--Chad Love

There are any number of things that can go wrong, sometimes horribly, when we take our dogs into the field. They can run through a fence and get torn up, run through a cattle guard or hole and break a leg, run into a porcupine or skunk, inhale dangerous seeds, get bitten by a snake, trampled by a cow, run over by a car, get overheated, dehydrated or completely lost, the list is pretty much endless in terms of potential dangers.

All you can do is take it on faith that those things won't happen while hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. That's why most of us do things like carry first-aid kits on all our hunting trips and plugging the phone numbers of local vets into our cell phones.

But here's one more thing that every one of us should familiarize ourselves with: what to do if one of our dogs gets caught in a body-gripping trap. Here's an absolutely heartbreaking story from last week's Minneapolis Star-Tribune about a rash of dogs dying in traps.


From the story:

Doug Snyder won't forget the day he loaded a .22 rifle and shot his dog at point-blank range. He and his two teenage sons were walking along a forest road near their cabin east of Hinckley in late December when Polka Dot, their 9-year-old setter-Lab mix, suddenly howled in distress. Bolting headlong into the woods, Snyder found his dog 60 yards away with its head and neck caught in a deadly body-gripping trap. "She was standing there, bleeding from the snout," he said. Frantically, Snyder and his 16-year-old son struggled to free their pet before it suffocated. But two powerful springs held the trap's jaws tightly closed. "We fought like hell to get it off, and we couldn't," he said. "She was melting away."
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by David Draper

There are a lot of great ways to get wild on Super Bowl Sunday. You could paint yourself in team colors, go streaking, and post the resulting video (and arrest) on YouTube. Or you could just dip into the larder and cook up a fish or wild-game inspired dish to share with your friends during the game. I’m not going to encourage you to do the former, but I will help you along with the latter by throwing a Super Bowl Snack Contest.

Post your favorite fish or game dish below in the comments section below, along with a few sentences on why it’s the perfect food for this year’s Super Bowl party. The most creative idea will win a box of assorted cooking/food-related goodies from Camp Chef, Hi-Mountain Seasonings, Cabela’s, and other generous folks. To be eligible to win, post your entry by Saturday, February 4 at 6:00 p.m. MST. I’ll announce the winner next week.
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by Chad Love

The noted French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once famously opined that “Hell is other people.” As a lifelong misanthrope, I’ve found that little gem to be not only a great way to kill conversation at dinner parties, but a wholly satisfying life philosophy. It’s not that I don’t like people; it’s just that I try to avoid large numbers of them at all costs.

So when the website informed me that I would be attending SHOT this year with some 65,000 of my closest friends, and that I would even be allowed to wander the show floor unsupervised, I questioned the decision as either a gracious but misguided act of charity or the result of a lost bet.

I took pains to point out to my editors that in matters of tact, wit and other social graces I’m roughly on par with Bat Boy from the Weekly World News. I reminded them, too, that, frankly speaking, I prefer the company of dogs to outdoor industry types, and that as a preferred destination for the third week in January I’ll take a CRP field in Kansas over Las Vegas, Nevada, oh, about ten times out of ten.
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by Chad Love

It's always been hard for me, as a bird hunter, to get very reflective around New Year's, simply because most upland and waterfowl seasons are still in high gear. But as we inexorably creep toward February, that starts changing. This is the time of year when waterfowl and upland seasons begin to wind down for many of us, which I think is as good a time as any to reflect on the past year and look toward the next.

For me, this past weekend marked the end of duck season, and in about three weeks I'll no longer be able to walk mile after fruitless mile in vain pursuit of the bobwhite quail, a bird which I'm told is rumored to inhabit this area. Of course, I've also been told leprechauns inhabit this area, too, and I haven't seen any of them, either.
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