dogs

Confessions of a Turkey-Dog Addict

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 05:00:00 -0500

Bear Attack Footage And Seven More Tales of Near-Death Experience in the Outdoors

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 07:00:00 -0400

Photo Gallery: Deputy Editor Anthony Licata Goes Hunting with Hawks

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 05:00:00 -0400

Dog Training Tips from Master Outdoorsman Jerome B. Robinson

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:20:00 -0400

Bird Dogs Hunting: 31 Great Shots from Photographer Bill Buckley

fieldandstream-editor — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 08:00:00 -0400

First Shot Wallpaper: Jump Start

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 04:20:00 -0500

Jump Start: "This is typical pre-hunt behavior," says Gifford Cochran, whose 51/2-year-old Lab, Gertie, couldn't contain her excitement for a pheasant hunt near Belgrade, Montana. "She'll do this at least 15 or 20 times. I'll keep telling her to settle down and save it for the birds."

Click here to check out more of Cameron's photos on his web site, www.cameronlawson.com

Click here for a 1024 x 768 sized photo (fits 1024 x 768 monitor resolutions)

Click here for an 800 x 600 sized photo (fits 800 x 600 monitor resolutions

Instructions for downloading wallpaper (Windows users):
1.) Click on either 800 X 600 or 1024 X 768 to open the resolution you prefer.

2.) Right-click on the opened image. You may then choose to download the image, or select "Save As Wallpaper" (or "Set picture as...," "Set as Wallpaper," or "Set as Desktop item," depending on your system.)

3.) If you chose "Save As Wallpaper," you're finished! If you chose to download the image, go to your "Control Panel," select "Background," and browse to locate and select the downloaded image.

Instructions for downloading wallpaper (Mac users):
1.) Click on either 800 X 600 or 1024 X 768 to open the resolution you prefer.

2.) With your mouse on the opened image, hold down the mouse key until a menu appears, then choose

3.) "Download Image to Disk," select a folder, and save.

4.) Under the Apple menu, open "Control Panels," then "Appearance."

5.) Under "Appearance," open "Desktop," then "Place Picture." Browse to the folder in which you saved the image and select the image. Click "Open" and choose "Set Desktop."

Getting Into Coyotes

fieldandstream-editor — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 04:05:00 -0500

Fool one of these superwary predators and you earn the rank of expert hunter. Here's how to do it:

Focus on areas that hold small game, birds, mice, and vermin. CRP fields, brushy creek- or riverbottoms, swamps and marshes, and young clear-cuts are all excellent choices. Most farmers will gladly give you permission to hunt. Pinpoint your spots by looking for tracks and listening for barks, yips, and howls at dawn and dusk. The ideal conditions for a hunt are cold, calm days. Windy days are the worst.

Stealth is the first priority: no slamming vehicle doors or talking to your partner. Settle into a comfortable shooting position on a knoll or field edge that offers good visibility, and wait five to 15 minutes before calling.

Coyotes have extremely keen eyesight and, like any animal coming to a call, are looking hard for its source. Make sure your camo is good and that your hands and face are covered. A cushion to sit on helps you keep still.

If no coyotes come to your calls, sneak back out and drive to another area at least a half mile away, and repeat the process. You should be able to cover eight to 10 good spots in a day of hunting.

The Ideal Coyote Setup:
Wind is key, but other factors can help put the odds in your favor. Click the picture below for to enlarge and see directions.

The Gear
You don't need much to start, and you may already have it

Calls Mouth-operated rabbit squealers are a must, but don't rely on them alone. Also use other distress calls and coyote howlers.

Decoys These act as a closer to your calls. One of your kid's beat-up stuffed animals can suffice, though battery-run motion dekes work best.

Guns Flat-shooting rifles in .223 caliber work best in open terrain, but your deer rifle will do the trick. Shotguns rule in thick timber or on night hunts (where legal). If you hunt turkeys, you probably already own the right setup: a tight-choked 12-gauge that throws a dense pattern out to 35 yards. Use No. 4 buckshot in magnum loads.

