by Chad Love

Wildlife food plots are an integral part of many a deer hunter's strategy, especially on smaller acreages where a few small food plots can make a big difference in your hunting success. But what about bird hunters, or, for that matter, gundog owners looking to improve bird habitat on their land or training grounds?

Now, obviously, planting food and/or cover plots on large public WMAs or hunting preserves is fairly routine, but what about those of us small landholders who are just looking to get a few more birds around our houses or small acreages? Could a few small, upland bird specific food plots make a noticeable increase in the birds you hunt or train on?

The folks at Pheasants and Quail Forever think so, which is why they're selling food plot seed designed specifically for bird hunters.

by Chad Love

Gundog owners are used to low-grade attacks on our way of life. Not even the loony fringe believes outright bans on hunting dog ownership can work. Yet, there are any number of ways that anti-hunting and anti-pet ownership forces can nickel and dime us with laws that, on the surface seem fairly benign or even well-intentioned. I mean, who isn’t against puppy mills, irresponsible dog owners and animal cruelty, right?

So these groups trot out, mostly on the local level but increasingly on the state level as well, proposed legislation like spay and neuter requirements, dog limit requirements, "kennel licensing" requirements, breeding restrictions, etc., that would make owning, breeding, training, and hunting with dogs as difficult and expensive as possible.

by Chad Love

Back in February, Phil Bourjaily wrote a Gun Nuts blog post about the return of the revered Eddie Bauer name to hunting and shooting apparel. I was able to take a look at some of Eddie Bauer's new upland hunting and shooting apparel at SHOT this year, and came away impressed.

As Phil has already noted, Bauer has a full line of shooting apparel, and will also launch its upland collection this fall. It looks very nice, and I'm looking forward to trying out some of it, but in perusing the Eddie Bauer Sport Shop site I discovered that Eddie Bauer (the actual man, not the company) was a pretty serious gundog guy.

From the Eddie Bauer website:

In 1930 Eddie drove to Canada, paid $65, and brought home the first black Labrador retriever in Washington State. Eddie took a lot of ribbing from his hunting buddies. "What are you doing with that mutt?" they laughed.