Dukats Journal of Hunting

Welcome to the most informative and entertaining hunting website on the internet.  We are dedicated to providing you the knowledge we have learned the past 20 years of hunting as well as great articles on successful hunts from hunters around the world. 

As the Dukat's Journal grows, we will be adding sections on equipment, outfitters and taxidermists including reviews and ratings, forums and much more to make this the one stop site for you when planning a hunt.

The great thing about having all of our resources and articles online is you'll never need to dig through hundreds of old magazines, searching for that certain article.  Just use our search engine to find the article you seek. 

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It all started with a lion hunt, set up with my hunting buddy Layne Brandt.  He got a call and scheduled a lion hunt with fellow by the name of Roy Smith.  Roy lived out in Indiana and wanted to take a dry ground lion in the desert of Arizona. 

I normally hunt the weekends with local friends, but Layne and I planned a five day hunt to do our best to to get Roy a lion in the short time he had to make the hunt.

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I called up Layne's hunting buddy and part two of the lion hunt began.  My wife and I had a brand new baby in August and I couldn't get out in the fall, but by December I was ready for some days back in the mountains. 

Ray did some late night sweeping of the Sierrita Mountains and we planned our first hunt on foot. We spent the first couple hours checking for tracks in various canyons in the truck and when all we found were skunk and bobcat spoor, We decided we would make a round on foot.

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It's not too often you get a chance to hunt mule deer where you might see ten to twenty four point muleys in a day.  There is nothing like hunting the rut with a rifle and Nebraska schedules their hunt the perfect week.  If you find a spot with a good population of does, it won't be long before the bucks start showing up.

Game management is finally starting to grow some roots in western Nebraska and the mule deer populations are expanding because of it.  For years the ranchers did there best to rid the countryside of the "rats of the prairie" as my grandfather called them.  They didn't want the competition for grazing or their farming crops and hay to be gobbled up by the original residents of the land.  With the rise in hunters willing to pay a price to find a mule deer or whitetail buck, it finally made sense look at things a little differently.

Dave and Susan, I hope your hunting season has been safe and successful thus far. I suppose with the new addition to the family, your “hunting” time is a bit more limited now. Perhaps a call to grandma to come visit for a few days is in order, huh...say around the whitetail rut? At any rate, I just returned from hunting the Yukon Territory with Chris and Sharron McKinnon with Bonnet Plume Outfitters.

On a recent hunt for Sitka blacktail deer on Kodiak Island, Warner Smith was enjoying a great hunt with friends when things turned bad in a hurry.  In a matter of minutes, Warner was no longer the hunter, but had become the hunted.  A huge Alaskan brown bear decided Warner was a threat, and the decisions he now faced were not about enjoying the hunt, but for his life. 

When reading the story and looking at the pictures, keep in mind that Warner is a large fellow who would make most folks seem small when standing in his presence.  Warner relates, "I had a great hunt ...right up until the time when Yogi decided he wanted to eat me for lunch."  

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After my first sheep hunt, in the mountains of northern Yukon, I knew sheep hunting was in my blood.  The places sheep live and the amount of effort required to get to those places makes sheep hunting one of the most fulfilling adventures available.  There is nothing to compare to cresting that last summit after several hours of lung bursting hiking and seeing a band of rams sunning on the rocks in the distance.

The problem with sheep hunting is there aren't enough of them.  To draw one of the several thousand sheep hunting tags in the lower 48 of the United States, you have to be extremely lucky or extremely persistent.  Thousands of people apply every year and very few end up with a sheep tags in their mailbox after the draws.