Ducks Unlimited’s campaign mobilized a broad coalition of hunters and anglers, from national camouflage and hunting-gear brands to everyday waterfowlers across the country. And, late last week, higher ups at the Department of Interior, which oversees USFWS, took note.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service thanks the more than 200,000 commenters who responded to the request for information on the process for calculating setbacks for the drain tiles around the wetland easements,” the Service said in an August 14 tweet. “Our administration is dedicated to protecting both the wetland easements purchased by the FWS that are necessary to protect our conservation heritage as well as the private landowners’ use of their lands outside the easement boundaries. At this time, no further action is planned as we review the information received.”

The tweet came just days after a large consortium of waterfowl groups including, DU, Delta Waterfowl, California Waterfowl, and South Carolina Waterfowl, issued a joint letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum urging him to maintain the current drain-tile setback rules. Separate letters from bi-partisan groups of elected officials in both the House and Senate also urged Burgum to keep the rules in place.

Field & Stream will continue to cover the issue as more details emerge. Full story by @travishallmedia. ...

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Every bar has a guy with a big buck story. Jim Jordan’s happened to be true.

It cost Jordan $5 to have this buck mounted. Getting his name back on it took the better part of half a century.
In 1914, 22-year-old Jordan was hunting near Danbury, Wisconsin, when he shot a massive 10-point whitetail along the Yellow River. Jordan knew the buck was special. He just had no way of knowing how special. He handed the rack to a local taxidermist, who agreed to make him a mount for $5. Then the taxidermist moved and the buck disappeared with him. Decades passed, and Jordan went on to run a bar in Hinckley, Minnesota. The giant buck he’d lost was still part of the lore, and Jordan kept telling the story to anyone who’d listen.

Meanwhile, the rack had resurfaced in Minnesota and changed hands for just $2. Eventually, someone put a tape to it: 206 1/8 inches, with only 3 2/8 inches of deductions. There was just one problem: nobody could prove Jordan was the hunter. But all those years of telling the story eventually mattered. People who’d heard it at his bar helped connect an outdoor writer with Jordan, setting off an investigation into the buck’s origins.

In 1978, Boone & Crockett officially recognized Jordan as the hunter and Danbury, Wisconsin, as the location of the kill. The Jordan Buck held the world-record typical whitetail title until 1993. More than a century later, his massive Wisconsin 10-pointer remains one of the greatest typical whitetails ever taken.

Old School Sundays, presented by Yuengling. ...

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How much gear do you actually need?

Leon Berthold and Lea are the duo behind WildBound. They live out of a self-converted camper van and document their DIY off-grid adventures on their YT channel. For this adventure, they spent a week on a remote Arctic island.

For the first leg of the trip, conventional fishing gear was off limits and they knew they didn’t bring enough food to eat for a week. They made a valiant attempt to build what they needed, found their own bait and started fishing.

Spoiler alert: their homemade rod went into the ocean but they saved the reel and kept fishing by hand. Check out @leonberthold.outdoors | “WildBound” for more. ...

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The mark of experience? Knowing you don’t always have to go deeper.

Elk aren’t hard to kill; they’re just hard to find. Although elk populations are high, the landscape they live is huge and the terrain is rugged. With the animals spread over millions of acres of wilderness, herds can seem to vanish into thin air. And that’s why, starting in summer, Jace Bauserman spreads cameras all across his part of the West to locate them. Trail cams may have been initially designed for whitetail nuts, but their use has exploded among western bowhunters. And for good reason.

Archery-season bulls are big, noisy, and for a 30ish-day period during the rut, they think with something other than their brain. If you can just find a few good bulls ahead of the season, you’ll have a great chance at tagging one once it opens.

Drop an “EDGE” comment and we’ll DM you the elk summer scouting clinic by @jace_bauserman powered by @moultrieproducts ...

