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I returned from SHOT relieved to find my old setter, Ike, still alive and even able to rouse himself to wag his tail and give me a nuzzle when I came in the door. For a while after he first went blind, I took him to the field with me and let him run around before and after the hunt as he’s doing in the picture above. But he has been fading since mid-December. He can walk a little but mostly I carry him from place to place.

[ Read Full Post ]

From SkyNews.com
A teenage girl has told how she bashed an attacking shark over the head with her body board until it let her go.

Lydia Ward, 14, was in waist-deep water with her brother at Oreti Beach, on New Zealand's South Island, when the sea creature grabbed her hip.

She said she did not notice the shark until the attack was under way.

"I saw my brother's face and turned to the side and saw this large grey thing in the water, so I just hit it on the head with a boogie board" .... [ Read Full Post ]

While watching the Super Bowl last night, I got pigskin fever. Pigskin, I recalled, is an old term for a football. Then my addled brain tumbled in sequence to fried pork skins, which are a fantastic snack food.

Like me, you’ve probably fished with pig skins also. Who among you hasn’t rigged a bass jig with an Uncle Josh pork frog or tipped a Johnson’s Silver Minnow with a strip of cured white rind?

Uncle Josh used to make fried skins, too, as people food instead of bass food. But for some reason I can’t find them online any more. So maybe they decided fish bait is better business and quit that sideline.

And that all reminded me of closely-related pork cracklings, the crispy brown bits you get when rendering pork lard or frying down strips of salt pork. As a little kid on family camping trips, I distinctly remember to this day the sounds and smells of frying salt pork as my mother cooked it on a big griddle over a fire, thereby extracting enough grease to then fry some smallmouth bass fillets. I hung around for... [ Read Full Post ]

I have to admit, I’m a Jets fan, but last night’s Super Bowl was one of the finest I’ve seen. Pritchard didn’t get too excited about the game, but she did raise her head from a deep slumber when the Doritos bark collar commercial aired. She didn’t get the joke—she just liked the barking—but I got a laugh out of it. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, check it out below. [ Read Full Post ]

You all know how this works.  Write your best caption below and we will pick what we consider the best one and award you a prize.

The winner this week scores big time with a pair of Korkers Guide Wading Boots complete with their famous interchangeable sole and BOA "lace" system.  They retail for $179.99

Good luck, and may the best caption win.

TR [ Read Full Post ]

For anyone looking for another example of the Armageddon politicians can unleash on game management, the Nebraska legislature, in an effort to radically reduce the deer herd (a move favored by many farmers, who no doubt represent a powerful lobby in NE), offer bill LB836, which would remove many of the most fundamental restrictions on deer hunting, thus legitimizing every poacher in the state and making poachers out of everybody else.

On its face, LB836 looks to me like a potentially disastrous free-for-all with perhaps the power to disintegrate the line between hunting and killing. In short, an abomination.

I could be wrong. But I’m not alone.

From a McCook Daily Gazette column:
LB836, which would allow night-hunting with spotlights and shooting without permits as a way to decrease the deer population in Nebraska. It would also allow landowners and their immediate family members to kill, without permits, deer caught damaging property, and would establish additional deer hunting seasons. . . .

There is plenty of reason to be concerned about deer. . . .

But the state officials who know the most about the issue oppose LB836. The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is already dealing with the issue by extending antlerless-deer... [ Read Full Post ]

It is now 47 years since Patsy Cline’s short, sad life ended in a plane crash, and no country singer has come along to equal her. Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941, and not even the past decade’s crop of steroid-bloated imbeciles has come close to matching that record. Joe Louis hung up his gloves in 1949, having held the heavyweight title for 12 years, setting a mark that will never fall. And since 1966, when Robert Ruark’s liver disintegrated in a London hospital, no one has written half as well about Africa.

And this is why we should welcome Safari Press’ release of Robert Ruark’s Africa, which was compiled and annotated by Michael McIntosh, and originally published by Countrysport Press, in 1991. The book’s 20 chapters are collected from magazine pieces Ruark did (all sorts of magazines; not just Field & Stream), and I doubt you’ve seen any of them before. McIntosh, who is a fine writer himself, provides a little gem of an introduction to Ruark, his life and times, and comments on the chapters, which are organized into three parts: first hunts, Mau Mau years, and final years.

This book... [ Read Full Post ]

Remember the exclusive photo gallery we posted this fall about the enormous Ohio nontypical whitetail taken by Brian Stephens the opening day of gun season? At the time, we told you Stephen’s buck would almost certainly shatter the state muzzleloader nontypical record, with perhaps the longest main beam ever recorded.

Well, it’s now official. Yesterday afternoon I received the following email from Brian:

Dave,
We had our official scoring for Boone & Crockett and Longhunter on Saturday at the Ohio Division of Wildlife District 5 headquarters. Several state media outlets covered the scoring.

The Buck scored 250 1/8" gross, and 232 5/8" net Non-Typical for a new Ohio Muzzleloader Record and #8 All-Time for North America.

The left main beam, at 35 1/8", is the longest ever, and the right main beam, at 34 1/8”, is the 2nd longest ever.

The deer's 9pt main frame scores 218 1/8" Typical. 

Congrats, Brian. Incredible buck. [ Read Full Post ]

From the Idaho Statesman:
Rick Hobson, a Boise wolf advocate, used a public records request to get the names of hunters who reported wolf kills to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Hobson posted 122 names and bought a classified ad in the Idaho Statesman that directed people to a Web site.

He said harassment was not his intent. . . .

But Robert Millage, Idaho's first successful wolf hunter, said he's been dealing with harassment since he killed a wolf on the opening day of the season in September. . . .
Millage countered with a Web site of his own to show some of the thousands of angry e-mails he's gotten. Some describe him as an "inbred hillbilly," a "sick killer" and "pure evil. . . ."

"I have some concerns over the safety of the individuals listed," said hunter John Hendley, who didn't harvest a wolf last year and isn't on the list. "What (Hobson) is doing is legal on one hand, but immoral on the other."

Millage is better known to all of you on this site as “idahooutdoors,” and he shares his story in depth in our upcoming March 2010 issue. Be sure to check it out.

Meanwhile,... [ Read Full Post ]

From the Idaho Statesman:
Rick Hobson, a Boise wolf advocate, used a public records request to get the names of hunters who reported wolf kills to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Hobson posted 122 names and bought a classified ad in the Idaho Statesman that directed people to a Web site.

He said harassment was not his intent. . . .

But Robert Millage, Idaho's first successful wolf hunter, said he's been dealing with harassment since he killed a wolf on the opening day of the season in September. . . .
Millage countered with a Web site of his own to show some of the thousands of angry e-mails he's gotten. Some describe him as an "inbred hillbilly," a "sick killer" and "pure evil. . . ."

"I have some concerns over the safety of the individuals listed," said hunter John Hendley, who didn't harvest a wolf last year and isn't on the list. "What (Hobson) is doing is legal on one hand, but immoral on the other."

Millage is better known to all of you on this site as “idahooutdoors,” and he shares his story in depth in our upcoming March 2010 issue. Be sure to check it out.

Meanwhile,... [ Read Full Post ]

Last week my father-in-law sent me an email from one of his friends. A speech a grand daughter gave to her grand father on his 90th birthday. It resonated deeply with me.

I won't ruin it by trying to over-explain it. The paragraph below (from him), helped me understand the back story. I hope you like it.

TR

The bond between a North Carolina grandfather and his first grandchild began 30 years ago. On a secluded and secret stream in western North Carolina, an angler learned, mid-cast, that his daughter had given birth. [ Read Full Post ]