By Joe Cermele

When I was about 11 years old my family had a big boat at the beach. On the next dock over there was a smaller boat, about 25 feet long, and one day they went out on a trip to the canyon and never returned. The weather had turned on them, and all the Coast Guard ever found were the fuel bladders they had strapped to the bow, floating 80 miles out.

Stories of anglers lost at sea are hard to swallow no matter what the circumstances, but I have to be up front and say that like those anglers years ago, and like the NFL players in Florida now, common sense and a little planning could have prevented tragedy.

The fact is, packing four big guys on a 21-foot, single-engine boat and making a 50-mile run is just not smart. I don’t care if it’s a blue bird day. My limit on my 26-foot, single-engine boat is about 30 miles, and it has to be the most picture-perfect forecast for me to go that far. I’ve only done it twice.

There really is no excuse for tragedies like the one... [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

As well-read, worldly and sophisticated as I obviously am, I've never been a big fan of Esquire magazine. Mostly because - like most of the genre -  it's little more than a monthly instruction manual on how to be a well-coiffed nice-smelling, perfectly-accessorized, smartly-dressed narcissistic tool.

And the writing isn't doing the magazine any favors, either. This example  (a big hat tip to Steve Bodio for the find) is simply the most gawdawful piece of magazine journalism I've ever attempted to read. So imagine my surprise when a friend sent me a link to a new Esquire blog called the Daily Endorsement. I wasn't surprised by the blog's title, which is supremely fitting for a demographic that doesn't do too well thinking for itself, but rather the blog's inaugural "endorsement" which reads:
 
As for this, the first Daily Endorsement, I was going to suggest "keeping it brief." But no one likes a cop-out. So try this: Esquire endorses carrying a pocketknife.

You've probably got one — and it's probably been languishing in a drawer for years. Tonight, pull it out. Give it some work. A little steel wool to brighten up the brass. A few... [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal

Berthold is the name of an R-84 model Blaser .30/06 who came to the United States in the early 1990s, and was bought in Las Vegas after a SHOT Show. His new owner gave Berthold a home because of the way the rifle could group—three shots touching with ammo it liked—and its light weight.

Berthold became a go-to rifle. He went to Anticosti Island, and northern Quebec, and Alaska, and even Africa, and killed everything at which he was pointed. But over the years, his accuracy deteriorated to the point where he was lucky to print a 2-inch group.

[ Read Full Post ]

By Philip Bourjaily

Claiming – shooting at the same time as someone else, then hollering “I got it!” –  ranks fairly high on the list of ways to annoy to your hunting partners. I try only to say “Nice Shot!” on the rare occasions I shoot at the same bird as someone else.

I had a bird claimed from me when I first started hunting and never forgot it. I  started late, as a college senior,  but I was still young enough to think of myself as a kid among adults when I went with my dad and his friends. An acquaintance of my dad’s named Bill, a real grownup, but probably closer in age to me than to my dad, came with us one day. As we walked a creek bottom, the one rooster of the day flushed between us. Bill and I both shot, me from the left, Bill from the right. Having shot all of two pheasants thus far in my life, I was thrilled to see this one crash to Earth.  The bird was still barely alive when I picked it up. Bill grabbed it from me and dispatched the pheasant by twisting its head all the way off.  He said:... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

My primary deer hunting spot is an extremely popular and heavily-utilized public hunting area. Beginning in October bowhunters swarm this place, followed by legions of blackpowder hunters, who are in turn followed by division-strength hordes of orange-swaddled, cell phone-talking, cannon-toting sniper wannabes whose primary woodcraft skills involve walking around loudly and aimlessly, leaving truly prodigious amounts of trash strewn across the landscape and then gathering around their RV to bitch about not being allowed to drive ATVs on the area.

Ultra-deadly super predators they're not.

But according to a recent Newsweek article featured on Stephen Bodio's excellent Querencia blog, the modern hunter is so efficient and so effective that he is single-handedly responsible for no less than the wholesale reversal of the evolutionary process.

From the story:

It’s Survival of the Weak and Scrawny :Researchers see 'evolution in reverse' as hunters kill off prized animals with the biggest antlers and pelts.

"Researchers describe what's happening as none other than the selection process that Darwin made famous: the fittest of a species survive to reproduce and pass along their traits to succeeding generations, while the traits of the unfit gradually disappear. Selective hunting—picking out individuals with the best horns or antlers, or the largest... [ Read Full Post ]

By Philip Bourjaily

The father of one of my son’s friends called the other day to say he had a chance to pick up a used Ruger Red Label and should he buy it for his son? Since I had just come back from a wonderful quail hunt in Texas and still harbored warm, fuzzy feelings for the 20 gauge Red Label I borrowed down there, I said sure.

   
For whatever reason, no shotgun is loved and hated as much as the Red Label. It has a loyal cult following, and a cult of haters, too. Having owned and sold three, I’ve done time in both groups.

Red Label lovers point out:
It is made in the U.S.A.
It is solidly engineered.
It has a very low-profile receiver.

Red Label haters counter:
It weighs too much.
The wood-to-metal fit is of high-school shop class quality.
It flops open.

All of the above are true, with a couple of caveats. The 12 and 20 are overweight pigs, except for the Sporting models, which have lighter-contoured barrels. The 28 is built on a perfectly scaled-down frame and handles beautifully. I was deadly with mine,... [ Read Full Post ]