Web Exclusive: Caring for Your Kill
Coyotes sport beautiful coats that can be tanned and used as rugs, sewn into clothing (I'm still searching for the perfect pelt to make a mountain man hat), preserved as a taxidermy mount, or sold to a fur buyer. For a rug or mount, it's best to take your coyote whole to the taxidermist. If you plan to sell your hide or make some kind of simple clothing from it, here's how to skin the animal yourself:

Directions:
Get to the task as soon as possible. Don't let the animal freeze, and bring it to a warm basement or shed to keep the hide flexible and supple.

Tie a section of rope around one of the coyote's hind legs, just above the paw. Then tie the other end around a nail, peg, or beam on the ceiling so the animal is hanging upside down with the tail at about eye level.
With the belly of the coyote facing you, make a slit in the hide at the base of the tail and continue up the inside of the leg that's tied, stopping at the rope. Cut the hide all the way around the leg at this point (it's not important to leave the back feet attached if you're going to sell the hide) and skin this hindquarter. Return to your original cut and repeat the procedure on the opposite leg.
Make a 3" to 4" cut through the hide on the underside of the tail (just above the anus) extending toward the tail's tip. Peel the skin back on each side of this cut until you can run a finger (under the skin) completely around the tailbone. Grab the base and with some steady pulling, you should be able to peel the tailbone awayy from the hide surrounding it.
Make a circular cut around the anus to free the hide where it attaches there. At this point, you've freed the hide from the hind legs and tail. Continue to pull the skin off the animal down to the shoulders, as if you were removing a shirt. When you reach the legs, peel the hide down until you reach the "ankle" joint just above the paw. Cut the legs off at this ankle joint, leaving the paws attached to the pelt.
Continue working the hide down over the animal's body until you free it. You'll need some extra patience around the ears, face, and mouth. Coyotes have thin skin and are very lean, which means careful skinning is required to avoid tearing the hide. The first dog you skin will seem tricky, but the process speeds up with practice!

How to Pick a Pup

fieldandstream-editor — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 04:05:00 -0500

A high-quality gun dog adds riches to your life. But a lot of pups for sale are genetically designed to be nice-looking nitwits that bring their owners nothing but frustration and embarrassment. So how can you tell the good from the bad?

[BRACKET "1"] Look at the Parents:
The qualities of the parents tell you more than anything in a pup's papers about what it will look like, how good its nose will be, and how it will behave. That's why you should never buy from a breeder whose claims cannot be checked. TIP: Ask to see the parents work. Pointing-dog parents should be close-working bird finders, not runaways that disappear and hunt out of control. The parents of good retriever prospects retrieve enthusiastically without any frantic activity.

[BRACKET "2"] Check Their Health:
Make sure you see a veterinary certificate showing that the pups you're interested in are in excellent health and have been wormed and inoculated with DHLPP vaccine. TIP: Arrange to see the litter at feeding time. A healthy pup eats eagerly, has a firm covering of flesh, and is happy and robust, not timid, spooky, thin, or runny-eyed.

[BRACKET "3"] Test Their Temperament:
One by one, gently pick up the pups. Before putting each one down, turn it on its back for a moment. A pup that snaps at your hand or struggles wildly when held on its back momentarily is hypersensitive and may be difficult to train. One that just lies there may be dull. You want one that wiggles but doesn't go crazy. TIP: Male or female? The only absolute difference is that females come in heat. In my experience, females are extra-affectionate and sometimes handle with less effort in the field.

[BRACKET "4"] Take Them for a Test Drive:
Take the pups you like outside one by one and apply these tests. Their responses will indicate how they may respond to training later.
Test 1: Walk away. Does the pup romp along beside you or ignore your departure?
Test 2: Stop walking, clap your hands, and squat down on one knee. Does the pup run up to you or wander off on its own business?
Test 3: Crumple up a paper and throw it in plain view. The pup should show healthy curiosity and run after it.

