Health & Fitness

A Bug Spray You Can Drink? CDC Promotes Grapefruit Extract "Nootkatone"

Online Editors — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:51:32 -0400

This must be a good year for insect repellant research. First it was a new type of pre-treated clothing. Now researchers at the Centers For Disease Control say they're working on a new all-natural insect repellant made from a citrus extract.From this story on NPR.
"...the CDC is pushing hard to develop a completely natural insect repellent made from a chemical called nootkatone, which is found in Alaska yellow cedar trees and citrus fruit. (CDC researcher Marc Dolan) says nootkatone "is nongreasy, dries very quickly, and it has a very pleasant, citrus-y grapefruit odor to it." He recently demonstrated its effectiveness as a mosquito repellent, rubbing some on his hand and then sticking it into a cage containing 50 hungry mosquitoes. When he holds the treated hand near mosquitoes, they try to get away in the opposite direction as fast as they can. Even after five minutes, Dolan has no bites on his nootkatone-treated hand.

Nootkatone is also effective against ticks, and scientists think it will work against bed bugs, head lice and other insects, too. Moreover, nootkatone is so nontoxic you could drink it. In fact, it's already an approved food additive, officially classed as "Generally Considered Safe." It's also a natural ingredient in some foods. "If you've had a grapefruit, you've consumed some nootkatone," Dolan says, "or drank a Squirt, for instance." Dolan, who is leading a CDC team to develop nootkatone, says it could be put into soaps and sunscreens, so people wouldn't have to apply a separate bug repellent. But that's not all ˜ it turns out that nootkatone could be both a repellent and an environmentally friendly pesticide. That's because it doesn't just repel bugs ˜ it kills them.

Road Munchies: Avoid These 25 Literal Heart-Stoppers on The Way to the Woods

Dave_Maccar — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:47:15 -0500

Road trip! Kennel the dog. Slide the shotgun behind the seat. And don’t forget the snacks; you’re bound to get hungry on that long drive to hunting camp. Before you load that cooler with chips and cookies or make your initial stop at the Golden Arches, take a look at our rogue’s gallery of 25 of the worst foods you’ll find along the way to woods.

Get Ready to Hunt in Big Game Boot Camp

Joe_Cermele — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:18:00 -0400

A Close Call With Rabies

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:53:50 -0400

At 9:30 on a sunny July morning, the screaming starts: a ragged, half-human keen that pierces the halcyon woods flanking our western Pennsylvania home. My wife, Debbie, our 11-year-old son, Jack, and I run outside to see what’s being murdered. There, beside a patch of Big Boy tomatoes, stand our two pugs, Lefty and Biscuit, with something scruffy and feral wedged between them. It takes a moment to realize what exactly is happening. A 20-pound raccoon has affixed its teeth to the jowly flesh of Biscuit’s muzzle and won’t let go.

I grab a shovel and pin the raccoon’s torso to the ground, which only intensifies the creature’s screams. Putting my full weight into it, I try to shovel the attacking beast in half. Debbie grabs Biscuit’s trunk and tries to yank her free, but the raccoon’s teeth refuse to unclamp. Debbie yells for our friend Rudy Plese, who’s inside working on a carpentry job. He runs out and grabs another shovel.

“Hit it on the head,” shouts Debbie, whose own hands are now perilously close to the raccoon’s teeth. Rudy raps the beast’s brainpan once, then again, and again.

“Whack it harder,” I say, trying my best to snap its spine with my own shovel. A half dozen hits later, the raccoon finally surrenders its death grip on Biscuit, who skedaddles loose, her normally curly tail straightened from trauma. Now that Rudy finally has a clean shot, he gives the raccoon two more blows to the head. Finally, its eyes bulge, blood spurts from its nostrils, and the demon dies.

Jack, Debbie, and I all cradle Biscuit, trying to calm her. She’s soaking wet, and the three of us have been thoroughly slimed. A call to the Allegheny County Health Department confirms our worst fears: The source of this moisture is almost certainly raccoon saliva. Debbie takes Biscuit to the vet for a rabies booster shot. Jack and I pack the raccoon in a garbage bag, surround its head with a bag of ice cubes to preserve the brain tissue, and drive it into Pittsburgh for testing.

