This question came up on another gun blog when someone mentioned that they had seen a rifle of mine for sale, and another blogger asked about the gun—a 7x57—and inquired if I was still alive. Far from taking offense, I see this as a reasonable question, and will attempt to answer it as best I may.

On the one hand, I am very old. I can remember before television. I can remember when actual music was played on the radio. When I was born, there were still a fair number of men alive who had fought in the Civil War. I can remember when people believed what our government had to say. Obviously, that is a long, long time ago and does not argue well for my survival.

On the other hand, someone is writing this stuff and it sounds like me. And, in a week I’m going way up to northern Maine to freeze my nasty bits and not see a single one of the six deer that are left in that state. That sounds like something I would do. Last week I dropped enough at Cabela’s and Brownell’s to finance Cruella Pelosi’s health care package for a month. That’s definitely me.

And... [ Read Full Post ]

Who knew there was such a sport as anvil shooting? The world championships are held every year in April in Laurel, Mississippi. Anvils are launched at various events around the country, mostly in the south.

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First off, I appreciate everyone who took the time last week to send in reports of the rut activity (or lack thereof) in your area. It is always fascinating to me to see how sometimes-small regional variations can make a huge difference in the level of rutting behavior that hunters witness.

Here in the upper Midwest, we are brink of an explosion. For the most part, the full-bore chase phase has not begun. But the bucks—including some of the mature deer—are getting very active. They are on their feet, roaming their core areas, hitting rubs and scrapes and looking for that first estrous doe. My good friend Mitch Hagen was hunting in southern Iowa over the weekend and reported several large bucks “shadowing” does. This is a fascinating behavior to me; the doe is clearly not “in” yet, but the buck senses she is getting close. The buck does not dog her or chase her, but simply follows and keeps track of her movements.

Mature bucks are highly adept at noting the signs of a soon-to-be estrous doe. He’s been down the breeding path before and can recognize whatever signals she’s sending... [ Read Full Post ]

From the News Herald:
A Florida Fish and Wildlife officer’s attempt to use a 5-foot live alligator during show and tell Friday at Breakfast Point Academy ended with the critter on the loose in the woods near Pier Park. . . .

[A]fter the show, the officer placed the gator in the back of his truck and left in an attempt to return the animal to the wild. But the creature apparently got anxious and decided to return to the wild early, [FWC spokesman Stan] Kirkland said. . . .

“It’s green, it’s 5 feet long and it was last seen on the lam,” Kirkland said.

Officers do lose animals from time to time, Kirkland added.

“It’s probably happened. It’s not something we hear about,” he said. “This just happened to be viewed by half of Panama City Beach. We appreciate all those calls to the media.” [ Read Full Post ]

Many years ago, when Shari and I were first dating, my wife-to-be was under the mistaken notion that I drank a 20-ounce bottle of pop every time I went hunting. Finally, I had to confess that I was not hooked on soda. The bottle was empty when I stuffed it in my backpack and, um, filled if my bladder convinced my brain we’d been in the treestand too long.

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Amateur trainers (myself included) often worry most about the holy trinity of gun dog problems—water shyness, gun shyness, and bird shyness. Oodles of manpower have gone into making sure pups never show any of these dirty traits. But often overlooked is a problem that’s more common than all three...a lack of a desire to retrieve. And like most problems encountered in the gun dog game it’s often the result of poor training practices. (For a point of focus we’ll zero in on dogs that are roughly 6 to 8 months.)

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From the Missoulan:

Officials say a downed power line near Eureka in northwestern Montana electrocuted more than a dozen animals over a period of months, including a wolf that was "still warm" when it was found earlier this month.

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On Tuesday, October 27, two coyotes mauled 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell on a hiking trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Although Mitchell was hiking alone when the daylight attack occurred, two nearby hikers heard the commotion and called 911. Officers responded in time to shoot one of the coyotes.  Airlifted to a Halifax hospital, Mitchell died of her injuries the next day.

Mitchell, a 2009 Canadian Folk Music Award nominee, leaves behind grieving family and fans, a shocked wildlife community, and a public wondering whether coyotes are animals to fear.

The consensus among wildlife professionals is that a fatal coyote attack on a human is a freak occurrence. “If I had to guess what animal would be responsible for a fatal attack in eastern Canada I would have guessed black bear, never coyote,” says Mike O’Brien, the Nova Scotia DNR’s Manager of Wildlife Resources. O’Brien says coyotes first appeared in Nova Scotia in the 1970s, and there have been very few attacks on humans since that time. Incidentally, eastern Canada’s coyotes are significantly larger than their western relatives, often weighing well over 40 pounds, perhaps due to interbreeding with wolves.

“It’s very abnormal,” says Ron Andrews, Iowa DNR Fur Resource... [ Read Full Post ]

We all know there isn’t much love lost between hunters and anti-hunters, but nobody wishes anybody any real harm—except when some crazy anti-hunter does wish us real harm and a newspaper has the poor taste to print his wish. Then it’s the hunters, in this case the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who take the high ground.

From the NSSF website:
Shameful is the word that comes to mind for the Burlington Free Press and its decision to print a reader's anti-hunting letter. . . . that was written in response to the Vermont paper's story about the opening of moose hunting season. . . .

Here's the letter:
Take a Few Hunters Along with the Moose
On this beautiful day we learn that about 1,251 hunters are taking to the woods with legal permits to "pursue prized quarry." Certainly the members of various humane organizations do not approve. I suggest that before the next annual killing season, other residents be awarded legal permits to kill hunters who will be out to kill these beautiful, non-destructive animals. Or the government could just rule out all this primitive killing.

The NSSF asked for an apology and got one, as well an... [ Read Full Post ]

Over the weekend I helped out at a Pheasants Forever Mentored Youth Hunt. PF, I should mention here, is my favorite of the single-species groups because they spend all their money locally, do good habitat work, and support youth hunting and shooting of all kinds. Anyway, it was my job to run three groups of kids through some shooting instruction before they went hunting.  I’ve done this before, and I learn more from watching the kids shoot than they learn listening to me.

This weekend’s takeaway: slow down to speed up.

Since the kids were going to shoot flushing birds, I had them start from a safe field carry position, then call pull, and mount and shoot. Naturally, all of them wanted to throw the gun up as fast as possible.  The kids would whip the gun up, then have to readust their faces on the stock, then find the target again,  and shoot.

Move slowly, I told them. Push the muzzle toward the bird like you’re trying to stick it with a bayonet and raise the gun to your face smoothly.

I expected them to start hitting targets better. What I didn’t expect was that they would start hitting targets faster.... [ Read Full Post ]

This past summer, a geezer friend of mine was railing at the current generation of hunters who roost in trees like so many spavined turkeys and rarely walk anywhere.

“They haven’t sweated up ridges like you and I have,” he snarled.

Sometimes, you gotta walk uphill, and if you haven’t done much of it, here are some tips from someone who has done a lot it and hated every yard.

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