[BRACKET "5"] Trust Your Gut:
By now you should have narrowed your choices down to a few pups. If one appeals to you more than the others for some unexplainable reason, play your hunch and take it. If a final choice seems impossible, just reach in and grab one of them.
TIP: Before making your final pick, check the pup's temperature: 101.5 degrees is normal; anything between 101 and 102 is acceptable.

The Grouse Frontier

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 05:05:00 -0400

More than 20 years ago as I crossed the border into middle age, I promised myself that I would return to Michigan's Upper Peninsula every year to hunt ruffed grouse until I was too lame to walk or too blind to shoot. It's one of the few resolutions I have actually kept, and now that I am, by decree of the Social Security Administration and AARP, an official old guy, but still sound of wind, limb, and eye, I intend to keep on keeping on.

My choice of where to go is dictated as much by emotional and aesthetic reasons as by practical considerations. The U.P. is wild, a kind of mini Alaska, and that wildness is among the things that attract me. I like hunting in places where you can get lost. I don't mean temporarily turned around, but downright lost. Though I am fairly skilled at land navigation, on several occasions in the U.P., I have been utterly bewildered as to where I was and have had to spend hours finding my way back to my truck and civilization.

Stretching east to west for about 300 miles and north to south for 150, the Upper Peninsula is more than half covered by national and state forest. Much of the rest-hundreds of thousands of acres-is owned by pulp and logging companies but is also open to hunters and fishermen. Alger County, where I do most of my hunting, has a population density of about four people per square mile, which meets the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of a frontier. Up there, you're as likely to encounter a bear, wolf, or bobcat as you are a person. I don't have to ask a landowner for permission to hunt; I just park near likely bird cover, let the dog out, load my gun, and go. It's simply wonderful.

The U.P. is more of a recycled wilderness, however, than a virgin wilderness. Over the past 125 years, it has been used and abused by loggers and iron and copper miners. Its immense white pine forests, millions of acres of trees taller than 10-story buildings, were cut down during the lumber boom of 1880Â¿Â¿Â¿1910. Once it had all been exploited, it was left to its own devices and the woods grew back, though not with anything like their primeval magnificence.

Today, the white pine stumps that spread over loamy, lichen-covered plains resemble tombstones, which, in a sense, they are. These secondhand forests seem to breathe a melancholy atmosphere, as though they have a memory of the slaughter committed against their ancestors.

Logging continues on the U.P., which is a good thing for its inhabitants, who need the work, and for the grouse hunter. The bark and snarl of chain saws isn't pleasing to the ear, nor is a clear-cut pleasing to the eye, but the fact is that logging sites become magnets for grouse. Aspens sprout amid the slashings and grow to 10 to 16 feet within a few years, providing grouse with cover and food. The young trees seem as thick as grass on a golf course, making shooting difficult, and walking through piles of branches and rotted stumps is as treacherous as it is tiring, but these areas almost always produce birds. [NEXT "THE FEATHERED BULLY"]

The Feathered Bully
When I was young, I thought the bird was called a "rough grouse" and wondered how it had got that name. Was it a feathered bully? Or did the adjective refer to the nature of the bird's thickly wooded, brushy habitat?

On my first grouse hunt, in the fall of 1962, I formed another theory. My friend Bill and I joined his uncle, an enthusiastic grouse hunter, at his cabin on Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"No wonder they're called Â¿Â¿Â¿rough,' because it sure is rough to hit them," I'd said after Bill and I, jump-shooting from logging roads, had failed to hit a single bird on the wing. Our bag-one apiece-was obtained through unsportsmanlike conduct: I blasted mine out of a tree. Bill got his on the ground.

I don't recall whether we admitted this to his uncle, but I do remember him correcting my error in nomenclature: "It's ruffed grouse, Phil," he'd said, fluffing t dark neck feathers that form a frilly collar when extended.

Now that I had the name right, the next step was to learn to shoot them in the approved manner-while the birds were flying. I had shot my share of pheasants and waterfowl, but the lessons gleaned in duck blinds and Midwestern cornfields were of little use. Grouse appeared and disappeared like apparitions, vanishing before I could get a bead on them.

