodging than most hunters know about turkey hunting. You can learn how to take a tom like this by spending many days in the outdoors yourself - or, by learning from the experiences of turkey hunters who have been successful taking toms.

The Bowfishing Bible doesn't promise salvation or a ticket to heaven, but it does give you much of the information you need to be a happy, successful, productive, and winning bowfisherman. We've taken advice, recommendations, and principles that have led to successful careers for many different bowfishermen. We've also included bowfishermen of different ages and both sexes and with varying degrees of knowledge and experience.

The Briar Patch Philosopher is a collection of wise sayings that are simple to remember. One of my favorites that I learned from my dad was, “Even the good will of a bad dog is worth something.” We all face bad dogs in our work places, in our families and with our friends. By getting the good will of bad dogs on your side, you make the dog’s biting you very difficult.

Because river systems are so unpredictable, I’ve felt the best way to get the most useful information on how to fish rivers for crappie is to talk to numbers of anglers all over the nation to learn their best tactics. In this book, I’ve gleaned crappie-fishing wisdom from three dozen crappie anglers and guides from a dozen states, who consistently catch crappie at all times of the year. The tournament crappie fishermen in this book fish most of the country at different times of the year on various river systems and lakes.

I've learned so much on how hunters find trophy bucks, what they do to put themselves into positions to take those trophy bucks, and which hunters have the best chances of taking older, mature bucks. This audiobook is a celebration of the men and women who’ve taken their bucks of a lifetime.

Yes, you can catch and eat crappie during the fall and winter months. Often, at many places, you’ll catch more and bigger crappies in the fall and winter than you do in the spring and summer. To learn where to find and how to catch cooler weather speckled sides, we’ve interviewed a wide variety of some of the nation’s best tournament crappie fishermen and guides.

A mule deer hunter never can know everything about hunting these animals because they live in over 18 states, Canada, and Mexico, and all types of terrains, including the mountains, the plains, and in deserts and creek bottoms. They’re hunted with bows, rifles, sniper rifles, and black-powder rifles. This audiobook tells how more than 30 mule-deer hunting disciples find and take mule deer at different times of the seasons.

After more than 45 years of turkey-hunting experience with some of the best callers and hunters in the nation, author John E. Phillips developed The Turkey Hunter’s Bible to be a complete reference on how to find, call, take, clean, and prepare the wild turkey for the table. The author has taken several birds of each subspecies of wild turkey in the continental United States and Mexico. But more importantly, he’s hunted with some of the greatest turkey hunters who ever have lived.

I’ve interviewed some of the best crappie fishermen in the nation for my new audiobook, Catch Crappie All Year: Fishing a Single Pole, Using No Boat and Farming Crappie to learn how, where, and when to catch the most crappie with or without a boat while single-pole fishing.

The quickest way to learn how to turkey hunt successfully is to either hunt with a turkey hunter with years of experience or a turkey-hunting guide. These two types of turkey hunters have solved most of the problems turkey hunters ever will face. They don’t always get their birds, but they’re far more experienced than anyone else I know.