When talking about the 4200 Elite, I find it necessary to repeat the following: When the scope came out in the early 1990s, I was drawn to it for a variety of reasons, and ended up with maybe half a dozen. When the company developed Rain Guard coating for the line, I sold all the first crop and replaced them with the newer scopes. All told, I’ve had something like 14 Elite 4200s in service for close to 20 years, used them everywhere, mounted them on some fearsome rifles, and never had one fail in any way, shape, or form.

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The sad tale of a world-class buck’s sorry demise continues. Today, Troy Alan Reinke, 32, of Cannon Falls, MN, pleaded guitly to poaching the largest 8-point whitetail buck ever killed--a 185-inch bohemoth brought down last Halloween. Now, Alan is headed to where many hunters say he belongs—in jail.

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Okay... I know I'll raise a few hackles with this one.  I live in Colorado. I moved here for a reason (namely the fabulous trout fishing, and the 300-plus days of sunny, angler-friendly weather we have in the Centennial state on an average annual basis). But I grew up in Pennsylvania, and truth be told, my "home river" is the upper Delaware. It's beautiful place, and as trout fishing goes, I think the Upper D is both the perfect "elementary school" and "grad school" for anyone who wants to be a bona-fide fly angler. [ Read Full Post ]

On the last day of the Iowa archery season, I shot a doe at a distance of seven yards. I was kneeling at the time, my back pressed against a broken-down willow tree that hid my silhouette. I can honestly say that the seconds before I released that arrow were every bit as exciting as the ones leading up to the buck I killed three months earlier. And that was the largest whitetail buck I have ever taken.

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A number of readers questioned both the validity and sourcing of a blog post I wrote last week concerning threats to the Clean Water Act. My information came from the New York Times, you see, so it must have an agenda.
 
Fair enough. But here's one that says basically the same thing, and it was published in that bastion of liberal socialism, Wildfowl magazine. And not to be outdone, those left-leaning folks at Ducks Unlimited have voiced their radical agenda on the issue as well. So what other liberal groups out there ar throwing their support behind this un-American, anti-free market legislation?
 
Let's see... Trout Unlimited. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The American Sportfishing Association. Whitetails Unlimited. The North American Grouse Partnership. The list goes on and on and on.
 
Glenn Beck and James Inhofe must be apoplectic at the thought of so many granola-crunching socialist hippies.
 
I can't think of one mainstream, sportsman-based conservation organization out there that doesn't support the Clean Water Restoration Act, and there's a very good reason for that: clean water is the basis, the keystone for everything. Without clean, unpolluted... [ Read Full Post ]

About a month ago Deeter asked the question, "should felt soles be banned?" The responses ranged all over the board, with many of you agreeing with the science behind the banning theory and many of you thinking it a waste of time.

Monday, Trout Unlimited urged Alaska's Board of Fisheries to, "phase out the use of felt soled wading products in Alaska as a way to guard against the spread of aquatic invasive species.The Board will take up the proposal at its March 16-21 meeting in Anchorage."

The same board passed a ban for the Southeast Region of the state last year which takes effect in that part of the state in January 2011. Trout Unlimited now thinks a full state-wide ban makes sense because Mark Kaelke, TU Southeast Alaska Project Director, says, “Fisheries in Alaska are simply too valuable to too many people not to take every reasonable action possible to stop the introduction and spread of aquatic invasive species in the future."

Deeter and... [ Read Full Post ]

Ordinarily I can take people’s home turkey videos or leave them alone. Usually, it’s just jittery footage of some poor gobbler crossing a field and getting shot in the head. This one, though, I love. Part of the fun of turkey hunting is hearing birds make all kinds of sounds. Real turkeys break the rules of calling. The hen in this footage would be booed off the stage at a calling contest because once she starts yelping, she can’t stop.

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Wait a minute. Hold on, now. It’s not me saying so. It’s the winner of the previous “Shoot Me Down”—that is, the person who gave the best argument against my wild assertion that “The .260 Rem. Is The Best All-Around Whitetail Cartridge.” It is our own Walt Smith, who has agreed to accept the coveted prize of doing my job for me, as a guest blogger. Put another way, Walt is my guest. So be nice. Disagree, by all means. Shoot him down, if you must. Nail him to the wall. But be nice about it.

(Seriously, Walt, thanks for playing along.)

With that, here’s Walt:

Food Plots and Baiting Are One And The Same

Whether you till the soil and plant seeds in the ground or you stop by the gas station and buy bags of corn and carrots to spread on the ground, the only reason you go to all that trouble is to attract deer to your stand. Either way, you’re baiting.

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My first duck season with Pritch is just a memory now. But our last hunt is one that I will remember for a long time. My nephew, who was hunting with me that day, likes to refer to it as the wrestling match in the swamp—Pritch versus me.

Our first two duck hunts had been quick affairs. We sat on the edge of a small wood duck swamp with hardly any calling and the birds came in early and fast. We took a couple of shots and it was over. But our third and final duck hunt was more typical. (For the record, I was not carrying a gun.) We had a large spread of decoys on a decent size pond, and there were three of us in the blind. We were set up nicely when my nephew and his buddy started really working their calls…and Pritch went gonzo. At first it was a constant whimpering that would crescendo into the occasional bark. When the first shot went off (a miss) she resembled a small but powerful bronco. The exact opposite of gun shy—call it gun happy. As soon as I had her calmed down the calling cranked up again... [ Read Full Post ]

Last Friday, I announced that we have a four-way tie in the Mathews Z7 contest. Buddyboy25, Ikedogg, mwmrtn, and taylor1 each correctly guessed the actual, to-the-inch, gross-score total of 685 inches. I also posted a tie-breaker buck—but that deer, unfortunately, proved to be a little too well-known, as Hank111 rightly pointed out.

So here is a new buck for our Final Four (as buckhunter has dubbed them) to guess at. Okay finalists, we’ll give you two looks at this one:


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A while back I wrote about a website called FishyKid.org. The site was, "inspired by two fathers who enjoy the sport of fly fishing and want to do their part in passing along the virtues of the outdoors to their children as well as the families within the online angling community."

Last year they did a coloring contest with rods and reels for prizes, but it's this year's contest that really caught my eye. Fishykid's new writing contest is for anyone 17 years old or younger. The winner will take home a $900 NuCanoe. The boat is described as sit-on-top kayak/sport canoe and looks like a fishing machine. You thought Deeter and I gave away some sparkly prizes...

The topic for the writing contest is: Why are the outdoors and spending time on the water so important to you? I thought all of our younger readers and everyone's kids would like a shot at this one.

The complete entry rules are here.

Good Luck Kiddos.

TR [ Read Full Post ]