Although my average has improved over the years, I still haven't learned how to hit them with even reasonable consistency. Exploding from cover with the sound a playing card makes in the spokes of a bicycle wheel, only louder, the ruffed grouse darts through the woods, its mottled brown, gray, black, and white combining with its speed to make it practically invisible.

Once in flight, the bird has an uncanny ability to put a large tree between you and it. You're dead on, you shoot, but all you see are shredded leaves. For this reason, I prefer hunting them in the mid- to late afternoon, when they are apt to abandon their forested coverts for edges and for black cherry and willow thickets that dot the meadows, thus presenting opportunities for an open shot. Jack pine plantations are also favorable to the hunter. Grouse like to roost amid these scraggly trees that, planted in rows, offer shooting lanes not found in natural woods. [NEXT "A BIRD FOR THE HARDCORE FEW"]

A Bird for the Hardcore Few
The very difficulty of the sport is what makes it attractive. Like dry-fly fishing, it goes against the current of our culture, which is to make everything faster, easier, more efficient, and convenient. If you really love driving interstates, eating Happy Meals, and going to shopping malls, grouse hunting probably isn't for you. You will tramp 5 to 8 miles a day through rugged country, get shots at perhaps half the birds you see, and consider yourself lucky if you drop half of those.

There are two rewards for all this effort: the satisfaction of making a fine wing shot and the exquisite taste of grouse. Its diet of seeds and berries and its sedentary ways give the grouse's white meat a distinctive but delicate flavor, less gamy than woodcock, ducks, or doves. Put your mouth to a grouse stuffed with apples and baked in Calvados and you'll find yourself able to eat the lumps of tissue paper sold as chicken in supermarkets only when faced with starvation.

Wildness and solitude compensate for the frustration of birdless days. I recall one such a couple of years ago. Skunked, my dog and I reached the banks of a lonesome, beautiful brook-trout stream. I sat high on a bluff under a stand of tall white pine, looking down at the river curving into a deep, umber-colored pool. Beyond the river, forests of fir and spruce reached as far as I could see, and there was no sound but the wind in the trees. Then out of the woods came a cautious buck. His white tail flashed when he saw me, and he bounded off. That moment made up for all the hard, fruitless effort.

And there are other memories. Two years ago I was hunting an old logging slash near a hamlet called Melstrand. It was a late afternoon in mid-October. In the slanting, amber light, the aspen and maple leaves glowed as brilliantly as electric lamps. As I walked back to my truck, my dog, an English setter bitch named Sage, started to sniff the ground, working back and forth in ever tighter circles.

Watching her, I knew she was tracking a grouse that had walked from one patch of cover to another. Sage began to creep. Suddenly, she slammed onto a hard point near a baby spruce, her tail straight out, her belly only a few inches from the ground, her body trembling. I could see the concentration in her caramel-hued eyes and was sure she wouldn't have flinched if I had exploded a firecracker a foot from her ear. But it was the effect the afternoon light had on her color that captivated me most-she appeared to be on fire, each strand of white fur a thin, copper flame.

A big, rufous grouse burst from under the spruce. I shouldered the gun, pulled the trigger, and realized that I'd forgotten to take the safety off. By the time I got around to doing this, the bird was 50 yards out, sailing away over a clearing. I fired twice and clean missed. And I didn't mind at all. The picture of Sage filled my heart and burned itself into my mind, a living, mental photograph that I could call up any time I chose. Sage and I will be at it again this fall. It is a ritual I look forward to all year, and look back on with pleasure when it's done. of white fur a thin, copper flame.

