By Slaton L. White

The 4-in-1 Woodsman is a tool perfectly designed for deer camp. It combines a hatchet, saw, mallet, and a stake puller into one easy-to-carry implement. Converting it from hatchet to saw is easy, and the ingenious hatchet sheath also serves as the saw handle. To switch back to the hatchet, simply stow the blade in the handle, then loosen the sheath. Kindling is just seconds away.

MSRP: $79.95 [ Read Full Post ]

Avian-X Strutter Decoy

$120; avian-x.com.  Outside of taxidermy decoys, Avian-X LCD inflatable turkey decoys are as realistic as it gets—just what you need when trying to fool late-season longbeards wary of rubber-chicken lookalikes. This new strutter works with a real fan, weighs 4.8 pounds, and comes with a carrying bag for run-and-gun hunting. It’s 15 percent smaller than your average real tom, too, making it less intimidating to subordinate birds. Hey, some of us like to shoot jakes. —Will Brantley

Cortland FlyPad

$80; cortlandline.com.  If your garage looks anything like mine, you need an easy way to organize all your dries, nymphs, and streamers. The FlyPad is a modular fly-storage system that holds eight trays of flies. A waterproof, low-profile fly box is strapped into a recess on the side. When you’re ready to fish, grab the tray you need, snap it into the box, and you’re ready to go. The ventilated FlyPad allows wet flies to air dry, and you can purchase extra fly boxes or trays configured to hold all different kinds of flies. —Joe Cermele

Diamond Archery Infinite Edge Package 

$399; diamondarchery.com. This new compound takes the recent trend of increased adjustability to a... [ Read Full Post ]

By Michael R. Shea

Mike Shea, a Field & Stream Duck Reporter, spent the past duck season hunting hard in Rhode Island. This is the equipment he used in the field. See what held up best and which items are getting an update in 2013.

Franchi Affinity Shotgun

Like marrying your high school sweetheart, the only shotgun I’ve ever loved was my Remington 870 Wingmaster. Heavy, with a 30-inch barrel, she swung smooth and just felt right. Then last year I shot the Franchi Affinity. Well, I wouldn’t say I divorced my 870, I just moved a younger, lighter, modern gal into the gun safe.

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by Michael R. Shea

This Home Depot special will be the best $15 decoy bag you’ll ever buy. We used them for diver and sea duck spreads that routinely pushed 80 decoys, stacked over three leaf bags. It works because we long-line our decoys with 400-pound mono and bouy snaps. This way nothing tangles, even if they’re all jumbled together. If you took this same rig and put them in slotted bags, which can cost more than twice as much and always tend to be too small for foam floaters, the clips inevitably hang-up between the slots. Like when coiling line, you’re better off with a contained pile than a tight, twisted-up package.

We bungee corded these bags to the side of the boat while underway. When they’re empty they collapse into a thin foam disc, which makes a nice seat.  There are drainage holes in the bottom of the bag, so it never takes on water, even when the decoys do. My main hunting partner, Tim, and I stumbled on this solution this season. Some smart company needs to come out... [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Of all the many things we can buy covered in camo that shouldn’t be camo-ed, flashlights rank near the top of the list, along with knives. Several years ago a big game guide showed me his knife. He had dipped the handle in some kind of rubberized bright orange paint. It was easy to hold onto, he said, and easy to find when he set it down somewhere.

Which brings us to the TerraLux Lightstar 80. I used one last season and found it to be in most ways a basic, serviceable light. It’s a fairly inexpensive ($30 list, sells for less) 80 lumen LED light that runs for five hours on a pair of AA batteries. It has a rubber ring around the end so you can hold it in your mouth comfortably, and the on-off switch can even be operated with tongue pressure.

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The Field 90 is the no-nonsense workhorse of the Tri-Tronics line. About a year and a half ago, Garmin bought out Tri-Tronics and at SHOT Show 2013 they unveiled a Garmin-branded e-collar, the Delta Sport. The transmitter and receiver is much like the Tri-Tronics Sport series, and it’s priced about the same at $250. It has the standard-issue continuous and momentary jolt, along with a tone/vibration feature. There’s 18-levels of correction and the controller has an innovative LCD readout. This is the first e-collar with a bark eliminator built right in. Garmin claims the BarkLimiter technology recognizes the difference between wanted and unwanted barks. I have no idea how that works, but I know a little yappy dog I can test it on. [ Read Full Post ]