Outdoor Life — The Source for Hunting and Fishing Adventure

For snags within a rod length of the surface, Texas bass pro Russell Cecil simply reels down to the ensnared bait, reaches below the surface and uses the rod to push the bait free. When he knows the snag sits deeper, he'll grab his line between the reel and the first guide and steadily pull backward to essentially walk the rod into the water and down to the ensnared bait. Instead of reeling the bait to the rod, the inverse operation takes the rod to the bait. [ Read Full Post ]

Cheetahs might be the fastest terrestrial hunter on the planet, but it has only recently been discovered that speed is not the most important factor to the big cats' hunting success. A study conducted by the Royal Veterinary College in London determined that: “Grip and maneuverability, rather than top speed, were shown to be key to hunting success. Hunts involved considerable maneuvering.” [ Read Full Post ]

Being a fanatic about wild food foraging and field medicine, I’ve often wondered what would happen if those two worlds were to collide. What would I do if I ate the wrong plant or mushroom far away from a doctor’s help? What’s the first aid for that? After years of ethnobotantical research, it’s hard to imagine that I would make a mistake that could leave me poisoned. But, I’ve also been around the block enough times to realize that mistakes do happen from time to time. And it might not even be me that needs help. I may need to care for someone else, who was less cautious than I am when selecting wild food.

This “what if” situation should leave us wondering if there are worthwhile treatments one could employ if poisoning occurs in a remote-area survival event. After much research, I’m afraid to say the prognosis for field treatment isn’t good. [ Read Full Post ]

An Alaskan man was mauled by a black bear over the weekend after he threw meat at the animal. The man was at the lake, north of Anchorage, for a church picnic, Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman Beth Ipsen told the Anchorage Daily News.

“He’d been drinking,” she said.

The man, who's name has been withheld, left the picnic to go for a bike ride. He came across the bear and threw it a pice of meat, which the bear ate. The man threw the bear another piece of meat and then… [ Read Full Post ]

There aren’t too many things capable of grossing out a 12-year-old kid on summer vacation. I wouldn’t count these among my proudest moments, but I can vividly recall doing such things as: running over a bloated day-old roadkilled cottontail with my bike with disgustingly predictable results; performing more stomach-content analyses on largemouth bass than most fisheries biologists would care to (by the way, they mostly eat bluegills and can carry eggs the entire summer) and putting down a giant rain frog (the thing had to weigh 5 pounds) with a sledge hammer in order to protect the lives of my cousins. But then there were the giant jelly sacks from hell! On the revolting scale, they rated a 15. [ Read Full Post ]

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval on June 13 vetoed a bill requiring background checks for gun sales between private parties, telling the Las Vegas Sun that it “imposes unreasonable burdens and harsh penalties upon law-abiding Nevadans, while doing little to prevent criminals from unlawfully obtaining firearms.”

Sandoval said the bill had a number of worthy elements, including prohibiting the possession of guns by anyone judged mentally ill. He also applauded a section that required courts to speed up reporting of mental health adjudications. [ Read Full Post ]