Later that same afternoon, we receive a call from the lab. The raccoon has, in fact, tested positive for rabies. All four of us will need to go to the emergency room for evaluation.

Horrible and Fatal Rabies comes from a Latin word meaning “to rage”—an apropos description of the thrashing, hyperventilating death throes of victims of so-called “furious” rabies. There’s also “dumb” rabies, a less sensational death to watch, though no doubt equally unpleasant to suffer, which is characterized by apathy, depression, paralysis, and coma. Either way, after the symptoms arise, rabies is incurable and virtually 100 percent fatal.

The disease is caused by a nasty, bullet-shaped virus in the Rhabdoviridae family. Once inside the bloodstream, the virus invades and eventually overwhelms the brain and central nervous system. These microscopic miscreants are capable of infecting all warm-blooded hosts, including humans, though their most common victims in the United States today are wild animals, particularly raccoons, skunks, foxes, bats, feral cats, and coyotes.

Each year, 7,000 to 9,000 such critters test positive for rabies, though this surely represents only the iceberg’s tip. Nationally, almost half the positives come from infected raccoons. In the Mid-Atlantic states, which are currently in the throes of an unprecedented raccoon rabies epidemic, the rate is closer to 90 percent.

Rabies spreads from one animal to another through infected saliva, which accumulates in great foaming gobs once the virus paralyzes a victim’s throat muscles. Bites from infected raccoons have led to an increasingly bizarre array of affected animals. Just this summer, a black bear in Centre County, Pennsylvania, tested positive. In Georgia, rabid beavers have attempted to jump into fishermen’s boats, and rabid whitetail bucks have been spotted harassing horses and even chasing hunting dogs.

Spreading Like the Plague
The contemporary epidemic in raccoons dates back to the 1970s. In an effort to replenish depleted stocks in the Mid-Atlantic region, more than 3,500 raccoons were live-trapped in Florida and transplanted to West Virginia. Unfortunately, some of these animals carried presymptomatic rabies and ended up starting a chain reaction that wildlife health officials are still contending with today.

“The raccoon strain of rabies is known to travel approximately 10 times faster than any other type,” says Jason Suckow, director of wildlife services in Pennsylvania for the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. “It’s really unfortunate that those animals were transplanted, because once they arrived, raccoon rabies was able to spread in all directions along the Appalachian mountains.”

If federal, state, and local authorities had unlimited resources, they could blanket the entire Mid-Atlantic region with baits containing oral rabies vaccine, bringing the epidemic to a halt in a matter of years. But because of budgetary concerns—each bait costs $1.23—the current plan is necessarily more modest: establish a baiting corridor beginning at Lake Erie and running south along the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, through West Virginia and Tennessee, and down into Alabama. Once the spread of raccoon-strain rabies has been halted on the western side of this barrier, the idea is to gradually roll the curtain eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean.

When we arrive at the ER late on the afternoon of our own exposure, we get some good news and some bad news. Thanks in large part to the aggressive vaccination of domesticated animals, human deaths from rabies have dropped precipitously since the 1940s when such measures first became mandatory.

The fact that none of us were bitten this morning is further cause for guarded reassurance. On the other hand, skin exposure to the saliva has been known to cause infections through cuts and tiny abrasions. When I mention that Jack and I both have colds and that we might have rubbed our eyes after petting Biscuit, the doctor says this is another possible means of transmission.

Given our circumstances, he says, the choice to undergo a preventive series of shots remains up to us. But if he were in our shoes, he wouldn’t hesitate to get the shots.

We agree, especially after he explains that the agonizing stomach shots most people still fear haven’t been used for 30 years. To our great relief, today’s treatment is infinitely less draconian. On the first day we will begin with intramuscular injections of immune globulin, a thick concoction of antibodies that jump-starts an immune response to any potential rabies virus in our blood. Rudy and I each get four of these shots deep in the muscles of our thighs and butts. Debbie and Jack, who weigh less, get three and two shots respectively. The injections are a little painful but not unbearable. Then we each receive an additional single shot of live rabies vaccine in the shoulder. This contains a genetically altered virus designed to trigger our immune systems to begin producing our own natural antibodies to the disease.

Over the next 28 days, the doctor says, we’ll need to come back four more times on a precise schedule to receive additional doses of vaccine. It’s reassuring to learn that no human who’s adhered to such post-exposure treatment has ever come down with rabies. The main downside is some temporary muscle tenderness in the injection sites and the arguably more painful financial burden of the shot series, which comes to an estimated $1,500 per individual.

