Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2020 i Petersen's Hunting

I’M WRITING this on February 1. Traditional big-game seasons have long since ended here in Nebraska. The last day of duck season was a week ago. Pheasant season closed yesterday. There are just a few days of dark goose remaining. And then it’s all over until next fall. I’ve cleaned my guns, swabbed their bores, wiped the barrels down with an oily rag, and stashed them away in the safe. Camouflage clothing has all been washed and hung. Even my lucky hunting pants, which don’t see soap suds until the end of the year, are folded and put away. Time to reflect on the tags punched and tags eaten over the last few months and start making plans for September. Oh, I may still pick away at a coyote, but…

HISTORY Introduced to market in 2017, this powerhouse was engineered to outperform all other popular .338-caliber cartridges and to fit into a standard (.30-06) length action. Like its 26-, 28-, and 30-caliber siblings, it utilizes the .404 Jeffery as its parent case. Although relatively young, it’s gained a stellar reputation among those that have used it and is a personal favorite of John Nosler. Maximum overall length is SAAMIspec’d at 3.340 inches, so it’s an easy adoption into existing standard-length bolt actions with magnum-size boltfaces and feed rails. Of course, Nosler offers its own premium-quality bolt actions factory-chambered for the 33 Nosler. APPLICATION Particularly well suited for heavy-bodied ungulates, such as elk and moose, the 33 Nosler is adequate for all North American game, including big coastal brown bears, assuming…

WHEN OFF-SEASON hunts require long plane rides, take a cue from the crew at the front of the plane and pack accordingly. Crafted from the tough, tanned hide of water buffalo, this Pilot Bag is large enough for overnight flight essentials, Dopp kit, and a day’s worth of hunting gear should your checked luggage get lost in transit. The spacious main bag is lined with green canvas, and sewn with multiple zippered interior pockets for small necessities, including that tattered copy of Use Enough Gun that goes everywhere you do. Stash a passport and boarding passes in the side zippered pocket. Sneaking away for a few days hunting often requires toting work along, so the bag also includes a padded laptop case. Outside pockets buckle down to keep a phone…

Shooting success on moving game requires a heads-up, eyes-open style of shooting unfamiliar to most American big-game shooters. Open sights were long the norm, but quality red dot and reflex sights have changed the game for the better. Across the pond, Aimpoint rules the Old World forests, and the Micro H-2 is the favorite among European hunters. With precise adjustment and the choice of three different dots sizes (2, 4, and 6 MOA) that show up clear, it offers the perfect blend of fast acquisition and maximum accuracy. Durably constructed, the H-2 is waterproof and has an estimated battery life of 50,000 hours. $828; aimpoint.com…

“TO HELL WITH LUCK. I’LL BRING THE LUCK WITH ME.”—Ernest Hemingway THE SAYING “it’s better to be lucky than good” is often quoted and refers to all sorts of circumstances in everyday life. It applies to hunting in a big way, though many other factors come into play. Being at the right place at the right time is the ultimate objective, whether it’s achieved by luck, skill, or savvy. One aspect of hunting is entirely dependent on luck, and that’s the necessity of obtaining hunting permits through lottery draws. It’s a gamble, a risk where odds are often not in your favor. Granted, many states offer preference or bonus points to help your chances of drawing tags, but there are nonetheless many instances where a rabbit’s foot or a four-leaf…

Times were a little different 30 years ago. Whitetails numbers were exploding, dedicated hunters could still find a few coveys of quail, and permission to hunt both was as simple as knocking on a farmhouse door. Not anymore. The quail are mostly gone, and permission to hunt those deer requires more than a polite request. It takes a wad of cash. Once the domain of Texas, paying landowners for exclusive hunting rights is now common throughout the country. Virtually every tract of corporate forest in the Southeast is under some sort of lease. A growing number of duck marshes, deer woods, and pheasant fields are open only to those willing to fork over hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Leasing is big business. But is it playing a role in…

YOU HEAR it all the time from the preservationists: We must protect wide swaths of the Western United States lest they become riddled with oil wells, stitched by roads and pipelines, and raped by roughnecks. “Unbridled development” is a favorite bogeyman of environmental groups that would rather see public land in the West managed for pronghorn antelope than antediluvian shale. On the other side of the multiple-use divide, advocates for the industrialization of our public lands claim that actually developing energy resources permitted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service are so procedurally fraught that it’s easier to negotiate health-care insurance than to drill on public land. So which is it? Trout Unlimited (TU) doesn’t exactly have the answer, but the conservation group does have…

I’ll admit I was confused when I received the invite from Benelli to join them on a plains game hunt in South Africa. I’ve long been a Benelli shotgun customer and am a fan of the company’s products, but I couldn’t see myself chasing sable and roan with a slug gun. Things quickly became clearer when I was informed that Benelli would be introducing its first bolt-action rifle: the Lupo. The rifle was released at the 2020 SHOT Show, but I was fortunate to be among a small group of writers who were able to shoot and hunt with the rifle many months before its release. “Lupo” is Italian for “wolf,” Italy’s most fearsome predator. The Lupo spent at least four years in development. Rather than rushing an inferior product…

