Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2016 i Outdoor Life

The National Park Service (NPS) turned 100 last month. At the time of its creation, OL’s early editors had already been campaigning to create national parks as wild-game sanctuaries. That these public lands are still off-limits to hunting is frustrating for some sportsmen, who point out that many game species have been restored to sustainable— and, in some instances, overabundant—levels. THEN MARCH 1872 Yellowstone is named the first National Park. APRIL 1899 An unsigned editorial calls for wild-game sanctuaries across the country: “Look at the increase of game in our protected national parks. They are full to overflowing, and the overflow is what, in their immediate vicinage, provides sport that would long since have been impossible under the obtaining kill-all-you-can-and-where-you-can conditions.” JANUARY 1900 In the hopes of protecting elk from…

CHASING A SHADOW Ryan Aulenbacher/ Rock County, Wisconsin MY OBSESSION with Mr. Photogenic began after my first trail camera glimpse of him in 2014. I was hunting our 257-acre family farm in south-central Wisconsin, but where was he? What did I need to do to get a shot opportunity? Would I ever get to draw my bow on this once-in-a-lifetime whitetail? Although he showed up on my cameras five or six times—hence his nickname—it just didn’t happen. I was relieved that one of the pics came after the close of bow and gun seasons—he’d made it through. Starting in the spring of 2015, I kicked up my efforts, setting up new treestands, spending a ton of time on my food plots, and scouting—a lot—throughout the summer. To make sure I…

“IT’S A DIFFERENT RACE OF DEER UP THERE,” Tim Trefren said as we pulled dusty saddles and sweaty blankets off our horses. Tim’s mount was a classy roan named Red. They called mine Propane Tank, both for his rotundity and for his habit of releasing an audible quantity of gas with nearly every step. “Up there” was a high ridge above the wall tents and lodgepole corral of Tim’s remote Wyoming hunting camp. We had just ridden down that steep ridge in the dark, our horses’ hooves throwing sparks every time their shoes nicked a rock in the trail. To me, in the dark atop a farting horse, the sparks looked like terrestrial versions of the shooting stars we had seen early that morning as we ascended the ridge, the…

It’s true: A dead coyote will never eat another fawn, and a dead raccoon can’t scavenge another quail’s nest. But that doesn’t mean that plugging the occasional predator from your deer stand will actually do a great deal to help your local game population. It’s much more complicated than that, says University of North Dakota wildlife professor Dr. Susan Felege, who led a three-year study examining the impact of predator removal on quail nesting success in Florida and Georgia. Her findings were startling. Although professional trappers removed as many as 737 mammalian predators in one year from individual 3,500-acre study sites—raccoons and possums accounted for most of the animals—overall nesting success did not change. “The predator community is very complex,” says Felege. “If raccoons aren’t eating quail eggs, something else…

In a sea of sage, grass, rocks, hills, gullies, draws, valleys, and washouts, any mule deer hunter worth his salt knows that locating a deer to stalk is the essential first step to a successful hunt. To the uninitiated, the task appears simple: With all that open space, let’s just get up high, glass it up, and find a buck to sneak up on. But experienced mule deer hunters of the prairies, steppes, grasslands, and pastures know better. How you look for deer, where you look, and what you look for can greatly increase your efficiency at finding a gray ghost out there in the middle of an open wilderness. HOW TO LOOK The biggest mistake firsttimers to mule deer country commit is skylining themselves. Never walk a ridgeline, crest,…

TRUTH BE KNOWN, I’M A BAD WINGSHOT. IT’S NOTHING THAT A LITTLE TIME ON THE SPORTING CLAYS RANGE CAN’T CURE, BUT I DIDN’T HAVE THAT KIND OF TIME LAST FALL WHEN AN UNSCHEDULED TRIP TO LOUISIANA TOOK ME TO THE BURAS MARSH FOR TEAL. BY THE TIME THE TWO-DAY ORDEAL HAD ENDED, I HAD EATEN ENOUGH HUMBLE PIE TO LAST A LIFETIME. WHEN IT CAME TIME TO HEAD HOME, MY GUIDE, MANUEL SAUCEDA, COULD ONLY LOOK AT ME AND LAUGH. “MAN, NEXT TIME YOU COME, YOU SHOULD PRACTICE MORE,” HE SAID. “FIRST TALK TO MR. RYAN. HE CAN TELL YOU HOW TO SHOOT.” “MR. RYAN” IS RYAN LAMBERT, OWNER OF CAJUN FISHING ADVENTURES (CAJUNFISHING ADVENTURES.COM), A PREMIER WATERFOWLING OUTFITTER IN SOUTHERN LOUISIANA. HERE ARE THE TIPS HE SHARED. 1 CALM…