Back home that night, I’m thankful for the latest medical advances but conclude that, all in all, it would have been better to have avoided this morning’s encounter altogether. >

Is Your Game Meat Safe to Eat?

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:32:33 -0400

Despite all the news about chronic wasting disease, hunters are more likely to become ill from consuming meat that is infected with other diseases or carelessly prepared than from CWD. Here’s how to identify animals that are unfit to eat—and how to properly handle and cook game—so you can eat with confidence.

Common Senses
Once you’ve killed a game animal, examine the outside for sunken eyes or emaciation, scabby skin, tick infestations, or discharges of dark blood or creamy or green substances from orifices. Previously wounded animals may have maggot infestations or abscesses. Use your nose. Decaying flesh and gangrene emit a putrid odor.

If the outward appearance of the animal raises no red flags, don the surgical or dishwashing gloves you should carry for field dressing and run your hands over the body. Does the hair rub off easily? When you peel back the skin, is the underside soft or gelatinous, or does it have a film of blood or fluid that is not the result of your gunshot wound? Does the body fat have a cheeselike appearance? Muscle tissue should be free of parasites and blood spots and should not smell bad. Blood clots in muscle tissue, black blood, or greenish discharge from organs are also signs of disease. Tan or yellow lumps on the inside surface of the rib cage or in lung tissue may indicate tuberculosis, which has been found in deer in Michigan; humans can contract the disease by handling or eating the meat. Infected big-game animals should be reported. If you can transport the carcass safely (wrapped in plastic) to a fish-and-game office, you may be eligible for a replacement tag.

Upland birds and waterfowl should be examined for the same symptoms. In addition, check to see if feathers come off easily or if they have grown in a helicopter pattern over parts of the body. Discard birds that appear to be diseased.

It Could Be Your Fault
In most cases of gastrointestinal distress, the problem is with the hunter, not the animal. Dr. Catherine Cutter, a food-safety specialist at Penn State University (whose booklets on processing game are available online at http://pubs.cas.psu.edu), says that avoiding problems begins with four steps:

1 Keep it clean. Wash hands before and after handling the carcass. Dress animals promptly on a clean surface, taking care not to puncture the stomach or intestines—but if you do, clean the inside of the body with antibacterial towelettes, alcohol rubs, or vinegar. Water encourages bacteria growth, so don’t use it unless absolutely necessary, and then dry the inside of the carcass immediately afterward.

2 Keep it free from internal contaminants. Clean your knife frequently, especially after it comes into contact with the animal’s bodily fluids. Because some diseases are concentrated in the spinal tissues and brain, don’t cut through the backbone or eat the brains of any wild animal.

3 Keep it cool. Food-borne illnesses can result from eating game that has not been dressed or cooled expeditiously. Bacteria thrive in moist, warm conditions, so bring the carcass to an internal temperature of less than 40 degrees as soon as possible. On warm days, speed the process by skinning your deer and filling the body cavity with bags of ice, water frozen in milk jugs, or sealed bags of snow, then tie it closed.

4 Keep it cooking. Normal amounts of bacteria can be killed by cooking meat to the correct internal temperature. But no amount of time in the oven can eliminate harmful bacteria once they have proliferated. And those are guests you don’t want at the dinner table.

Physical Fitness for the Whitetail Nut

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:16:48 -0400

Okay. Take off your clothes. Stand in front of a mirror, and let your gut go. Now take a good look at the horror show staring back at you and consider this: Couch spuds are 56 times more likely to have a heart attack during vigorous exertion—like scaling a ridge or dragging out a deer—than guys who are in reasonable shape. Even if you’re fairly thin and active, it pays to tune up before the season. We’re talking big bucks here, and you may have to hike farther or climb higher to score. Once you do, you’ll have more weight to haul. And if you’re in shape, you won’t nod off during the day from all the exertion and possibly miss your only chance at that buck. So here’s your regimen:

[1] Walk and Hike: You need a basic level of aerobic fitness so you don’t drop halfway through a 5-mile still-hunt. Your operative training maxim: Start low, go slow. First, establish a baseline. Walk briskly for 10 minutes on a flat surface. If this proves easy, wait a day and do the same except alternate 50 steps walking with 50 steps jogging. If this is a cake walk, wait another day and jog for 10 minutes.

