By Ben Romans

Imagine after years of applying for a coveted hunting tag, you open your email inbox one morning and find a message from the state fish and game office with the word “congratulations!” in the subject line. Then imagine the sinking feeling half an hour later when you receive a follow-up email from the same office saying, “Oops, our bad. Sorry, you’re not a winner. Better luck next year.”

There’s a good chance you know exactly what I’m talking about if you applied for one of South Dakota’s two bighorn sheep licenses. Last week a computer glitch inside the South Dakota’s Game, Fish & Parks’ system incorrectly notified approximately 2,000 bighorn sheep applicants they won one of the prized tags. [ Read Full Post ]

By CJ Lotz

As part of a game management project, state wildlife biologists from Alaska Department of Fish and Game killed 89 bears to ramp up the moose population in western Alaska.

"Bears are most efficient at taking young moose, so calves being born now will have a much higher chance of survival," a spokeswoman said. "Once calves have survived a year, they're not as vulnerable." [ Read Full Post ]

By Phil Bourjaily

We have one more week of Marlins, then we’ll give some other guns a chance. However, after the 336 crushed the Model 94 Winchester in last week’s voting I am eager to see what happens in today’s Gun Fight. It’s an asymmetrical matchup: the Marlin 1894c squares off against a Glock 10mm pistol. Which is the better walking gun for pigs and whitetails?

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By David E. Petzal

This morning, I learned that the politically correct term for “hungry, starving, etc.” is “food insecure.” It will take weeks to get over that, if I ever do. But in any event, I shall now take time out from flinging lead at all points of the compass in the hopes of hitting something to review a pair of standout books.

"It’s Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It" is an odd and unclassifiable book by the odd and unclassifiable Bill Heavey. The publishers of Slow Food offered Mr. Heavey money if he would feed himself by foraging—everything from dandelion greens to persimmons that fell from a Washington, D.C. tree and had lain on the sidewalk for quite some time to things so rank and gross in nature that I cannot list them here, and then write about it.

Bill’s quest took him from Washington to San Francisco to Louisiana, and along the way he met the real subject of the book, which is not so much food as the people who forage as a way of life. No matter what Heavey writes about, he ends up with people, and if you have any literary acumen you’ll recall that this is what Bill Tarrant and Robert Ruark did as well. There is some hunting here, and some fishing, and quite a bit of information on food, and some fine-sounding recipes, but Slow Food is irresistible because it’s very funny and very sad and filled with unforgettable characters. Heavey is a strange and repellant character, but he writes like hell. Oh, and if you want to make a salad out of the stuff that grows in your lawn, watch out for dogs**t. $25, Atlantic Monthly Press.


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By David E. Petzal

In my post of May 13, I touched briefly on high pressure, undesirability of, and I think it’s worthwhile to elaborate on that. As a rule, if you manage to blow up a gun, you are guilty of such horrendous negligence that you should not have owned a gun in the first place. The corollary to that is that most modern rifles are enormously strong, so if you do manage to generate enough force to shatter one, the results will be dire.

If you’re a handloader, excess pressure is not something that sneaks up from behind you in the night. There are several warning signs that you are getting in over your head. First is cratered primers, although this is not infallible. Second is primers that are flattened, or are bashed so flat that they fill the primer pocket. Third is difficult extraction. Fourth is case head expansion that you can measure with a micrometer. Usually, you get a couple of these symptoms simultaneously. [ Read Full Post ]

By CJ Lotz

We're not too sure about the facts behind this story out of Bosnia, but it's worth a look. The injured shepherd in this video claims he basically choked a brown bear to death when the bruin attempted to attack his flock.

"I grabbed it round the throat and squeezed and squeezed until it collapsed," the shepherd told news agencies from his hospital bed. [ Read Full Post ]