By Chad Love

Many of you are probably familiar with the books and stories of Jim Fergus. Although primarily a novelist these days, Fergus was at one point an active hook-and-bullet freelancer (in fact, he recently wrote a piece for F&S). He also penned two very good non-fiction books: "A Hunter's Road" and "The Sporting Road." "A Hunter's Road" is his chronicle of a season spent bird hunting across the country, and "The Sporting Road" is mostly a collection and expansion of some of his better magazine pieces. Both are, I believe, out of print, but can be easily found online and well worth your time.
 
Anyway, Fergus wrote a screamingly funny piece in "The Sporting Road" I think we can all relate to in some way. Its title? "A Close Call With The Dog Cops," in which Fergus is walking his lab, Sweetzer, off-lead but at heel and in control at a city park when he's confronted by, of course, the dog police. Papers and identification for both dog and man are demanded, dog and man are threatened with incarceration, dog and man make a run for it, escape in comical manner, and all ends well. [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

The brilliant cyberpunk novelist William Gibson may, or may not (it's attributed to him, anyway) have once said, "the future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed yet." Why, you may ask, am I leading off this ostensibly hunting and/or fishing news blog post with a quote from a semi-obscure cult sci-fi novelist? Because the future of game camera technology is here - it's just not evenly distributed, nor is it quite tailored for hunting...yet.

From this story in the Boston Globe:
They are better known as stealthy killing machines to take out suspected terrorists with pinpoint accuracy. But drones are also being put to more benign use in skies across several continents to track endangered wildlife, spot poachers, and chart forest loss. Although it is still the ‘‘dawn of drone ecology,’’ as one innovator calls it, these unmanned aerial vehicles are skimming over Indonesia’s jungle canopy to photograph orangutans, protect rhinos in Nepal, and study invasive aquatic plants in Florida...Relatively cheap, portable, and earth-hugging, the drones fill a gap between satellite and manned aircraft imagery and on-the-ground observations, said Percival Franklin at the University of Florida, which has been developing such drones for more than a decade.

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By Chad Love

The headline to this next story may seem funny (OK, so it really is) but anyone who's ever fished out of a float tube knows that beavers can be really scary. And rabid beavers? Nothing says terror like a crazed, rabid beaver coming at you when you least expect it. Luckily, however, Boy Scouts are prepared for that, too.

From this story on cbsnews.com:
A rabid beaver that attacked a Boy Scout leader swimming in the Delaware River was killed after Scouts in the troop pelted it with rocks. The Poughkeepsie Journal reports that 51-year-old Normand Brousseau, of Pine Plains, N.Y., was swimming in eastern Pennsylvania on Aug. 2 when a beaver swam through his legs and bit him in the chest. "I thought it was a giant carp fish," he told the paper.

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--Chad Love

Action on the SB 1221 bill, which seeks to outlaw the use of dogs for bear and bobcat hunting in the state of California, has been delayed, for a while, at least.

You may recall the controversy over this bill, but it is still very much alive, thanks to a large public turnout -- both for and against -- at a recent public meeting.

From this story on redding.com: 
A bill to ban using hounds to hunt bear and bobcat drew what legislators said was one of the largest crowds in recent memory to a state Assembly committee hearing on Wednesday. Some 300 people showed up for the Assembly Appropriations Committee's vote on whether to approve SB1221. After dozens of people came forward to voice either opposition or support for the bill, the committee instead delayed action on the bill. "I would say that for high visibility issues, this is probably the biggest crowd I've seen," Appropriations Committee Chairman Felipe Fuentes said after the hearing. The committee is scheduled to take up the bill in about a week, said Fuentes, a Democrat from Arleta. [ Read Full Post ]

By David Draper

Whenever someone tells me they don’t like leftovers, I am downright shocked. Shocked, bordering on offended. My typical response is something along the lines of, “What? You’re too good to eat leftovers?” typically followed by me questioning their parents’ child-rearing skills. In my family, not liking leftovers wasn’t an option. Well, it was an option if the other side of the coin was starvation.

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By Phil Bourjaily

It’s as if Lego made a shotgun. You snap some parts off, put some on, swap barrels, and your duck gun is a deer gun. Or a turkey gun. Or a home-defense gun or a tactical riot gun. You can change the stock, fore-end, and pad of Mossberg’s Model 500 Flex pump action in less than two minutes, without tools. Available in 11 base models, with 16 accessory parts, the Flex represents the ultimate expression of Mossberg’s shooting-system approach.

Having tied the company’s success to the Model 500 in 1962, Mossberg has since marketed its budget pump to be the one gun a shooter could use for every conceivable purpose. Over the years the company offered accessories and countless extra barrels to make the 500 extra versatile.
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