A well-done mount of a significant animal is a timeless reminder of a great hunt, as well as a tribute to the buck, bull, or boar. Unfortunately, “well done” is not as commonplace in the world of taxidermy as it should be. Disaster stories abound, ranging from poorly done mounts to stolen moose, elk, and sheep heads. Taxidermists move—and sometimes vanish forever with whatever they have on hand. Shipments are lost in transit. Hunters sometimes get the wrong animal back, like the time I got a young black bear skull back from a guy in Montana, rather than the massive 19-year-old sow I killed. I knew because the sow had broken teeth, and the small skull I received didn’t. But epic taxidermy failures aren’t always the fault of the craftsman…

And he spake unto them, saying, “Return with much riches unto your tents….” —Joshua 22:8 There are places where it isn’t a “safari” without cell service—or, better, Wi-Fi. Direct-satellite television, plunge pools, under-floor heating, gourmet dining, gymnasiums, and conference centers can all be found in one lodge or another in Africa. And, if the mood strikes, you can also hunt big game. That’s far from the rule of safari in Africa, but it is trending. And there’s nothing wrong in hunting in a certain style, if you wish. Nobody wants to hear some fossil maundering about “back when,” but back when I began hunting in Kenya as a very young man, safaris still set off in lorries and traveled off the roads until they found, in the hunting blocks they…

BULLET BASICS Featuring a soft lead core bonded into a robust, tapered jacket, the InterBond provides dramatic expansion on impact yet maintains much of its weight. The hard-walloping bullet has better-than-average penetration. A polymer tip and boattail design aid aerodynamics, maximizing retained velocity downrange, which in turn delivers maximum energy on impact and minimizes wind drift. TESTING GROUND A friend and I used the 129-grain 6.5mm version, handloaded to 3,030 fps, in my Ruger M77 Hawkeye Africa 6.5x55, to take eight African plains game animals in Mozambique while hunting with Zambezi Delta Safaris. Sizes ranged from 100-pound warthogs up to a 500-pound sable. FIELD PERFORMANCE The bullet shown was used to take a big sable bull from about 240 yards. Impacting just behind the shoulder, it passed through some 20…

Ravin debuted a family of new BROADHEADS at this year’s Archery Trade Show, giving x-bow hunters three new choices—aluminum, steel, or titanium—when tipping their bolts for the season. The rear-deploying design with an internal spring clip offers no-fail dependability. These broadheads won’t open during flight, even at Ravin’s blistering speeds over 450 fps, yet still deploy instantly upon contact with a full two-inch cutting diameter. All three models are available in 100-grain weight. Packed per three. $55–$85; ravincrossbows.com With all the advancements in manufacturing lately, you wouldn’t think companies could make arrows any more consistent. Well, Easton has with its new ultralight 6.5 MATRIX, which employs a seamless design through the Acu-Carbon construction process for exact spine and weight consistency from arrow to arrow. Inserts measure 6.5mm, beefing up impact…

Small or grandiose, American deer drives are elementary compared to the way our European brethren do it. In Europe, the driven hunt is a major tradition going back centuries, often on the same acreage, with the same routes and stands. A European drive can be a major production. I participated in a driven hunt in Germany that had 70 “guns” and God knows how many beaters, many with dogs. That sounds like—and can be—chaos, but it’s well-organized and orchestrated chaos. First, we must understand that the European situation is different. To some extent, wildlife is privatized, but always it’s considered a cash crop. Seasons are generally long, so “trophy hunts” are often done first, either by stalking or from stands. The driven hunt is thus the cleanup detail, to achieve…

My friends and I learned to turkey hunt before the age of the internet. Back before outdoor television programs and before turkey hunting DVDs and VHS tapes. I was in middle school when the first turkeys were released near our farm through a joint venture between the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Wild Turkey Federation. Before that, any exposure to wild turkeys came in short trips down South where we might see a small flock strutting in a field as my family drove through Alabama or Georgia. Or on a trip to the western end of the state where a small population existed at the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area, a sprawling chunk of timber situated between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. Just a…

It’s the offseason, the time when only the most hard-core whitetail addicts have their minds on fall while the rest of the sporting world is restocking its tackle box. Meanwhile, the deer woods are greening up, fawns are hitting the ground, and technology marches on. In the last decade we’ve seen smartphone-based trailcams, Ozonics anti-scent devices, mirror blinds, rangefinding scopes, topo map apps, and many more game-changers. Certainly, there are deer hunters who prefer to keep their hunting simple and nostalgic, but a growing number of the big-buck afflicted are willing to use any modern technology so long as it provides advantage, falls within the bounds of that hunter’s moral compass, and is legal for use. This column is for these guys. Here are five new products that push the…