ACCOUNTING FOR THE effect of wind on projectiles is typically the providence of long-range rifle shooters and isn’t something shotgunners normally bother with. But should you find yourself hunting fowl in truly nasty weather with high winds, you might need to take it into account. This was driven home to me on a sea duck hunt in Maine a few seasons back while I was going for eiders and old squaw. We were hunting out of a boat in a breeze you had to lean into in order to stay upright. While chasing down cripples, I noticed that at even 25 yards, holding dead on a bird swimming in the water resulted in a clean miss due to the crosswinds. My mental tumblers clicked, and from then on my hit…

WILLIAM H. ADDEO, HOBACK JUNCTION, WY IF WE USE YOUR STORY, WE’LL SEND YOU THIS AUTOGRAPHED BOOK! ”THIS HAPPENED TO ME” HAS BEEN A FIXTURE OF OUTDOOR LIFE SINCE IT FIRST APPEARED IN 1940. WE’VE SINCE COMPILED SOME OF THE MOST HARROWING, HAIR-RAISING MISADVENTURES READERS HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED IN A SINGLE VOLUME. IF WE RUN YOUR STORY, YOU CAN PORE OVER THE 183 PAGES OF THIS ACTION-PACKED BOOK KNOWING YOU’RE IN GOOD COMPANY. WANT TO BUY A COPY? THEY’RE AVAILABLE AT OUTDOORLIFE.COM/THTMBOOK STORYTIME We publish true adventures. Only those used will be acknowledged. Send to THTM@OutdoorLife.com (preferred), or Outdoor Life, THTM, 2 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Include a daytime phone number.…

If you’re fortunate enough to hit the annual fall migration just right, woodcock can provide enough heart-stopping flushes to help you forget about the good ol’ days of wingshooting. There’s no question a good dog can put you on more birds, but not enough hunters have the time, energy, or space for a dog commitment if bird numbers are on a cyclical low. If that’s you, don’t fret. Virginia bird hunting outfitter Chris McClellan (sailors creekoutfitters.com) has a solution. Walk ’em up . “A dog can cover 10 times the ground you can, of course, so you have to do a lot of walking if you don’t have a dog,” he says. “But it can be a lot more fun. Sometimes woodcock will flush 20 feet away. Other times you’ll…

MOST HARDCORE retriever trainers won’t put their dog on a first hunt until he’s whistletrained, rock-steady in the blind, and force-fetched. And plenty of training literature warns that hunting a dog too early can “wreck” the pup. But here’s the other side of the coin: Every hunt is a chance to learn. And a laid-back early-season hunt can be the best training a young retriever can experience. Here’s how to get your pup in the game, get some good hunting experience under his belt— and have a lot of fun doing it. MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS Before taking your dog on a hunt, he needs be able to sit, stay, and come when you call him. He needs to have had some exposure to gunfire— and to have proven that he’s not…

Just north of the legendary Wild West haunt of Deadwood, South Dakota, is a sunlit playground of steep gorges, clear streams, and fat trout. Spearfish Canyon cuts through the foothills of the Black Hills and should be a destination for the bucket list of any traveling flyfisherman. However, even the best spots won’t produce if the weather turns bad. When a burst of storms washed out the trout fishing, our group shifted gears in a hurry. Enter Robby Rhembrandt, a walleye fanatic, native Nebraskan, and Clam and Cold Snap pro. Rhembrandt offered to change the venue and target species. So we gave up on flinging flies and retreated to Fort Bouche Reservoir; in one hour, the two of us caught plenty of fish to make up for the lousy luck…

In the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing at all unusual about a 5-gallon bucket sloshing water around in the bed of a pickup truck in small-town America. Nor is there anything particularly interesting about a bucket carrying a single live brown trout along a dusty road somewhere between Great Salt Lake and the shadow of the Wasatch Range. But on March 25, 2012, a notable occurrence involving a bucket and a pickup took place near Holmes Creek in Utah—right where the stream meanders through vacant desert lands before swelling to a locally known 35-acre community fishing reservoir. That’s when an anonymous tipster alerted Utah conservation officers to the activities of Mathew Piling. What Piling was doing, according to court records, was seemingly innocuous yet hugely significant in terms of…

We sat in the ditch, watching the 160-class buck bound away. He gave one last flick of his tail before disappearing over the ridge. My guide clapped me on the shoulder and said something encouraging, but I could tell he was as disappointed as I was. I’d just had a mature whitetail in my scope at 150 yards—a chip shot in Wyoming—and couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. The flimsy shooting sticks might as well have been car antennas in the face of my buck fever. At one point my buddy even dropped in front of me so I might use his shoulder as a rest—but that setup didn’t exactly calm my nerves. I wasn’t comfortable, and I didn’t take the shot. So I missed that opportunity, and another…

