HotMocs: Tough Guy Slippers for Cold-Weather Hunters 
As a bowhunter there’s nothing I love more than sitting in a treestand day after day and just watching the woods come alive. While it’s easy to sit on stand all day in the earlier part of the season, it becomes a bit harder during the late season when temperatures really start to drop.
But the longer you can stay on stand, the better your odds are of seeing that mature buck you're after. HotMocs are one of those products that will help you put in more time on stand when the temperatures start to drop.
HotMocs guarantees that they'll keep your feet warm during the coldest of hunts. Available in Realtree AP, HotMocs are patented footwarmers (made from 300-gram breathable fleece) designed to wear over your boots or shoes. They feature an innovative pocket, which allows for placement of a heat pack. OK, OK, they look a little like slippers, but if they work, who cares?
I normally put a pair of toe warmers in my rubber boots when I’m hunting during the late season and the temperatures drop, but that only seems to work for a short time. HotMocs have a patented heat transfer technology to direct heat from inexpensive toe warmers to key parts of the body for maximum warmth.
For late season hunters and hunter’s who just get cold feet, HotMocs should keep you in your stand just a little longer.
HotMocs Shoe/Boot Cover Features:
• Easy on-off design.
• No binding to adjust.
• Rubber grip sole.
• Ultra compact, easy to carry, and lightweight.
• Warms feet up to 24 hours.
• Warms through any weight footwear.
• Insulation: 3M™ Thinsulate™
• Includes 2 Heat Factory handwarmer heat packs.
• Compatible with all hand warmer heat packs.
5 Winter Projects for Better Deer Hunting Next Fall 
With the whitetail season behind us, now is a great time to head to the woods to get some winter projects done. A few days of woods work this winter can make all the difference next fall. Here are some useful projects.
#1 - Do a Post-Hunt Analysis
If you are seriously into outsmarting mature bucks, you can start by figuring out how they outsmarted you last hunting season. Head for your favorite stand locations and do a post-season analysis. Look for big buck sign downwind of your stand — where a big buck might have skirted you (knowing full well you were there), while you waited in vain for him to show up. You may still be able to pick up his tracks or see where he stopped to tear up a sapling along his route.
If you can pin down the route he took to avoid you last year, he might just use the same route this year. Neighbor killed the buck? No worries, another mature buck will probably move in and use the same avoidance route next year.
#2 - Prepare Next Year’s Stand Locations
Once you have the route located, you can prepare a stand site for next year. If the area is secure, you can hang a stand or at least select the perfect tree and remove any interfering branches. The idea is to keep your primary stand location but still have a backup stand to hunt from once you’ve hunted your primary stand a couple of times. Mature bucks are proficient at locating hunters’ setups and often skirt them by about 80 yards downwind to avoid danger. A third setup can be located downwind of the second location just in case you get into a serious game of cat and mouse.
Did you happen to notice that the wind was wrong, or the deer entered the plot from the wrong side of the field, every time you wanted to hunt a certain food plot or woods opening last year? Well, now is the time to remedy the situation by preparing a second or third ambush location. You may need to cut some new shooting lanes or trim a few limbs for your climber, but this is the time to get the disruption over with. You can even set up a natural ground blind in winter which will be perfectly fine with a little added vegetation next fall.
Freshly cut vegetation smells “new” for quite a few weeks after the cutting and puts mature deer on alert. October is no time to be stinking up the woods with man smell, which includes the telltale odor of freshly cut brush and trees.
#3 - Locate Late-Season Feeding Areas
This is also a good time to find out where the deer spent the last part of the hunting season. Scout around until you find some month-old feeding signs and take note. This might just be the place where they will head to for one last feeding frenzy as winter begins to set in and deer season winds down. Deer typically go through distinct behavior patterns during the year and big bucks generally feed heavily to rebuild their tired bodies after breeding is completed. Find those late-season feeding areas and you just might end next season with an old boy in your sights.
#4 - Break Out the Chainsaw
Cutting trees is a great way to increase food-per-acre ratio by allowing sunlight to reach the forest floor. Deer live in a world that maxes out at six feet—that’s as high as they can reach. What happens above that is of little consequence to them. What happens under six feet is all about food and cover for whitetails.
A word of caution, a chainsaw is the most dangerous tool an outdoorsman can get his hands on. You must wear protective chaps (made for chainsaw cutting), a hardhat and eye and ear protection before even thinking about firing up a chainsaw.
#5 - Create Food and Cover
A mature woodlot may produce little more than 50 pounds of whitetail food per acre. A recently cut woodlot with plenty of daylight reaching the ground can produce somewhere around 500 pounds per acre. Multiply that by, say 50 acres, and you can really start making a difference in the number of deer your property can take care of.
Cutting trees also immediately makes food and cover available to whitetails. Drop a 12-inch maple, poplar, oak, ash or similar hardwood and see how long it takes the deer to find it and start feeding on the tender branch tips. They will generally browse up and down the full length of the tree, nipping off the first two or three inches of any branch they can reach. This is pretty good stuff for winter whitetails that may have been winter stressed for the past 30 to 60 days. The branch tips should now be swollen with next spring’s leaf buds that will be ready to pop sometime in April or May. Leaf buds typically contain six to eight percent protein, a welcome treat to winter stressed whitetails.
