Outdoor Life — The Source for Hunting and Fishing Adventure

Dave Fairman caught this monster walleye/sauger hybrid while fishing on the Yellowstone River in North Dakota last winter. Game and Fish Department officials confirmed that the 12-pound saugeye was a state record this week. [ Read Full Post ]

The Bureau of Land Management has extended the public comment period on its proposal to revise hydraulic fracturing regulations on federal lands to Aug. 23.
               
The new proposal, published May 25, would modernize regulations and establish baseline environmental safeguards for a process -- fracking -- that is already used to drill 90 percent of wells on federal and Indian lands.
               
Fracking involves injecting pressurized water into rocks at fault lines to release natural gas for extraction. The BLM's proposed rule changes would be the first update of the federal fracking regulations since 1983. [ Read Full Post ]

It was the type of nightmare born from far too many viewings of "Jaws." Except this happened while the anglers were wide-awake.

A group of fishermen were 30 miles southeast of Atlantic City on Sunday when they encountered a great white shark. The men watched for 10 horrific/fascinating minutes as the estimated 14-foot most-feared maneater circled their boat. [ Read Full Post ]

If the name Dale Manning sounds familiar, it should. He’s a regular part of the OL Optics Test team, and he’s among one of the best taxidermists in the country. In fact, the world.

Manning, who owns Custom Bird Works and Big Game Connection taxidermy in Missoula, Mont., won the “Best in World” in the waterfowl category at the 2013 World Taxidermy Championships in May. His flying snow goose, according to internet message boards, wowed everyone in attendance. [ Read Full Post ]

If it seems like I’ve been blogging about soft mast for whitetails, it’s for good reason. Whitetails are slaves to there stomachs and it’s the smart deer hunter who pays close attention to what whitetails are eating. And, when it comes to what whitetails eat, few foods can compete with soft mast.

By soft mast I mean fruits and berries that typically mature in the early fall. Soft mast is typically high in sugar content and wandering whitetails can get hooked in a hurry. Anything within reach is ripped from the tree and once fruit starts falling, it’s scooped up like candy from a piñata. [ Read Full Post ]

For long-range precision rifle work I’ve come to favor optics with some type of milling reticle in the first-focal plane (FFP) that have .1 mil corrections on the windage and elevation turrets. The ability to estimate range with these reticles and the ease with which the shooter can make adjustments for follow-up shots give FFP/mil-mil scopes a huge advantage over other systems.

That said, even companies that specialize in these expensive “tactical” optics, such as Nightforce, sell way more scopes that are MOA based.

There are a number of reasons for this, but the biggest factor is tradition. Most shooters in America were taught on MOA scopes that have ¼-inch click adjustments at 100 yards and anything that deviates from that seems odd. Likewise, most of those scopes have reticles in the second focal plane, so the first time a person looks through a scope where the reticle seems to grow and shrink as the power setting is changed, it doesn’t feel right. Plus, there’s also the very practical issue of cost. Second-focal plane scopes are less expensive to make and simple duplex reticles are also cheaper than fancy... [ Read Full Post ]

The Lakers might have had a disappointing season, but their center, Dwight Howard, seems to be having a pretty good fishing season. [ Read Full Post ]