Freddie McKnight
Posted By
Chad Lathrop
at
8/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
Freddie McKnight was born, raised and still lives in southcentral Pennsylvania. He practically grew up in the outdoors, being taken on hunting and fishing trips by his parents from a very young age. He still roams many of those same mountains to this day in search of game. The quality of the racks are not those of the bucks found in the Midwest, but they are every bit as tough to hunt, being pressured by an untold number of hunters who utilize the public lands that Freddie hunts.
You may recognize his name from the many outdoor articles he has penned over the years, or perhaps from a seminar listing from the many outdoors shows where he has been a speaker on hunting. Aside from sharing the outdoors with his own children and family, sharing his knowledge from more than thirty years in the outdoors is a true passion of his. He is extremely active with many outdoor organizations as well, currently serving as vice president of the PA Outdoor Writers Association, vice president of his local chapter of the NWTF, and public relations person for his local chapter of DU.
Don’t expect him to drop the hammer on a record book buck, but you might learn a few things from Freddie along the way on what it takes to be consistently successful in taking deer from the hard hunted public lands of the east.
Freddie's Hit List
Make sure that you keep checking back to see if any changes are going to be made to Freddie's hit list before the season starts.
Freddie has gotten a number of trail camera pictures from some of the bucks that they will be hunting this fall. He has not yet gotten footage of any of these deer, but are hoping that they will show up for the camera in the next few weeks.
As you can tell, these bucks are all great deer for big woods public lands and Freddie is looking forward to going after them this season. It will be interesting to see if these bucks show back up and what they look like after a couple months of growing.
"LUCKY BUCK": "I checked the cameras this evening and found this image of the public lands buck. I think I will call him "Lucky Buck" because of where he lives and all of the hunting pressure he has had to survive to get this big. I've hunted this piece of timber all of my life and have seen maybe two or three other bucks of this size come from that 11 thousand acres. They simply don't survive because if they are legal, they get shot. this one may be a challenge to even see, let alone kill."
"LOGGING ROAD BUCK:" "This is a public land buck that I have never laid eyes on before. The buck is apparently using a new clearcut that was made just last year because these two pictures (on a foggy morning which is why the quality is poor) show him using one of the logging roads leading out of the tangle. I don't know what he is for sure, nor do I have a name picked out for him yet, but I hope to get some better pics as we adjusted the cameras a bit to try and get a frontal shot."
"CULL 5": "Cull 5" is actually a 3 or 4 year old deer, though he may not look like it. I have his sheds from last year and he has actually gone downhill from a 6 to a 5.
"NICE 9": "Nice 9" pointer us a buck that started to frequent a clover field I have been watching. I have no idea who he is or where he has been, but for the last three evenings I have watched him enter past the camera. This is the best picture I have of him yet. I am trying to shoot some video of these two bucks as they are getting their picture taken by the camera. I have not succeeded yet, as it has been too dark for long distance video by the time they are in the field.
