The results were surprisingly clear.

After comparing ammo cost, recoil, and effective “dead-on” range across today’s most popular big-game cartridges, Field & Stream Shooting Editor Richard Mann found that one 100-year-old cartridge still delivers more reach per dollar than the modern long-range rounds built to replace it.

Not the 6.5 PRC.
Not the 7mm PRC.
The 270 Winchester.

Hunters have trusted the 270 for more than a century, and Mann’s breakdown argues there’s a reason for that. Sure, modern cartridges may drift or drop a couple inches less at extreme distances — but most big-game animals are still killed well inside a cartridge’s practical “1/3-second distance” anyway. And if you can actually hunt, you probably don’t need to shoot farther than that.
When it comes to recoil, cost, and real-world hunting distance, the old 270 still might be the most commonsense big-game cartridge ever made.

👉 Drop a “Big Game” and we’ll DM you the full report. ...

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This monster sturgeon crushed the Minnesota state record after an intense hour-long fight by angler Travis Keating.

Lake sturgeon have rebounded in the Rainy River (which flows out of the Boundary Waters) after years of overfishing in the late 1800s and early 1900s. “With the passage of clean water legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially the Clean Water Act of 1972, the sturgeon population started to recover, as water quality and habitat conditions improved,” an MDNR press release states. “Now reproduction is successful in most years.”

Minnesota’s previous catch-and-release record for lake sturgeon measured 78.5 inches with a smaller 29.5-inch girth. MDNR estimated that 2019 fish at roughly 120 pounds, a full 45 pounds lighter than Keating’s. The International Game Fish Association last recorded an all-tackle world record for lake sturgeon in May 1982.

Full story by @travishallmedia ...

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Riley Green says growing up in Alabama meant always having dogs around, and that hunting eventually pulled him into labs and duck dog training. He says Carl, Jazz, and the rest of his dogs are family. “I want to take care of them the best way that I can,” Green said.

That includes Carl the Cowboy Corgi, who’s become a regular fixture beside Green everywhere from backstage at concerts to turkey hunts and Alabama farm country. Hunting dog or not, Carl still spends plenty of time outdoors chasing livestock around the farm.

@packprovisionspet was developed for active, working, and sporting dogs, with a focus on performance-driven nutrition rooted in science. The lineup includes dry and wet food, treats, and supplements designed to support dogs before, during, and after activity.

Available nationwide through @tractorsupply and online, Pack Provisions draws from more than 150 years of Field & Stream outdoor heritage to build guide-rated nutrition for dogs that spend real time outdoors. ...

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128 years ago today, this Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 sidearm shipped to Theodore Roosevelt in .38 Long Colt as he prepared to train the Rough Riders.

This was Roosevelt before the presidency, before wildlife refuges and national forests, and four years before he established Crater Lake National Park — the first national park created during his administration.

During this chapter of his life, he was already writing about fair chase, wildlife, and the responsibility that came with hunting wild country. His public lands legacy came later.

Photos: Roosevelt’s Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 sold at auction for $910,625 in 2023 (Rock Island Auction Company) // Rough Riders uniform portrait (Arthur Hewitt, East Orange, N.J., Public Domain). ...

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He makes GIANT plugs to catch monsters.

Gary Soldati has been handcrafting striped-bass plugs that sell out in one to two minutes flat. His Giant Pike lures aren’t just baits; they’re functional pieces of art, built one block of northern white cedar at a time.

At 74 years old, Soldati still suits up in a wetsuit and swims out to barnacle-covered rocks at night, rod in hand, in the name of research. And fun. Inside his workshop, every plug is shaped, sanded, and painted by hand in batches of 80 to 100. The precision in the scale patterns, the lifelike profile, the swimming action; every detail is deliberate. “I take great pride in seeing them swim correctly,” he says. For serious anglers and collectors alike, that pride is impossible to miss.

Read the full story by Ryan Chelius in the newest edition of the Field & Stream Journal, the Traditions Issue; Volume 131, No.1

Want more stories like this? Become an 1871 Club Member and get the Field & Stream Journal delivered straight to your doorstep.

Story by @ryan_chelius
Photos by @jesse_burke ...

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Typically, Alaska bush planes don’t offer complimentary lost baggage recovery but Callen Davis is one hell of a bush pilot.

Tent, 7 days of food, glass, gear, extra layers & the sleeping bag still almost got left behind…

@donnie_vincent probably would’ve hunted anyway. That’s part of hunting caribou in Alaska and why he keeps going back. Caribou don’t reward hurry, and they don’t tolerate forcing outcomes. The longer he’s hunted them, the less he worries about controlling the hunt and the more he trusts the country to give something back when it’s ready.

Check out “The Way Back” — Donnie’s film about why he keeps returning north. ...

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On May 7, cancer succeeded in doing what Illinois mobsters, the People’s Army of Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and various Middle Eastern terrorists, failed to do, by ending the life of Philip Caputo. Phil, like Ernest Hemingway, was a major American writer who loved the outdoors, particularly hunting, and wrote about it. Field & Stream was lucky enough to have him grace its pages in many issues. One of his finest contributions, “The Old Man and the Mountains.”

In his 84 years, Caputo wrote about everything. He began as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune in 1968 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for exposing political corruption. He continued for the Tribune as a foreign correspondent until 1975, covering most of the really unpleasant places in the world, and survived both a kidnapping by terrorists and a bullet in the ankle. He covered the fall of Saigon in 1975, and then retired from reporting to write full time. In the course of his career, he produced 19 books, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as magazine articles that are probably beyond count, and he was much in demand as a lecturer and commentator.

But what he will be remembered for is A Rumor of War, which was published in 1977, and is the account of his combat tour in Vietnam as a Marine Corps infantry officer. It’s been translated into 15 languages, has sold 2 million copies, and is the story of a journey from idealism to bitter disillusionment. Rumor, virtually since its publication, has been acknowledged as one of the two or three greatest books on Vietnam.

Phil was a man of extraordinary courage and limitless talent. May he rest in peace; God knows he’s earned it.

By David E. Petzal // 🔗 in story to read the full tribute. ...

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Throwback to a few unbelievable hawgs from the IGFA record book — some of the biggest bass ever caught.
The kind of fish that still get talked about long after the mounts yellow out. Archival Project // @fieldandstream x @yuenglingbeer ...

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In the past, finding 50 morels took her three separate hunts.

This spring, she picked that many on day one. She’s hunting around 2,700 feet in Washington, where the timing finally lined up: fresh rain, warming ground, calypso orchids blooming, miner’s lettuce coming up, and morels pushing hard along gravel roads catching sunlight. And if you’re new to mushroom forums, apparently forgetting to include your region is a cardinal sin.

(Successful-Arival87) ...

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Field & Stream previously reported on a Public Land Order that removed protections from Alaska’s famed Dalton Highway—a vast swath of federally managed public land known for caribou hunting and prime access to wilderness fishing. In addition to clearing a path for increased development, the PLO declared the lands eligible for state transfer.

Yesterday, the Department of the Interior fulfilled its promise, announcing in a press release that it has officially conveyed 1.4 million acres of BLM lands along the Dalton Highway to Alaska.

Comment “AK” for a DM to the full story by @travishallmedia ...

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