Now with your baseline set, do your aerobic workout once every other day, gradually increasing both distance and intensity, adding no more than 10 percent per week. As you gain endurance, introduce some variety. Alternate bursts of speed with a slower “active recovery” pace. Throw in some hills. Your goal is to eventually either brisk-walk, walk-jog, jog, or run up to 30 minutes at a time.

[2] Work Out: Assuming you don’t have a gym membership, go with calisthenics. They cost nothing and can be very effective. Your legs are already getting a workout, so focus on your upper body.

Again, start low, go slow. For the chest and triceps, begin with knee push-ups, build up to classic push-ups, and eventually make these more difficult by putting on your pack and adding weight. For biceps and back, progress from modified chin-ups (bar at chest height, with feet on ground and body in piked position, underhand grip) to regular chin-ups. Eventually switch to an overhand grip. Also enhance abdominal strength with sit-ups. Don’t go all the way up—just curl to about a 45-degree angle. Make these progressively harder by holding a weight on your chest. For each, start with one set of 8 to 12 reps and move up to three sets.

Once you’ve achieved decent general conditioning, modify your workouts to tap the muscles you’ll actually use while you’re out in the field. Put on your hunting clothes and take a 30-minute hike over uneven wooded terrain. Slowly incorporate more hills. Then put on your pack and gradually increase its weight. If you can’t easily access a forest, go to the local high school and climb the bleachers on the diagonal.

Finally, of deer hunting’s physical challenges, by far the most taxing is dragging a buck. If you’ll do this yourself, you must train specifically for it now. Fill a burlap bag with a few rocks or some dirt and drag it a short distance. Over the weeks you’ve got left before the season, gradually add more rocks or dirt and more distance. When you can easily drag your tub o’ lard buddy (the guy with the body you used to have), you’ll be ready to drag out that 12-pointer.

Before You Start
Ask yourself these questions before

Have you ever been told you have heart problems?
Do you suffer frequent chest pains or have high blood pressure?
Do you often feel faint or dizzy?
Do you have a history of joint or bone problems?
Are there any other health concerns that could conceivably make exercising unsafe for you?

The Anglers' Guide to Sun Protection

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:22:49 -0400

In 1992, Chuck Naiser of Rockport, Texas, decided to stop selling insurance and try to make his living as a flyfishing guide in the coastal bays near Corpus Christi. His wife gave him her blessing, provided that he’d make her two promises: (1) to religiously cover his skin with sun-protective clothing and slather sunscreen on when he went out on the water; and (2) to visit a dermatologist every six months.

Before making the switch to full-time guiding, the now 59-year-old Naiser had spent nearly every weekend of his adult life fishing beneath the broiling Gulf sun. Even this had taken a toll—prematurely “photoaging” his skin, triggering a couple of small precancerous lesions on his face and ears, and periodically causing his lips to crack and bleed for weeks.

Since he started guiding 13 years ago, Naiser has spent from 225 to 240 days a year out piloting his skiff and wading the shallows in pursuit of redfish. Despite all this time in the broiler, he says his ears and other parts remain fully intact and cancer-free, due in large part to his wife’s advice. He’s also grateful to his dermatologist, who, over the course of two dozen visits, has frozen off numerous precancerous growths on his neck, scalp, and ears, eliminating future problems.

Thanks to their efforts, Naiser says that he’s confident he’ll be able to keep catching redfish “until they find me lying facedown out there.” The key to any angler’s longevity, he’s become convinced, is sun-smart behavior.

“If I were to drop my guard for even two or three days,” he says, “it would shorten my career. Caring for your skin is as important in fishing as having a boat that runs. Just as your boat needs preventive maintenance, so does your skin.”

The Dark Side of a Sunny Day Sun damage is done by ultraviolet radiation, which bombards the Earth’s atmosphere in three basic forms: UVC, UVB, and UVA. The first packs the greatest wallop but is mostly blocked by the ozone layer. UVB is only partially blocked by ozone and is primarily responsible for sunburn and skin cancer formation. And UVA can pass through clouds and even glass; it hurts us by augmenting the burns that UVB triggers, and by photoaging the skin.