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And yes, he’s packed a sheep out with that 45L Mystery Ranch Sawtooth before. The bag separates from the frame, with the meat riding between the two and the head on top. His last sheep came out that way over a 35-mile hike.

One caveat: the kill kit, spotter, and binos are riding with his hunting partner.

What are you adding… or leaving at home?

(u/Select-Cash1102) ...

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Bulldozers have begun clearing land for a new border wall inside Big Bend National Park.

On August 4, bulldozing for the $1.7 billion project began in earnest, despite strong bipartisan opposition from locals. Private contractors are carrying out the project under the authority of Customs and Border Patrol.

The federal government is waiving scores of bedrock environmental laws for the project. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, contractors have already bulldozed key areas of the park as part of a plan to build new border barriers, paved roads, and other types of border wall infrastructure.

The Texas Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers @texas_bha has voiced significant concerns about the projects, citing negative impacts to the area’s hunting and fishing heritage. The group says a physical border wall would block native wildlife from accessing the Rio Grande and impede known movement pathways for black bear, mountain lion, big horn sheep, pronghorn antelope, and hundreds of bird species.

Maps seen by Texas BHA Policy Chair Jake Walker show a definite loss of hunting access if the wall goes through, including an entire public hunting section near Lake Amistad and current public hunting areas inside the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area.

Full story by @travishallmedia with video shot by local journalist @ntlnwmn showing bulldozers clearing land for a new border wall inside Big Bend National Park. ...

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When you’re putting up enough Kenai salmon to eat through the winter, systems matter.

If you don’t know Cory Loeffler, you’ve been missing out. Loeffler is an avid outdoorsman who hunts, fishes, makes duck calls, you name it and he’s got the recipes to show for it. When it comes to fillets though, he’s doing it in the water. Once the knife comes out, he works around the ribs, leaving as much good meat intact as he can. None of it is particularly complicated but deliberate.

Loeffler says taking the extra time to scale the fish makes for better table fare. When he’s in a time crunch, he can move can move quick too… cue his 60-sec fillet challenges, as seen on his page. Give him a follow for more cheat codes and trip ideas: @cory_loeffler (he’s got a few rental properties worth looking at too!) ...

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This pond shags its own balls. Masters champ Charl Schwartzel took a one-stroke penalty on this 134-yard “cast” at LIV Golf New York. His tee shot found the drink, and the second it hit the water, a waiting bucketmouth blew up on the ball and tried to swallow. ...

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For the first time in U.S. history, an AI data center has been approved on federally managed public land.

The project is slated for BLM land near Boulder City, Nevada, about 10 miles from Lake Mead National Recreation Area. The parcel had previously been approved for solar development. Boulder City has appealed the decision.  Their concern goes beyond one patch of Nevada desert: city officials believe this could become a test case for putting more data centers on public lands across the West.

According to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, data centers require significant amounts of power, which can increase demand for energy development and supporting infrastructure. “Construction of new facilities, transmission lines, and cooling infrastructure often requires large footprints that can fragment or displace wildlife habitat,” TRCP reported last summer.

This is the first such approval on federal public land. Whether it becomes a model for similar projects elsewhere remains to be seen.

Full story by @travishallmedia ...

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When the 18th Amendment ushered in Prohibition, the nearly century-old brewery could no longer legally produce the beer that kept business flowing since 1829.

As part of an effort to keep illegal beer from being produced and stored, the government ordered brick walls to be built inside the brewery, blocking access to its aging tunnels. 

So, Frank Yuengling thought of other ways to keep the business alive by creating a legal 0.5% “near beer,” a non-alcoholic porter, as well as building a dairy across from the brewery to make Yuengling ice cream.

While breweries across the country closed and thousands of workers lost their jobs, the family found enough ways to keep the business alive. 

Prohibition finally ended in 1933 and Yuengling celebrated by brewing Winner Beer, a special batch reportedly sent by truck to President Franklin D Roosevelt at the White House. ...

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