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Greetings Gun Nuts. Though I never thought an occasion would arise that caused me to stray from my post at the Honest Angler blog and enter the realm of Mr. Petzal and Mr. Bourjaily, sometimes strange things happen. One actually happened today. I aimlessly wandered the SHOT Show floor with Phil Bourjaily, filming whenever something grabbed his attention. Here's a look at what we found, including some of the hottest new guns and gear, plus a booth babe that signs lingerie. I hope you enjoy the show, as Phil and I certainly had fun making it -- Joe Cermele

As you might imagine, I find myself a little more at home at the ICAST fishing industry show, but here I am with the rest of my team walking the SHOT Show floor in Las Vegas. Since I've been here I've lovingly caressed many a fine rifle, and even shot a few rounds of trap (I'm acutally not bad. I can do more than cast). But I've always got an eye out for fishy wares. Last year I reported on some cammo rods. This year I decided to visit the booth of each knife manufacturer to see what blades coming out in 2010 would pique angler interest.

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When I was a kid, I used to give my friends Wrist Rocket slingshots as birthday presents. My friends loved them, although looking back, I doubt their moms were equally thrilled.

So, it was a real treat to me to meet Mark Ellenburg at SHOT today. Ellenburg is the inventor the Wrist Rocket, which turns 55 years old this year. Ellenburg himself barely looks 55. He started inventing the Wrist Rocket when he was 12 years old, putting a wrist brace on a slingshot intended for throwing snowballs at his friend’s snow forts back in Norfork, Nebraska. Evidently playing with slingshots your whole life keeps you young.

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If you stop and think about it, many common American angling practices have been borrowed from other countries. Fly fishing has its origin in England. Many lures for muskie were copied from designs used by European pike anglers. Some of the most universal marlin tactics were derived from Australian methods. But now I say it's time we adopt the South Korean ice fishing strategy.

To be honest, I didn't even know it got cold enough to freeze massive bodies of water in South Korea. Not only was I mistaken, but people flock to the annual South Korean Ice Fishing Festival in numbers greater than Minnesota's Eelpout Festival. [ Read Full Post ]

SHOT Show starts tomorrow, and as always, several manufacturers held pre-show shooting events  today that gave us press-types a little trigger time with some of their new guns. At the Browning/Winchester shoot, I had the chance to get reacquainted with the SXP.

The SXP is the Turkish-made reincarnation of the old 1300, an underappreciated, lightweight, inexpensive gun made in the old New Haven factory before it closed. Winchester announced the SXP last year but it wasn’t until this year that they actually received guns from their Turkish vendor in sellable quantities.

Anyway, the 1300 was briefly known as the “Speed Pump” because its rotary bolt helped it cycle very quickly. I remembered the guns were smooth, but I had forgotten just how smooth they were. The first two times I tried to shoot doubles with it today, I worked the slide and ejected the shell literally without knowing I had, leaving me pulling on the forearm trying to open an action that was already open. Once I figured out what was happening, I could shoot the gun very fast, and a butter-slick pump gun is a lot of fun to shoot.

I liked the way it pointed and shot, and the... [ Read Full Post ]

The byzantine politics of coastal striped-bass management took another turn last week as a Massachusetts state legislative committee held a hearing on a bill that could end commercial striper fishing in that state. Making striped bass solely a gamefish might seem like a no-brainer to inland readers especially, where there are no commercial fisheries for species such as largemouth bass or trout.

But it’s not that simple. Commercial striper fishing is a centuries-old tradition here, which accounts for its political viability. At the same time, recreational striper angling has grown hugely in popularity over the last 25 years as striper populations recovered from their collapse (from overfishing) in the 1980s. The so-called “recs” are now taking far more fish every year than the “comms.” And it may well be there simply aren’t enough fish to go around, despite interstate striper management by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Because stripers are for the most part near-shore migrants--moving seasonally north and south from Nova Scotia to the Carolinas--an individual adult striper might pass through as many as 13 different coastal jurisdictions in a year. In some cases--New Jersey and Maine, for example--that fish will be a gamefish. And if... [ Read Full Post ]

In light of the current events unfolding in Haiti blogging about anything seems a bit trite to me this morning, but alas - something must go up...

Here I sit, shoulders slouched in front of my computer screen shell shocked by the the images coming in from every news and media outlet on the planet. Not unlike Mr. Merwin at the Honest Angler blog, I feel helpless and a bit depressed.

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Sometimes we talk about guns as works of art in this space.  How about works of art as guns? Robert Powell’s painted stocks use wood as canvas for designs based on the work of the masters. Painted gun stocks are popular among target shooters, although I for one would love to show up at a sunflower field dove shoot with a gun painted to look like Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers.” (What I would really like would be a turkey gun in Jackson Pollack camo).

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A guest post by Field & Stream Deputy Editor Jay Cassell

Last month, just before Christmas, I was offered the chance to go duck hunting out of Bay Flats Lodge in the Seadrift, Texas, a picturesque town on San Antonio Bay, west of 20-mile-long Matagorda Island. Each morning we’d get up at 4, grab a quick breakfast, then blast off in airboats to blinds strategically located around the bay. Our quarry was mostly pintails early in the morning, then redheads in the late morning. Green-winged teal, gadwalls and spoonbills also ended up in our daily bag. That’s not why I’m writing, though. I’m writing because the first morning, I saw a black Lab---curiously named Red, who’s 2 years old--- make the most unbelievable retrieve.

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From the Belleville News-Democrat:

Interest in the Illinois High School Association bass fishing state series has spiked this year….

An additional 27 schools have signed up for the second season of competitive bass fishing in Illinois, bringing the total to 226. Last year, 199 schools participated in the inaugural season….

"A lot of schools in Southern Illinois kind of took a wait-and-see attitude. They saw it turned out to be pretty good and jumped in, which is great[,”said IHSA assistant executive director Dave Ganaway].

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I try to blog about books and writing as much as the online editors will let me get away with, and I thought it interesting that today I received in the mail three books with a Field & Stream connection.
 
The first is The American Hunting Dog, copyright 1916 by Field & Stream Publishing Co. and written by former (and I'm assuming late) Field & Stream editor Warren H. Miller. The second is The Experts' Book of Upland Bird and Waterfowl Hunting, copyright 1975, edited by David E. Petzal. The third is He Loved The Dog, The Bill Tarrant Story by Mike Gould, a dog trainer Tarrant often featured in his writing.

 
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My thanks to John Blauvelt for this one.

Here’s a list of the most commonly used North American big-game cartridges, compiled over the past three years by Boone and Crockett. These loads were used by hunters who entered trophies in the B and C listing. I’ve entered more or less intelligent comments of my own after each one.

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