Another benefit to chainsaw work is the structure that is left behind. We found that deer relate to structure just like fish do. If you want whitetails to start hanging out in a specific location, add some structure by downing some trees. Cut two or three trees so their tops all land in the same place. You’ll get all kinds of cover as well as protection for sprouting saplings. Deer love this kind of cover and will use it for years. Hunters often cut up felled trees for firewood, but they should leave the tops alone if they are trying to increase their deer sightings.
Winter is a wonderful time to be in the woods provided you leave the deer alone and don’t put any pressure on them. With the hunting pressure off, you will be amazed at how quickly they get used to your presence and associate the sound of a chainsaw with a free meal. They often stand close by, waiting for a fresh tree to provide them with another week’s supply of winter food.
Photos: 34-Point Mutant Buck From Kentucky Michael Rothman killed this gnarly 34-point cactus buck last season in Kentucky. We take a closer look at this deer and just how freak-rack bucks develop.
New Mechanical Broadhead Creates 'Havoc' for Deer, Big Game  The Havoc is the newest addition to G5’s line of lethal broadheads. Known for making high quality fixed and mechanical broadheads, G5 has now entered the 2-blade mechanical market with the Havoc.
The Havoc is designed and engineered to create massive wound channels with a 2+ inch-cutting diameter. G5’s two-blade Havoc is the company’s first mechanical broadhead to feature Swiss Steel LUTZ blades. LUTZ blades are known for their unmatched sharpness. The blades on the Havoc lock in using the new Posi-Lock blade retention system, which eliminates the need for o-rings and rubber bands, creating a no-hassle system for hunters.
Featuring G5s new balanced blade deployment system, the blades on the Havoc always deploy simultaneously, ensuring bigger and more consistent entrance holes. Blades are quickly and easily replaced with the new blade cartridge system.
At the front end of the Havoc is a bone crushing chisel tip to ensure deep penetration.
“Every year we strive to produce some of the world’s best hunting broadheads that assure hunters accurate flight and quick kills,” stated Joel Harris, Brand Manager for G5 Outdoors. “2012 is no different, as we prepare to release one of sharpest and most lethal broadheads available in today’s industry.”
I’ve hunted and successfully taken down big game with several of G5’s broadheads including the Montec, Striker and T3, and have always been thoroughly impressed by the construction of these broadheads and their quality. After seeing the Havoc at the 2012 ATA Trade Show, G5 has once again created a quality broadhead that I look forward to putting to the test this fall.
The Havoc is available for both compound bows and crossbows in 100 and 125 grains, and comes with a practice broadhead and G5 window decal. Look for the G5 Havoc to hit store shelves in August 2012 with an MSRP of $47.95.
Tenzing: A New Player in The Hunting Pack Market 
Backpacks have become a standard piece of hunting equipment as hunters bring more and more gear afield with them each season. From binoculars and rangefinders to game calls and extra clothing, there’s always a need for a pack. The problem is that each hunter has different needs when it comes to selecting one.
At this year’s ATA Trade Show a new player entered the backpack game: Tenzing.
Tenzing offers a new line of high-tech, high performance packs engineered to enable hunters to go farther, stay longer, carry incredible loads in and even bigger ones back out.
Looking through their product offering at the ATA Trade Show it was obvious that Tenzing put a lot of time and energy towards designing these packs and they focused on the details before releasing their packs to the hunting community.
The Tenzing product lineup features 10 models including full-sized backpacks, lumbar packs, single-sling archer's pack, lightweight daypacks, waist-belt camera bag, fanny pack and the women's-fitted pack.
Each pack is constructed from high quality materials including Dyneema, which is said to be the world’s strongest fiber. The packs are designed to be lightweight and rugged and feature several pockets to keep your gear organized. To top it off, the packs are fully adjustable to get the perfect fit for any hunter.
All Tenzing packs incorporate an innovative and expandable storage compartment somewhere in their designs. Another Tenzing family trait is that the main compartment always incorporates yellow zipper pulls and teeth for instant identification and access into it.
Model TZ 6000 is the largest pack in the Tenzing family, and the strongest and lightest of its kind. It weighs just under 7 pounds and has a capacity of 4,400 cubic inches that is expandable to 6,013 cubic inches. Especially noteworthy is the pack's expandable, breathable mesh meat pocket that can carry a giant load off the mountain tight against the back in the first trip out, without having to move gear to make room for it.
The women's model TZ 1215W features 1,215 cubic inches of storage space in a streamlined and feather-light 2 pounds, 6 ounces pack that has been specially designed to fit a woman's physique. The pack has nine compartments, including six specialized zip pockets, an H2O reservoir pocket, and a special boot that folds out for hands-free carrying of a gun or bow.
The TZ 1140 is a single-sling archer's shoulder pack that weighs in at just over 2 pounds and offers 1,144 cubic inches of storage space. Its sling adapts to fit over either shoulder, meaning it gives right or left-handed shooters an unrestricted draw. The pack has a quick access quiver mount on the right side to hold today's modern one-piece bow quivers. A side-mounted clip on the left side carries the bow.
Tenzing made sure to optimize each pack to make the most of the available space. Most models incorporate an H2O compartment with hydration port for a 2-liter reservoir, while the smaller packs have expandable pockets for carrying water bottles.
All Tenzing packs are available in Realtree Max-1 camo patterns, and some also offer Realtree AP as an option. The models range in price from the fanny pack TZ 720 that sells for around $99.99, up to the spacious TZ 6000 backpack that retails for about $399.99.
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