Outdoor Life — The Source for Hunting and Fishing Adventure

You’re 12 feet up in your treestand, bowhunting for deer, when suddenly a young black bear cub scurries up your tree, passes you, and perches on a limb above your head. Then, after it realizes what it has just done, the frightened juvenile begins bawling loudly for its mother.

What would you do?

Kevin Schulz of Ladysmith, Wisconsin didn’t have much time to think when he was faced with that scenario Friday evening. But he’s got time to reminisce about his ordeal now, as his wounds heal and he recovers to bowhunt another day.

Schultz, 42, found himself in a bear sandwich when a sow he estimated to weigh 300 pounds started up his tree to recover her stranded youngster. He first tried kicking her away and pushing her using his bow.

“She got me by the side and by the armpit and tried to drag me out of the tree, but I had my treestand strap holding me,” Schultz told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Then she tried to pull my leg. She actually pulled my boot off. I think she thought she had me.”

During the hand-to-paw... [ Read Full Post ]

How do you know when the whitetails are about to come in to rut? When you discover active scrapes in the woods? When you spot rubs high up on large cedar trees?

How about when a 4-point buck crashes through the window of a fifth grade classroom in suburban New Jersey, then proceeds to race down the school's hallways, terrorizing students and faculty alike?

Yep, the rut's right around the corner, for sure!

It was about 10 a.m. Tuesday morning, when Bonnie McCullough and Brenda Adelson were in the process of concluding a vocabulary lesson with their class of 19 fifth graders.

"We heard this crash; I didn't know what to make of it," Ms. McCullough said. "It sounded like glass breaking, and I didn't have time to look too much, and there was this brown blur."

Without touching anyone, the deer charged straight through the room and headed through an open door, turning down the hallway.

The young buck's next stop was the infirmary, where he introduced himself to Rosalie Preuss, the school nurse.

"When he saw me, he started climbing in," Ms. Preuss told the New York Times. "I thought... [ Read Full Post ]

Jay Gregory sent me a couple more pictures and some details on how he shot this fantastic 190" Midwestern Monster last Wednesday AM:

He had been hunting “Splitter” for 3 years. He got one Cuddeback picture of the buck in 2005, at night, when the deer was 4 years old. The next summer he got tons of photos and even filmed Splitter once in full velvet. But Jay never saw him during the 2006 hunting season. "A more fitting name for the buck might have been Ghost," he said. This past summer he never saw the buck, but he got lots more photos.

Last fall, Jay had hung a tree-stand set close to where he thought Splitter/Ghost might be bedding, but he was only able to hunt it once--one day in November--because the wind never was right.

Last Wednesday, October 10th, Jay and his wife, Tammi, made their way to the stand in the early-morning darkness. They had not been in there since last year, but they were excited because of the early-season north wind. (Just as I had thought, that... [ Read Full Post ]

Among the differences between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow is how we manage to miss with each. As a general rule, when shooting a game at rest, rifle hunters miss by shooting high while bow hunters miss underneath. I’ll leave the psychological explanation for this phenomenon to you.

John Snow [ Read Full Post ]

There are lots of ways to miss shots on game—if you’ve done much hunting you probably already know this first hand. The good news is that most things that cause errant marksmanship are under our control. For example, if you’re unable to trot 50-yards uphill and get your crosshairs on target because you’re blowing like a whale and seeing spots you might want to rethink your pre-season conditioning. Or stick to hunting on your butt.

Another great way to send a bullet sailing into the ether, rather than into a deer’s vitals—is to use a complicated scope. Reticles that calculate bullet drop, distance to target and other ballistic data are, with precious few exceptions, more likely to hurt rather than help your shooting. [ Read Full Post ]

Here comes the bride, all dressed in camoooo…

We’re not sure, but at least that’s what we think the words to the Wedding March might have sounded like last week when Brook Davis married her longtime sweetheart, Jason Michael, in a ceremony taking place in Delray, West Virginia.

The two have been inseparable since they were youngsters, so their marriage was really no surprise to their many friends and family members who attended the ceremony.

However, Brook’s choice for a wedding gown caught most folks off guard when she entered the church last Saturday. And no one was more surprised than her soon-to-be husband.

That’s because her dress design reflected her love of hunting and the outdoors, something that she shares with Jason and his family.

“I had the gown made out of the new Mossy Oak Break-Up camouflage material,” Brook proudly told the local newspaper, The Hampshire Review.

The ceremony began with a slide show that included “hero shots” of Brook, Jason and their family members posed with numerous hunting trophies taken in recent years. To the strains of the song, “Born Country,” ushers wearing khaki suits with... [ Read Full Post ]

I know in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence or somewhere that it says that all calibers are created equal, and for the most part, as a good American, I try to take that to heart.

But among the pantheon of cartridges—and I’m talking specifically hunting cartridges here—there are some lesser gods, the least of which in my book is the .243 and its 6mm relations.

I’ve tried, but I can’t warm to the .243. It’s billed as having three great attributes: it’s death on varmints, it’s adequate for deer-sized big game and it is a great cartridge for young hunters because of its moderate recoil. I think it is a poor second-choice—if that—for any of these tasks.

Varmint shooting? I’ll go with a high-octane .22 over a .243 any day. I’ve tried to come up with a scenario where I’d be better served with a .243 over a .223, a .22-250 or a .220 Swift and can’t with the lone exception perhaps being low-volume shooting in very windy conditions, which frankly doesn’t sound like a very fun day of varmint hunting. On the other hand, it is easy to picture where the .22s would be much more pleasant, and effective, to... [ Read Full Post ]