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By Ben Romans

A homeowner in Coquitlam, British Columbia recently filmed two wild black bears fighting in her driveway.
 
Some time later, conservation officers responded and found the boars were still facing off against one another. [ Read Full Post ]

By Nate Matthews

A new fishing kayak was released today called the Predator (top), which appears to be Old Town's answer to Hobie's popular Pro Angler model. Both yaks are part of a trend toward bigger, more comfortable fishing kayaks that trade range and speed for customizable versatility. Both the Predator and the Pro Angler feature highly stable multi-hull designs, extra-wide beams, and adjustable, removable seats that emphasize angler comfort (they look almost like deck chairs). Both are great kayaks for big-bodied anglers, those who want to stand up while fishing, and those who need lots of cargo space for carrying livewells, coolors, and other bulky gear. Both boats feature slip-resistant decking as well as mounting plates that let you attach rod holders, GPS mounts, or other accessories without having to drill holes in your hull. Both were designed to accomodate trolling motors. 

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By David E. Petzal

As the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson once observed, societies can keep people in check only up to a point. When more people than the cops can handle get cheesed off about something it can cause the dissolution of a large and well established police state (the U.S.S.R.), at least three revolutions (American, French, and Russian) and issue-based insurrections too numerous to count. Did anyone drive 55 mph when Jimmy Carter told us to? Did anyone pass up a drink during Prohibition? Did anyone foreswear the reefer because Nancy Reagan told us to just say no?

Now, we may be on the verge of a new era when firearms laws may be collapsing under the weight of consumer demand. In Maine, the state police are so buried under concealed-carry applications (and Maine is not a pain in the ass about this) that it can take 150 days to receive your permit. In Maryland, during the first four months of 2013, the state police had received more than 57,000 applications for guns—more than had come in during 2008 to 2011. The backlog currently stands at 26,547.

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By Bob Marshall

The Senate has done its job for fish, wildlife and sportsmen—now it’s time for the House to step up.

Monday the Senate passed a new Farm Bill that includes two key provisions considered critical by conservation groups:

– Sod Saver, which safeguards the nation’s dwindling base of native grasslands from agricultural development.
– Making landowner compliance to conservation programs a prerequisite for taxpayer-funded crop insurance subsidies.

“The Senate has produced a bill that makes constructive changes to conservation programs, and it ensures that the shift to crop insurance premium support as the primary component of the farm safety net carries with it protection for wetlands, highly erodible lands and native prairie,” said Steve Kline, TRCP director of government relations.

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By Ben Romans

How much would you pay to be able to hit your target at distances of 1,000 yards—and never miss? TrackingPoint, a precision rifle manufacturer in Texas, is setting the opening bid at $22,500.
 
The company is producing precision rifles and fusing them with advanced scopes that account for distance, gravity, wind speed, humidity, and even the rotation of the earth. TrackingPoint debuted the system at SHOT Show in January to much media attention.

Shooters can view their target through the scope and “tag” it with the crosshairs, so even with the safety off, the gun doesn’t fire until it’s locked on to the target. What’s more, the scope systems are WiFi enabled and come with a color display that records the scope’s perspective so shooters can share videos online. But they come with a hefty price tag: $22,500 to $25,700. [ Read Full Post ]

By David Draper

Last week’s “What The Heck Is This?” contest garnered about 50 correct responses, though I suspect only about the first 10 or so actually recognized the device as a biltong cutter. Of all the correct entries, Neuman23’s number came up in the random drawing, so congratulations to him and thanks to everyone else who entered their guesses.

I’ve also been remiss in picking a winner for the Worst Cooking Disaster contest back in April. T. Rebel and I finally got on the same page and came up with our favorite stories. There were some doozies, including DigHunter digging into some under fried chicken after some late-night shenanigans and Bowhunt3r’s tale of his brother’s attempt at making pizza dough. If you haven’t read those—or the rest of the great entries—it’s worth the time just for the laughs. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

Many of my carp nation friends from coast to coast are reporting that the fishing has turned on—in a big way. Al Quattrocchi and Conway Bowman tell me the annual "Throwdown" tournament held at Lake Henshaw near San Diego was a great success. I am going down to fish the Dirty South Platte in Denver today to see what's happening. Will Rice reported that flows have dropped, the water cleared, and the fish are happy.

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By David Draper

The recent news coming out of Turkey has me reminiscing about my trip there last summer. After a few days spent in Antalya visiting with the innovator behind the UTS-15 shotgun, I kicked around Istanbul for a week just experiencing an amazing city. The apartment I rented was just off Taksim Square, the center of the ongoing protests, and a lot of my favorite meals from Turkey came from the spider web of streets branching from İstiklâl Caddesi, the avenue leading to Taksim that’s been the sight of some of the worst of the clashes between protestors and police. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Once a year I shoot my sporting clays gun—a Miroku Charles Daly with 32-inch barrels—on a two-day charity preserve pheasant hunt. The stock is fitted to me and the long, heavy barrels move inevitably to the birds. It’s almost impossible to miss with it.   

Longer barrels are easier to shoot with, especially on any kind of crossing bird. Most of my hunting guns now have 28-inch barrels, which seems like a good compromise length. Of course, barrel wall thickness varies and two guns with 28-inch barrels can have very different balance, but in general they have a little bit of weight forward that makes them easier to shoot. In fact, chances are I will shoot a gun pretty well if I pick it up and it feels too heavy in the muzzle. [ Read Full Post ]

By Ben Romans

A few anglers in Alaska recently had an up-close-and-personal encounter with a killer whale when it approached their boat and grabbed a halibut from the end of a fishing line.
 
In a clip recently posted by The Alaska Life, you can hear the men behind the line talking, but they seem relatively calm considering what happened. This has led to some comments online alleging the men knew the whale was in the area and were purposely trying to entice it closer.

Also, no additional details about the location of the encounter with the orca have been reported. Do you think it was a truly candid moment?
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By Hal Herring

There is nothing like a good anti-federal-government advertising campaign to rally support for, well, almost anything. In this time of Internal Revenue Service scandals and accusations that the Environmental Protection Agency has charged so-called “conservative” groups for Freedom of Information Act requests that they handed over to environmental groups for free, the time was ripe for a smart advertising professional to tap in to the zeitgeist and try, yet again, to sell a highly skeptical American public on the Pebble Project—a huge gold and copper mine proposed by two foreign mining corporations to be built on public lands in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

On June 4, Northern Dynasty Minerals, Limited, a Vancouver, Canada-based corporation that owns 50 percent of the Pebble Project, ran an ad in the Washington Post and on various political websites that demands an end to what it calls EPA’s “black box bias” against the mine. The ad also claims that the EPA is manipulating public opinion and denying science in response to the results of the EPA’s 14 month-long comprehensive Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment (BBWA). The EPA's assessment shows that the Pebble Project does indeed threaten the greatest salmon fishery on earth (a $500 million industry annually) and the estimated 14,000 jobs that depend upon it, and will industrialize one of America’s wildest and most pristine expanses of public land, which would forever changing the culture and economy of the 7,500 people, mostly Native Americans, who now call it home.

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