By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

If you happened to catch The Late Show with David Letterman last night, you not only heard some top-notch turkey calling, but you also learned some of the results of the 2006 Wild Turkey Bourbon/National Wild Turkey Federation Turkey Grand National Calling Championship in Nashville, Tennessee. Check out the links below for a full account of the big event and a list of all the winners.
Grand National Friction Calling Contest
Grand National Senior Calling Championship
Grand National Owl Hooting Championship
Grand National Champion of Champions
Grand National Team Challenge Championship
Spit, Drum and Gobbling Contest
Grand National Gobbling Championship
Grand National Intermediate Calling Championship
Grand National Junior Calling Championship [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

One of the great shocks in our online gun survey was the complete ascendancy of Remington rifles and shotguns over everything else—particularly Winchester guns. The reason for this was made clear at the 2006 SHOT Show, where Remington unveiled the Model 105 Cti shotgun, a truly new design with a titanium and graphite receiver. It had everyone gibbering to themselves, so great a gun it is.

Winchester, on the other hand, was offering a bargain-price Russian-made .22 bolt-action, the Wildcat. A good, sound rifle, and a great value, but an old gun in every sense of the word. (It even looks like the Moisin-Nagant military rifle, which dates to the First World War.)

Browning, Winchester’s Siamese twin, introduced the T-Bolt .22, a re-done (and not nearly as nice) version of a rifle that was discontinued in the 1960s. The new T-bolt is a perfectly good little rifle, properly priced, and there’s no reason to get angry at it.

But you have to wonder: Why can’t some gunmakers innovate more? The Europeans seem to be far ahead of us in this respect. Tradition is great, but when that’s all you have to sell you find yourself out of business. Just... [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Looking for comfortable furniture that also speaks to who you are as a person? Well look no further. Fully loaded, the chair pictured in the link below holds 450 12-gauge shells whose brass tips “create a massaging texture.”
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/02/shotgun_shell_chair.html [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

By now you’ve probably heard that Mike Iaconelli was disqualified from the 2006 Citgo Bassmaster Classic on Friday shortly after bringing two dead fish to the weigh in. Here are the details.

According to the story below, an ESPN video shows that upon finding the dead fish in his livewell, Ike lost his cool, destroyed a running light, and swore a blue streak in front of spectators.
"Once we saw the videotape, it didn't take long to make the decision," said a tournament official. Ike sees it differently, though, saying, "I totally feel like I'm targeted. I totally feel like I'm being sabotaged here.” Whatever the case, this is the second time Ioconelli has been disqualified from the Classic--an unofficial tournament record.
http://www.southeasttexaslive.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16205752&BRD=2287&PAG=461&dept_id=512560&rfi=6 [ Read Full Post ]

By Dave Hurteau & Chad Love

Since the Bush Administration announced it’s latest plan to sell off federal lands (see http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2006/02/21/news/01burns.txt), a diverse group of academics, environmentalists, individual hunters and fishermen, and sportsmen’s groups are lining up to oppose it. It’s not just the loss of public land that bothers them, but also what many see as a frightening precedent of selling off our national heritage to pay for budget shortfalls.
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060226/OPINION/602260308
http://sltrib.com/utah/ci_3548948 [ Read Full Post ]

By David E. Petzal and Philip Bourjaily

A note of warning to all you bloggers and bloggerettes: What follows  is a subject of such luminous, transcendent importance that you are going to see it in different form in the pages of Field & Stream at some future date. If this annoys you, complain to someone who cares. I don’t.

The most illuminating single comment at the 2006 SHOT Show (aside from “Wow, have you seen the booth babe two aisles up?”) was made by my friend and colleague Dick Metcalf, a man who operates at the very highest intellectual level. (He has a PhD from Yale, and taught at Cornell, for God’s sake. How he tolerates the gun biz is beyond me.) We were sitting next to each other at a press conference at the Leica booth, viewing the latest in multi-thousand-dollar teutonic optical marvels when he said:

“We’ve gotten to the point where you can buy an over-the-counter gun that’s beyond the ability of even a good shot to get everything out of it.”

Or words to that effect. And he’s right. There were probably a dozen exhibitors in that hall who make rifles that will shoot down to around a half an inch or better, starting with the lowest-priced... [ Read Full Post ]