For fishermen of various stripes, excessive sun exposure is an occupational hazard. Southern-latitude anglers like Naiser are exposed to significantly more UVA and UVB than those in more northerly regions because solar radiation increases dramatically the closer you are to the equator. Not that those pursuing trout in the Canadian Rockies are significantly safer than their colleagues casting for bonefish in the Keys. “Every thousand feet you go up in altitude, there’s about 4 to 8 percent more UVB because there’s less atmosphere to filter it out,” explains San Diego dermatologist Lee Kaplan, M.D., author of the chapter on photomedicine in the definitive text, Wilderness Medicine (C.V. Mosby; 4th edition). “Guys who flyfish at high elevation—the mountains of Montana or Colorado, for example—do face a much greater risk of forming skin cancers.”

Another critical factor is that the sun’s rays bounce off the water, acting like a foil tanning reflector from yesteryear. “Fishermen can get burned in places you never think about,” says Kaplan. Behind the knees and under the chin are especially common. One guy suffered a painfully burned scrotum from light reflecting up his shorts.

Ignominious as this latter fate may sound, it could be much worse. The three most common forms of skin cancer have climbed in recent years:

• Basal cell carcinoma affects a million Americans each year. It’s rarely fatal, but if left untreated, it can ulcerate the skin and invade cartilage and bone, causing disfigurement.

• Squamous cell cancer targets another 300,000 Americans annually. These cells can travel to other parts of the body, including lymph nodes, lungs, and the brain, but fatalities are uncommon.

• Melanoma is by far the deadliest form of skin cancer—and one of the deadliest forms of cancer, period. Each year, some 7,500 patients die from it. Even more disturbing is the rate at which the risk is escalating, particularly for aging men. “Deaths from melanoma are rising most rapidly of all in men over 65,” says John Kirkwood, M.D., a world-famous melanoma researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Melanoma, if caught early, has a cure rate of up to 87 percent. But once a tumor gets established and has moved into surrounding lymph nodes, it will kill up to 90 percent of its victims.

An important factor to be aware of is early sun exposure. A single bad sunburn in childhood significantly ups your odds of melanoma decades later. “For many adults,” says Kirkwood, “the die might already have been cast. The real challenge is to protect our children. It looks like we get our greatest sun exposure by far in the years of childhood and adolescence.”

Getting the Message Despite the impact of early exposure, older fishermen still have plenty of opportunities to protect themselves. One form of melanoma, called lentigo maligna melanoma, only seems to result in people who, says Kirkwood, get “gobs and gobs of sun exposure,” like tropical fishermen. A case in point is the retired businessman who came to see Kirkwood after a fishing trip to the Caribbean.

“He’d had multiple sunburns,” says Kirkwood, “and he’d developed a patch of freckle-like skin near his eye orbit the size of a quarter. A biopsy confirmed it was this form of melanoma, and fortunately we caught it early.” A plastic surgeon excised the affected tissue.

Kirkwood says his patient’s brush with a potentially lethal disease hasn’t stopped his love of angling. “People who are fishermen once are fishermen always. He has altered his behavior dramatically. He always wears a hat and other protective clothing. He is assiduous about applying sunscreen. He’s become a very good advertisement for sun-smart behavior.”

Professionals like Naiser see that the gospel of sun safety is spreading among fishermen. “The people I take on fishing trips have a common conversation about all this,” he explains. “They’ll say, ‘Remember how we used to try to tan. Now we do everything possible not to.’ Fishermen are getting wise to the message.”

Along these lines, Naiser has come up with a motto he repeats to anyone interested in protecting his or her vulnerable human hide.

“Wrap that rascal!” he advises. “Cover it, coat it, gel it down!”

Sun Smarts: A Three-Part Strategy Researchers have begun to reduce skin cancer death rates through new treatments. Still, prevention is by far the better option. Experts recommend a three-part hierarchy of behaviors:

First Priority: Avoidance “Your best bet by far is to stay out of the sun,” says Kaplan, “especially during the hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. when sunlight is most intense.” If you do venture forth during this prime frying time, try to stay in the shade as much as possible.

