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By David E. Petzal

During the taping of this season’s Gun Nuts (which promises to be bigger than Ben Hur) the question came up whether a deformed lead tip can cause a bullet to fly awry. Several times in the past, when shooting a group, I had shot a slug with a deformed tip and seen no indication of this at all. But before I went on camera I decided to check. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Prodded, perhaps, by a poor economy, big-name gunmakers are finally offering no-frills base models of their top-of-the-line shotguns for those who want to buy a popular brand but have $1,000 or less to spend.

You can easily drop over $1,800 on a semiautomatic, but you surely aren’t paying for hand checkering when you buy a shotgun with a plastic stock. Mostly you are paying for new technology and the years of R&D that went into it. You also pay for extras you may not want or need: camo finishes, recoil-reducing stocks, fiber-optic beads, hard-plastic cases. It’s like buying a new car and having no choice but to pony up for the LX version with leather seats and a sunroof when all you want is the base model to get you around.

Now, those base models are available for a real-world price of around $1,000—or much less—listed here from least to most bang for the buck:

Benelli Synthetic Stock Montefeltro

New for 2013, and replacing the discontinued M2 American, this 3-inch gun weighs less than 7 pounds in 12-gauge. The Synthetic Montefeltro is the lower-cost alternative to the regular M2, which gives you Benelli’s vibration-­dampened ComforTech stock with the extra-soft pad and comb insert. In black, that gun sells for $1,359. This gun, with a black stock and a regular recoil pad, lists for $1,139. It comes in a 12-gauge, 26-inch-barreled version only. ­Benelliusa.com

You’ll save: $220.

[ Read Full Post ]

By Scott Bestul

I’ll go ahead and date myself: When I was a kid my dad would take me to the local movie theater to watch Fred Bear’s films. Those movies—which were of an epic quality and went far beyond the mere killing of game—fueled the dreams of a budding bowhunter. Bear was larger than life in so many ways, and his presence on the big screen played a huge role in cementing his reputation.  [ Read Full Post ]

By Ben Romans

Earlier this week, Karen Sciascia was on Montana’s Big Hole River with 4 Rivers Fishing Co. guide Seth McLean when they came to the aid of a drowning moose calf that was trying to cross to reach its mother.

A Missoulian article says Sciascia, was fishing from McLean’s drift boat when they saw an adult moose crossing the river, but didn’t realize a 25-pound newborn was following until they drifted closer. At this time of year, western rivers are swollen with mountain snowmelt and eventually the swift current swept the calf away. [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

About 35 years ago, I bought a trigger pull scale so I could measure trigger pulls. Back then, you could use weights on a rod to do the job, or you could get a spring-style scale with the weights engraved on a brass tube. There was a hook connected to the spring, and you put that on the trigger and pulled carefully until you heard the firing pin fall, and you tried to read where the indicator was at the instant you heard the click.

The scale was by no means perfect. You had to develop a touch with it so you could see what it read at the crucial instant, and every few years you had to polish the thing so you could read it. But it worked. [ Read Full Post ]

By Kirk Deeter

One of the greatest assets of the Ponoi River Company is its staff of fishing guides. It's literally an all-star international team, and I was pleased to find a number of familiar faces in the group—I had previously fished with Joaquin Arocena for dorado in Bolivia, and Max Mamaev for sea trout in Tierra del Fuego.

Ryabaga camp manager Matt Breuer is one of the anglers who figured out how to catch arapaimas on the fly in Guyana. It makes sense that the best of the best would gravitate to the Ponoi, since it's one of the world's finest fisheries. It makes sense from the lodge perspective too—if you're running a fishing operation east of Murmansk and north of the Arctic Circle, you don't want your guides to be semi-pro. [ Read Full Post ]

By Ben Romans

Caleb Newton of Spotsylvania, Virginia caught this 36-inch long, 17-pound, 6-ounce snakehead from a Potomac River tributary near Stafford, Virginia on June 1. The fish could best the current world record fish, caught in 2004 in Japan, by two ounces. [ Read Full Post ]

By Tim Romano

A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the Thompson Divide here in Colorado. It's an undeveloped backcountry area just west of the Roaring Fork Valley and is home to many productive and pristine native cutthroat trout watersheds as well as one of the most productive elk habitats in the state. Unfortunately for hunters and anglers here as well as out of state visitors, energy development is creeping in.  Almost half of the 220,000-acre area has been leased for natural gas development. I'll be blunt and say that I'd like some help working out a reasonable solution to development in the area.

The video above was made by my friend Josh Duplechian and features two of my friends and colleagues that depend on this wilderness area to make a living. [ Read Full Post ]

By Ben Romans

A motorcycle rider in Utah was injured Tuesday morning in a freak accident—a doe dashed into morning rush hour traffic and jumped on top of his bike.
 
The Salt Lake Tribune reports the incident occurred around 7:30 a.m. and knocked the rider off, mortally wounded the deer, and significantly damaged the motorcycle.
 
Police don’t know how fast the man was travelling, but the collision sent the 19-year-old rider on a 100-yard slide. The bike reportedly continued to slide on the road for another few hundred yards. Fortunately, protective gear prevented any serious injuries, and the rider only got some road rash, and a crazy story about how his bike was trashed.
[ Read Full Post ]

By Scott Bestul

All else being equal, the hunter with the most experience usually has the best shot at bagging a good buck. And when that Experience comes in the form of a great bow built by Bowtech, the odds are even better. Hurteau and I (along with test team members Will Brantley and Danny Hinton) recently put the Bowtech Experience through its paces in our annual Best of the Best bow test, and while I can’t reveal exactly where it placed in a field of hot shooters, rest assured it ranked high enough that I know this to be a very cool prize indeed. [ Read Full Post ]

By Nate Matthews

Last month I had the pleasure of test driving a 2013 Toyota 4Runner Trail Edition for two weeks, first on a trout trip to the Catskill Mountains, then while scouting and competing in this year's Kayak Fishing Classic, a three-day saltwater tournament in New York City. This wasn't a technical test (for a good one of those, click here), but it was an opportunity to use the truck the way it was designed to be driven—to carry lots of gear in challenging conditions both on- and off-road.  [ Read Full Post ]

By Joe Cermele

This video is a touch long, but I promise you'll get sucked right in by the power of the Surströmming. That, by the way, for lack of a lengthy explaination that the video will provide, is rotted, fermented herring, and a delicacy across the big pond. Question one: Have any of you ever tried this? Question 2: How many cold Budweisers would it take for you to give it a shot? I personally cannot fathom eating something banned by several airlines due an explosion hazard.