On my recent trip to Oregon, a bunch of us were sitting on a ridge waiting for a mule deer to do something stupid, and one of our number left to walk down an adjoining ridge. When he was 1,000 yards away or so the head honcho of the ranch said: “You know, I can see him as clearly as if he were wearing blaze orange. That camo of his doesn’t work.”

And it was true. The ridgerunner was wearing some kind of dark camo designed for sitting in a tree in a Southern swamp, and at a distance all the branches and leaves and Spanish moss and  cottonmouths in the pattern blended together into a dark and highly visible mass. I’ve seen this many times; very few camo patterns travel well.

There are three that do, and they work because ...

... none of them look like anything. No trees, no flowers, no chirping birds, no vines, just irregular blobs of color, none very light, and very little black or none at all. The best of these is Cabela’s Oufitter pattern. I’ve worn it in Africa, Alaska, New Zealand, and many places in between and it blends in unfailingly.

The two others are the patterns used by Sleeping Indian and King of the Mountain, who weave it into their wool. I’ve used these from Maine to Montana and they fit right in. Unlike myself.

Both the Army and the Marines have taken these principles to heart—to wit, the Army’s ACU pattern, and the Marines’ MARPAT, which has little globes and anchors blended into the pattern so the jarheads will not be mistaken for soldiers.

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Southpaw Alert! Niles Wheeler of Safari Outfitters (which is high-grade left-hand-gun central) advises me that he has two southpaw Model 70s just in. Both are out of the Winchester Custom Shop, one made in the late 90s, the other in 2001. They are super-fancy rifles, one in .338, the other in .35 Whelen, both in NIB condition. 845-677-5444.

This question came up on another gun blog when someone mentioned that they had seen a rifle of mine for sale, and another blogger asked about the gun—a 7x57—and inquired if I was still alive. Far from taking offense, I see this as a reasonable question, and will attempt to answer it as best I may.

On the one hand, I am very old. I can remember before television. I can remember when actual music was played on the radio. When I was born, there were still a fair number of men alive who had fought in the Civil War. I can remember when people believed what our government had to say. Obviously, that is a long, long time ago and does not argue well for my survival.

On the other hand, someone is writing this stuff and it sounds like me. And, in a week I’m going way up to northern Maine to freeze my nasty bits and not see a single one of the six deer that are left in that state. That sounds like something I would do. Last week I dropped enough at Cabela’s and Brownell’s to finance Cruella Pelosi’s health care package for a month. That’s definitely me.

And so my fellow bloggers, is the old bastard still sucking air? Probably.

Breaking up is hard to do.—Neil Sedaka, 1962

Changing your mind at this stage of life is a lot harder than breaking up.—David E. Petzal, 2009

Over the past decade and a half I’ve been braying to one and all about the pernicious effect that high-tech gadgetry is having on hunting. Now, however, I think it’s time to re-think things. A couple of weeks ago I went on a mule deer hunt in southeast Oregon, and while I and my rifle made it, my sense of distance did not. For whatever reason I was misjudging ranges by 100 yards or more, even at 300 and under.

What saved me was the fact that I, and everyone else, had a laser rangefinder, and when I got the drop on a 4x5 buck and the laser said 305 yards, I listened to it and not my own inner voice, which is frequently full of s**t anyway.

My rifle was a Mark Bansner .270 WSM, loaded with 150-grain Swift A-Frame bullets at 3,050 fps, and the scope was one of Bushnell’s new 6500 Elite 2.5X-15X rifles with the D.O.A. range-compensating reticle. D.O.A. stands for “dead-on-accurate,” and it is, but only if you know the range. So rather than guess how far it was I sicced high technology on the poor animal, put the 300-yard dot on his ribs, and trust me when I tell you that the bullet went exactly where the dot was.

Not only are the 6500 Elites tougher than Hillary Rodham Clinton, they are extremely bright and sharp. One evening after the sun had set I trained the scope on a herd of deer in a field of pale yellow grass. They were spread out from 630 to 750 yards, and despite the fact that the sun was gone, I could still get a perfectly clear, sharp sight picture.
It is a wonderful world we live in.

Mostly, I like my venison cooked so rare that it’s scary to look at on the plate. I do like beanless deer chili and the occasional pot roast, but mostly, the simpler the recipe and the bloodier the meat, the better venison tastes. In fact, I have a lot to say about those who ruin perfectly good deer meat by grinding it into salami, deer sticks and breakfast sausage.
Time for me to come clean about my own guilty venison pleasure. Technically, what my son John and I make is jerky, but we call it “deer candy.”

We made our latest batch last week, with part of the deer John shot in the youth season. We took a bunch of odd pieces and scraps, trimmed the fat off (important to get the fat off), and cut the pieces into two and three inch strips that varied in thickness but probably averaged a quarter inch. We wound up with three pounds of deer pieces. We marinated them in:

    Half a bottle of teriyaki sauce
    A quarter of a bottle of soy sauce
    At least two cups of brown sugar
    A couple of squeezes from a lemon slice
    A little orange juice
    A fair amount of grated ginger

We left the meat in the refrigerator overnight, then put it in a food dryer for 12-16 hours. It’s very sweet and gingery, very chewy, and not as dry as most jerky, because we cut it thicker and don’t leave it in the dryer forever. Three pounds of meat dries into a pound of deer candy, which doesn’t last long at all at our house. In fact, it’s already time to make more.