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April 1, 2013
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I experienced a college flashback this past week and not just because I was sitting in a bar. It was late Thursday afternoon and after greeting a couple of buddies shortly after walking through the door, IPhones began making their anticipated appearances. However, instead of predictable photos of strutting gobblers, the accompanying photo popped up.
“Yep, this thing was shot in Chester, Mass.—just a little north of here,” someone said. “Must have been one of those wolf/dog hybrid things because I heard that it was declawed.” And then I had my flashback.
[ Read Full Post ]March 19, 2013
by 
I’m a skeptic, so when I saw a gopher whistle for sale at my sporting goods store, I snorted. But I was intrigued enough by the promise of killing more ground squirrels that I bought it.
Pied Piping
To operate the Varmint Call, a machined aluminum tube made by King Tool of Bozeman, Mont. ($15; king-tool.com), suck air through the brass mouthpiece. It supposedly imitates the “all-clear” call sounded by gophers and Columbia ground squirrels. Really? In my experience, high-pitched whistles remind ground-dwelling rodents of raptors, and the sound sends them scurrying to their burrows. I decided to test its efficacy over the course of several gopher-shooting sessions last spring.
[ Read Full Post ]March 4, 2013
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As Ursus arctos horribilis outgrows the Montana backcountry, bears are moving into plains and river bottoms. This is Outdoor Life's in-depth report on the population expansion. Is it time to once again hunt this symbol of the Western wild?
Mike Madel and I are driving north out of Choteau, Mont., in his Fish, Wildlife & Parks pickup, looking for trouble in the 2,500-square-mile area he patrols with his Karelian bear dog, Ursa. Madel has been trapping, darting, and bear-proofing his way to an understanding with grizzlies for 30 years now. He knows every rancher, butte, and drainage, and a lot of the bears. He keeps a list of the names and radio frequencies of the collars on local grizzlies’ necks by his right hand. I glance down and see that they have handles like Dex, Beenie, and Bonita. I look out the window, knowing the bears could be anywhere from the snow-capped Rockies on our left to the flat plains and grain fields on our right.
[ Read Full Post ]February 13, 2013
by A hard-hearted old hunter, a solitary bachelor by choice and for cause, once told me that the only day he didn’t hunt coyotes was Valentine’s Day.
The rest of the year the old scab pounded coyotes with the sort of frightening intensity most people reserve for threats to their families or hopeless sports franchises. The old-timer had grown up on a sprawling sheep outfit along Wyoming’s Green River, and he had seen first-hand the sort of savagery a pack of coyotes could unleash on tender lambs and their bleating mothers.
One time, as he drove his old pickup down a county road and I feigned interest in a story I had heard a half-dozen times, I spotted a coyote in a dry wash, and he grabbed his rifle and jumped out of the truck while it was still rolling, leaving me to figure out how to hump over the trash on the seat, get behind the wheel and stomp on the brake before it veered off the gravel. He, of course, got his dog and never asked how I fared with the runaway vehicle.
[ Read Full Post ]February 5, 2013
by
The heart of winter is usually the toughest time of year for mammals in the North. Any animal that doesn't hibernate or migrate needs to endure the snow and cold to gobble up enough calories to keep warm and stay alive.
[ Read Full Post ] January 11, 2013
by 
As coyote populations have exploded over the last decade and the popularity of hunting them has skyrocketed, the cunning critters have become increasingly difficult to dupe. Here's how to rewrite the playbook and start dropping more dogs.
[ Read Full Post ]January 7, 2013
by 
Steve Darling was icefishing on South Dakota’s Oahe Reservoir when he noticed the dog tracks. There were dozens of them, fresh every morning in the new snow around the shoreline of the frozen lake.
Later, he spotted the authors of the prints—a pack of coyotes that crossed the lake each evening, keeping well away from the cluster of icefishermen, as they worked into the wind and filtered out into the coulees on the north side of the lake.
[ Read Full Post ]December 20, 2012
by The first rule of wildlife management is that populations matter. Individuals don’t.
The second rule is that long-term trends—in species’ range and distribution, in habitat health, and even in human tolerance for various wild critters—trump the peaks and valleys of annual gain and loss.
Unlike the bloodless analytics of other scientific disciplines, wildlife management is organic. It happens outdoors. It’s often bloody. To borrow Hobbes’ perspective of humanity, most wild animals spend lives that are “nasty, brutish, and short.”
In Dan Nosowitz’s misinformed and virulent essay on wolf hunting around Yellowstone National Park, he seems ignorant of these tenets—and realities—of wildlife management.
[ Read Full Post ]October 18, 2012
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Willie and Jase Robertson (left), from A&E's hit show Duck Dynasty, are unlikely TV superstars. And they're still hard-core outdoorsmen at heart.
Willie: Our show, Duck Dynasty, is a family show, and the reaction to it has been overwhelmingly positive. But I’ll tell you what—nobody wrote a manual for this. Nobody wrote a manual on how you run a business while all this is happening at the same time.
Jase: When we go out in public now we’re easily recognized. Basically, when you look like we do—before the show, people kept their distance. People thought I was homeless. Now it’s different. I was in Ohio last weekend, my plane got delayed, and I got there 60 seconds before I was going up on stage to speak. When I walked out, there were two families in the front row and they had “Duck Dynasty” spelled out in paint on their chests. People were cheering and hollering. People were going crazy and I hadn’t even said a word.
[ Read Full Post ]October 16, 2012
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I won’t lie to you—hunting rabbits with a beagle or five is easier than trying to fill a brace of bunnies by going dogless. But then, some things in life are appreciated most when they don’t come too easily. While most die-hard Elmer Fudds wouldn’t be caught in a thicket without their low-running hounds, for the casual hunter just looking to score some meat for a stew, rabbit country offers the chance for an incredibly fun and productive walk with a 20-gauge tucked over his arm. Follow these strategies to maximize your odds for success, whether going it alone or partnering up for a great hunt.
Going Solo
Because of the abundance of predators out to get them, rabbits prefer areas where thick cover and ample food are in close proximity. Grown-up borders or thickets immediately next to open crops of soybeans, peanuts, and peas, or food plots lush with clover or turnips or overrun with broadleaf weeds will all harbor a population of cottontails.
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