Second Priority: Barriers Protective clothing is the second most effective measure. Start with a wide-brimmed hat that shades your entire face and neck. Even better in very intense sun conditions are products like the Simms SunClava, a balaclava with a sun protection factor of 50+. For the rest of your body, realize that typical summer clothing isn’t as protective as you might imagine. A normal white cotton T-shirt, for instance, has an SPF of only about 5—and this declines significantly the moment the garment gets wet. Companies like Solumbra, Coolibar, and SunGrubbies use different technologies to give their activewear clothing lines a much higher SPF—from 30 to 50. Another option is a product called Rit Sun Guard, a laundry additive you throw in with your wash to gain an SPF of nearly 30.

Finally, don’t neglect your eyeballs. Look for sunglasses that provide adequate UVA and UVB protection. Naiser wears polarized Costa Del Mar sunglasses that also have side shields (polarization doesn’t affect UV protection).

Last Priority: Sunscreen Choose a product with a minimum SPF of 15, though SPF alone is not a perfect measure of a sunscreen’s effectiveness, since it only measures UVB-blocking potential. Select a “broad spectrum” formula that also stops UVA. Highly water-resistant preparations like BullFrog Sunblock and Aloe Gator are two good choices.

As effective as such products are, they only work if you put them on correctly. Coat any exposed skin, including under your chin, and don’t be stingy. The FDA specifies an application of 2 mg per square centimeter to obtain a given SPF rating. For the average adult, this means 11/4 ounces for full-body coverage. Surveys show that most of us use half this much at best. It’s also critical to put the sunscreen on before you go outside. And even the most highly water-resistant products must be reapplied every couple of hours.

Get In Shape, Shoot More Accurately

Joe_Cermele — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 14:14:21 -0400

In my college days, wrestlers tried to get down to unnaturally low weights, the theory being that someone who starved himself down a weight class would have a strength advantage over a naturally smaller man. We had a fine wrestler who was a natural 177-pounder but insisted on competing at 167. He starved and dehydrated himself and often went on the mat woozy. On one occasion, he shook hands with his opponent and immediately passed out, neatly forfeiting the match. If he had stayed at 177, he would probably have done as well and certainly have suffered less. And so it is with rifle shooting—a little weight can be a good thing.

Until the 1980s, rifles came in three weights—moderately heavy, heavy, and hernia. Guns had always weighed a lot because hunters were generally in good shape and only a few malcontent gun writers complained about rifle weight. Producing truly light rifles would have required extensive and costly redesign and lots and lots of expensive re-tooling.

Then two things happened. First, we transformed ourselves into Lardass Nation. Second, good hunting became a lot more expensive, and the people who could afford it were mainly porkers in their 50s and 60s. They howled for lighter rifles, and so in the mid-1980s we began to see guns that would blow away in a mild breeze. But there were complications.

STEADY HELP: In rifle design, everything is a tradeoff. When you remove weight, you make a rifle easier to carry but you also make it harder to hold steady, and sometimes you need steady very badly. Years ago in Colorado I was hunting elk at 8,000 feet and spotted a 5x5 bull uphill from me. The only way I could get a shot at the unfortunate ungulate was to sprint 40 yards nearly straight up to a little plateau.

Since sprinting 4 yards on the flat at sea level is an effort for me, I was on the verge of having a coronary by the time I got into shooting position, but I was nonetheless able to aim, courtesy of the 91/4-pound .338 I was carrying. It was no fun to lug around, but it was steady even when I was heaving like a bellows.

Based on my own experience, here’s a rough guide to what big-game rifles should weigh with scope aboard:

• .243 up through .270: 61/2 to 7 lb.
• .30/06 through the .30 magnums: 71/2 to 9 lb.
• .338 Win., .338 Remington Ultra Magnum, .340 Weatherby, .375 H&H: 9 to 10 lb.
• .416 Rem. and bigger: 91/2 to 12 lb.

Recoil is also affected. A light rifle, chambered for a hard-kicking cartridge, will pummel you. The only way to avoid this is to use a muzzle brake, which creates problems of its own, including added length and weight, and an inhuman ear-shattering muzzle blast.