110 Greatest Tips

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 12:30:00 -0400

SELF-RELIANCE; TIPS 69-79

098
MAKE YOUR OWN COVER SCENT
Boil a few handfuls of leaves, bark, and coniferous needles gathered from your hunting area in a gallon of water. Let the mixture boil until the water volume is reduced by half. Wet your hunting clothes with the resulting concentrated tea, then let them dry before going hunting. J.B.R., March 2000

099
SHARPEN YOUR KNIFE
For the keenest and longest lasting edge, you need an extremely smooth stone such as an Arkansas oilstone. This is a natural rock of fine, uniform texture which for many years has had a reputation for putting the best edge on a blade. Put a few drops of light oil on it and sharpen with uniform strokes, the edge of the blade facing forward, maintaining the same angle. Don't press hard. Your purpose isn't to remove a lot of metal, but to smooth the edge. Half a dozen strokes each way may be enough. T.T., February 1970

100
MAKE AN EMERGENCY BACKPACK
All you need is a T-shirt and a rifle sling. Remove the sling from the rifle, tie the arms of the shirt to the ends of the sling, and tie off the bottom. The shirt neck can be either tied closed or left open. T.T., september 1974

101
FORECAST THE WEATHER
Smoke rising from a chimney on a calm day provides one of the most reliable of all weather signs. When the smoke rises upward you can bet on fair weather; when it drifts close to the ground that's a sure sign that rain or snow is on the way. H.G.T., July 1973

102
STUFF A STOCKING
Next time you head to hunting camp, drop a bar of soap into the toe of an old full-length nylon stocking. In camp, hang the top of the stocking close to the washbasin. The soap can't get lost or fall to the ground and get dirty, and it suds right through the nylon mesh. H.G.T., September 1964

103
FIX YOUR AXE
If you store your axe at deer camp hanging above the ground, the shaft may dry and shrink, loosening the axe head. To make sure the head is tight, stand the axe in a pail of water to swell for a couple of hours before using it. J.B.R., May 2000

104
STAKE THE DOG DISH
If your dog keeps tipping over his water, use a large angel-food cake pan, which has a hole in the center. Just place the pan over a wooden stake driven securely into the ground. The stake anchors the pan firmly so that even the most excitable dog can't knock it over. H.G.T., June 1974

105
BUILD A BETTER MOUSETRAP
Make a hunting camp trap out of a 10-quart kettle. Hang a bit of bread or cheese from the bail of the kettle, which will lure a mouse out on a sliver of wood extending from one rim and fastened to a wire crosspiece with an ordinary staple. It's balanced with a large nail so that the outer end rests on the rim of the kettle. When the mouse passes center, it'll plunge into 6 inches of water below. The weight of the nail quickly swings the board back down into position for another victim. It should be placed beside a low box, or have a board extending from the ground to the outer end of the pivoting sliver, so as to give the mice every possible opportunity to drown themselves. T.T., May 1942

106
KEEP WARM ON STAND
Metal tree stands sap body heat. Carry two squares of indoor-outdoor carpet, one for under your backside, the second to insulate the soles of your boots from the footrest. K.M., November 2003

107
SCRUB POTS WITH PINE
When you're stuck with the chore of cleaning up after a meal cooked over an outdoor fire, look for help under a pine tree. A dry pinecone makes a surprisingly effective scraper for scouring off food that sticks to the inside of cooking ware. H.G.T., September 1976

108
DON'T FORGET THE GARBAGE
Tuck a couple of plastic trash bags in your pocket when you hunt. Sit on one to keep your tail dry while watching a traail or fashion a poncho to shed rain-and if you must cross a stream, pull them on like hip boots and wade across without getting your feet wet. H.G.T., November 1973

109
MAKE THE PERFECT DOG HOUSE
You can make a comfortable and inexpensive house for your dog out of a 55-gallon plastic barrel laid on its side. Using a saber saw, cut out a rectangular doorway, and then use pop rivets to hang a heavy-duty piece of canvas over the opening. To keep the bugs out, elevate the barrel by placing it on a wooden scaffold. B.T., June 1989

110
IMPROVE YOUR CAMP
You can keep the floor of your tent much cleaner if you make a natural doormat. Gather some fresh boughs of pine, spruce, or hemlock and place them in front of the entrance. By wiping your feet on them before you enter, you will leave mud and woods duff outside. H.G.T., April 1972