Last November 20, the Canadas came in continuous cycles, in waves of 25 and 30, but they refused to commit. It was cloudy and gloomy, and the geese were flanking to the far left or right of Mike Cunningham’s blind near Dwight, Nebraska. Cunningham, a waterfowl outfitter, couldn’t call the shot. Every time he stood to change the decoys, another batch of birds arrived and he gave them another chance, only to see them flare again. Exasperated, at 9:10 a.m., he took out his cell phone. The one person who could fix this problem was sitting at a kitchen table 1,500 miles away. Despite the two-hour time difference, Ralph Kohler had been awake as long as Cunningham. “I’m getting beat up out here,” Cunningham, 53, told Kohler, whom he first…

FINDING THE SWEET SPOT Soft -mast production peaks just as summer begins to fade from the landscape. Fruits and berries abound now, and a few cool nights begin the process of ripening the juicy mast. The sugar in soft mast is what attracts deer. Soft mast is also a more reliable food source than hard mast. Whereas acorn production ebbs and flows according to spring and summer weather conditions, chances are good you’ll be able to find at least one source of soft mast that is attracting deer in the early fall. Here are some to look for: PERSIMMONS ▶ WHAT IS IT? A tree with yellow to pale orange fruits, often with a blush of red or blue. Found in the southern and lower Midwest. WILD PLUMS ▶ WHAT…

“WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?” I was hunting whitetails in South Texas, but the coal-black, hairy-hoofed monster hanging from the meat pole was decidedly un-deerlike—and had drawn a group of inquisitive admirers. “Spanish goat,” someone shouted. “Lots of them out there.” Indeed, it was a Spanish goat, so named for the explorers who imported them to the West in the 1500s. Also known as brush goats, these creatures roam free today in many parts of Texas, and they’re just one of the many non-native species you can hunt here in the U.S. without breaking the bank. If you’ve ever dreamed of hunting exotic game in Africa or other faraway lands but don’t want the expense and hassle associated with traveling overseas, then hunting exotics on native soil might satisfy that…

When you have 20,000 acres of private fields and water holes at your disposal, like at Hooray Ranch in Kingman, Kansas, you can hunt however you want and not worry much about wearing out the birds. But that doesn’t mean you should. Waterfowler and guide Zach Simon cut his teeth hunting pressured public waters all over Kansas. The lessons he learned from killing wary birds are ever-present in his approach—no matter where he’s dropping decoys. That includes the leased cornfield we staked out while hunting with Hard Core Brands at Hooray. Nine of us—a veritable parade of goose hunters— piled into that cut field before dawn. We left a few hours later with a mixed bag of more than 100 birds in the trucks. Here’s how we pulled it off.…

DURING EARLY WATERFOWL SEASONS IN THE UPPER MIDWEST, WOOD DUCKS CAN BE THE ONLY RELIABLE GAME IN TOWN. AND THAT’S JUST FINE WITH ME. WOODIE DRAKES ARE AMONG THE PRETTIEST DUCKS IN NORTH AMERICA, AND THEY GO GREAT ON THE GRILL, TOO. BUT THE BEST PART ABOUT SERIOUS WOOD DUCK HUNTING IS THAT IT GETS YOU AWAY FROM THE SKYBUSTING CROWDS THAT CAN SO OFTEN BE THE DOWNSIDE OF PUBLIC-MARSH WATERFOWLING. WOOD DUCKS ARE SENSITIVE TO PRESSURE, AND THE BEST HUNTS ARE HAD BY THOSE WILLING TO LOOK BEYOND THE BOAT LAUNCH LINES AT THE LOCAL MARSH. PRESEASON SCOUTING ▶ Late-summer scouting isn’t only for whitetail nuts. If you want to find a wood duck haven, put in some work before the season. Start by pulling up Google Earth (or…

When Dad challenged the car salesman to a fight, my chances of getting the Bronco jumped. ¶ We had gone to Omaha to look at a white Ford Elite Dad had seen in an Omaha World-Herald ad. He worked a deal and put down a deposit but said we wanted to look around. At the next dealership, we saw the Bronco. I had daydreamed of a Jeep to get me in and out of every fishing nook and hunting cranny, but my safetyminded mother vetoed it, saying, “They look like they could tip over.” But, oh, this Bronco, 1974, bronze body with white top, which the salesman said could easily be removed. Heck, take out a few bolts and the doors come off too. After the test drive, I was…