IF YOU’RE A HARDBODY: Hunters in good shape can carry a heavy gun with no trouble. I am practically teetering at the edge of the grave, but last fall I carried an 11-pound .375 H&H for four straight 12-hour days in the hilly country of northern South Africa and did not perish. Some years ago on a nilgai hunt in South Texas, I borrowed a 12-pound 8mm Rem. Mag. that had been built for Craig Boddington, and I tiptoed through the ticks and the rattlesnakes for four days without perishing. When I did get a shot, I had to hunch over the rifle with the scope an inch from my forehead. I resigned myself to a major scope cut and pulled the trigger, but what I got instead was a gentle nudge and a dead nilgai bull. Sometimes heavy is beautiful.

Is Your Body Ready for High-Altitude Hunting?

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:49:35 -0400

Starting in late August, thousands of hunters from east of the Continental Divide converge on the Rocky Mountains to hunt elk and mule deer. Most of them will experience the hunting trip of a lifetime, whether they tag out or not. Some of them will spend the first couple of days feeling, generally, like crap. And, though it’s rare, a small percentage could succumb to much more serious health problems associated with the high country.

Hunters who rush from their home at lower altitudes into the mountains run the risk of suffering from acute mountain sickness (AMS), more commonly known as altitude sickness. AMS generally manifests itself in symptoms such as headache, shortness of breath, nausea and loss of appetite. Generally, its consequences are not much more serious than losing the first couple of days of the hunt. It’s easily treated by spending a day or so at an altitude below 8,000 feet.

Much more serious is High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). These two potentially fatal ailments are most common at extreme high altitudes – think Everest, but can happen above 8,000 feet, where much of the Rocky Mountain elk and deer hunting takes place. HAPE causes a build-up of fluid in the lungs and difficulty breathing while HACE is marked by confusion and mental fatigue. It’s a leading cause of death among climbers. Both must be treated by quick descent to lower altitudes and medical attention.

Preventing altitude sickness means acclimatizing yourself slowly. Experts suggest gaining only 1,000 feet of altitude per day. Better yet, if you’re coming from out of state, plan to spend a day in the foothills before heading to a high-country camp. Don’t over-exert yourself the first day of the hunt and stay hydrated. Setting up camp at lower elevations than you’re hunting can also help you acclimate faster.

For more information about staying healthy in the high country, you can learn about AMS here. -- David Draper, F&S Contributing Editor

Stop Adding Fat to Your Game Meat

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:43:52 -0400

While my Wyoming elk tag has so far gone unfilled, my friend Tess was luckier, tagging her first elk in a Nebraska cornfield not long ago. A heat wave prompted us to spend all day Sunday butchering and last night we put about 20 lbs. of trimmings through the grinder.

I’ve been processing my own (and others) deer and elk for about a dozen years and view adding some type of fat to ground venison as a necessary evil. I prefer ground pork, adding anywhere from 10 to 20 percent. Due to a calculating error on my part (I was told there would be no math!), Tess’ grind ended up at about 25 percent pork, a bit more than she preferred.

This math problem set me to wondering why hunters take a healthy source of protein and fatten it up? That’s like someone on a diet taking a carrot stick and dipping it in ranch dressing. Quick research shows no clear consensus on what or how much fat to add. Some hunters swear by 50/50, others just 10 percent. Some like pork, others beef tallow. Some add bacon ends and pieces.

Certainly, there’s a rationale to adding fat, including enhancing flavor because, hey, we all know fat tastes good. Fat also keeps meat from drying out when you fry it and helps patties from falling apart. But is there a better, healthier alternative? Yes, depending on how you’re planning to cook it.

Burgers on the grill are probably how much of the ground venison in America makes it to the table. I’ll be the first to admit, making a good burger without fat sounds impossible. The fat not only makes a burger juicy, it also helps it stay in patty form. Next time you have some 100 percent ground venison you want to throw on the grill, trying adding an egg and some breadcrumbs to serve as a binder. I’ve also heard of using steel-cut oats, diced onion, shredded potato and even powdered milk.

When frying ground venison for tacos, chili or spaghetti, cook it without fat. The spices should cover any gamy flavor you or your family might object to. (If not, find a new butcher to process your deer or learn to do it yourself. Since I started DIY processing 12 years ago, I’ve never had gamy game meat.) If the dry texture turns you off, try frying it in a little bit of olive oil, or add moisture as the venison browns in the form of stock, tomato juice or other flavored liquid.

As you can see, there are lots of alternatives to adding fat to your ground venison. What about you? How do you keep your low-fat game meat low fat? - David Draper, Wild Chef Blogger