By Dave Hurteau

I just got done testing four new compound bows that retail for under $550 each for an article that will run in the August issue. Two were purdy darn good. A third was very good. And my favorite, the PSE X-Force Drive ($500), was dazzlingly good—truly outstanding for the price, which comes in at about $400 less that your typically flagship model.

With an IBO of 326 fps, the Drive is somewhat slower than PSE’s top models, but it’s plenty fast enough, is wonderfully smooth shooting, exceptionally quiet, and it’s a shooter—or at least it is for me. The fit and finish is right there with any of the higher-priced X-Force models. Bottom line: It’s a killer deal. [ 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 Scott Bestul

No, not “buck” as in a dollar. You can’t do much of anything in Alaska for a dollar. But you might be able to save a whole bunch of money chasing trout, salmon, or halibut if you have access to some good whitetail hunting. I know because I’ve done it, and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my friend Greg Brush, owner of EZ Limit Guide Service in Soldotna, AK. That’s him in the photos.

Greg and I met on a bowhunt a few years back, and that’s when I learned he’s nuts about whitetails, which are damned rare near his home. So every fall he travels somewhere in the Lower 48 to chase deer. And to save money, he tries to swap a guided fishing trip in Alaska for a whitetail hunt. [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

Usually we deal with guns only, but every once in a while you come across a video that takes a Gun Nut approach to primitive weapons, and this is one of the best. Were bird arrow points for birds or deer? Only one way to find out...

[ Read Full Post ]

By Steven Hill

Like lots of early season hunters, Shane Sanderson has often patterned trophy whitetails in the last weeks of summer, only to have them disappear come opening day. But he executed his opening gambit perfectly on the archery opener (Sept. 1), shooting a 170-inch typical, which earlier this month was unveiled as Wyoming’s state-record bowkill buck.

Sanderson, of Kinnear, Wyoming, had been watching a pair of shooters on the family ranch when an even bigger buck showed up Aug. 1.

“He just dwarfed the largest of the deer I’d been watching, which was in the high 150s,” Sanderson says. “I knew right away this was the buck I was going after.”

After tracking the deer through his spotting scope three or four nights a week, Sanderson decided to erect a ground blind near a field corner that bucks consistently used to enter a grass field. Because deer were using the field as a staging area before entering some adjacent alfalfa fields to feed, Sanderson was betting he could get a shot at the buck well before sunset.

He arrived at the blind around 5:30 p.m., spooking several deer that were already in the field. An hour later he spotted the original pair... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau

Bestul and I are in the midst of a giant bow test, and so we are shooting a lot. (Nothing like a deadline to get you out on the range.) But before I took any shots for posterity, I spent a half a day or so warming up at 30 and 40 yards, jotting down my group sizes just for fun. After that, I put the target out at 60 and shot 20 three-shot groups.

Now, you have read from me and Bestul and many others that long-range shooting can really help your accuracy at typical hunting ranges. But today, I can
quantify it. [ Read Full Post ]