Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Petersen's Hunting

I HOPE, dear reader, you’ve known me long enough to know I believe any hunt is so much bigger than the kill. In fact, if you pressed me, I’d likely tell you that little moment after the bullet leaves the barrel is my least favorite part of the hunt. Instead, I enjoy everything else—the build-up, the planning, the travel and, most of all, the camaraderie of hunting camp. Sure, the stalk is challenging and the hard work after an animal is down is rewarding, but it’s who you share camp with that makes the trip. On a recent hunt for Roosevelt elk in Oregon, a Hollywood casting agent couldn’t have assembled a better group. Most of us were industry veterans with friendships forged around campfires and, honestly, bellied up to…

Snorts, blows, and stomps, oh my. I forced my way to the perfect stand location yet again. But it wasn’t working. I couldn’t get there without alerting deer. So, after days of brainstorming, I started studying app layers. And there it was—the perfect entry route to my desired stand location. A crease in a big bluff just safe enough to climb that spit me out 5 yards from my tree-stand. After finding it, a season of futility morphed into a filled tag. I’ve used hunting apps since their inception, tested almost every option on the market, and currently serve as a HuntStand Pro ambassador. That’s afforded me the opportunity to learn just how impactful these tiny tools can be. They increase efficiency. Here’s how. 1 ZOOM OUT The primary way…

We’d stalked as close as possible to the big pronghorn buck. He was getting nervous, and we were out of cover. The distance was 440 yards—exactly a quarter mile. Doable in calm conditions, but a crosswind was gusting. Uncomfortable with the shot, I lay in the sparse, sun-dried grass and watched the conditions. I had the right rifle, cartridge, and bullet; a super-accurate custom 6.5-284 loaded with a streamlined Nosler AccuBond. Finally, prone and steady, I held the crosshairs about nine inches into the wind and squeezed the trigger. Impact was too far back. I’d underestimated the wind drift by half. Running the bolt fast, I compensated accordingly and finished the buck. Thankful I’d managed to rectify my mistake quickly; I began running through what went wrong. Clearly, my read…

LESS GOVERNMENT, NOT MORE Dear Editor, I was recently reading a 2020 article in one my older editions that talked about hunter education and ethical hunting. It is without a doubt that unethical hunting, trespassing and disrespect for the outdoors we love will have a negative effect on the future of hunting, our 2nd Amendment rights and shooting traditions. Another imminent danger we have is that in our zeal to protect these liberties, we have allowed conservation managers in states like Alabama and elsewhere to overregulate, micromanage and use the hunting public for a revenue tool. All these rules make it more cumbersome and costly to go hunting, which in turn is having a negative impact on the number of hunters, especially the next generation who have so many more…

WHETHER YOU’RE an uplander, big-game hunter, waterfowl enthusiast or enjoy the sight of a full-strut American wild turkey, grassland ecosystems play a critical role for the sustainability of our most iconic wild-game species. Unfortunately, grasslands, including sagebrush shrub-steppe, are now considered one of the most imperiled ecosystems on the planet. More than 70 percent of America’s tallgrass, mixed grass and shortgrass prairies have vanished, followed by the precipitous decline of grassland bird populations—more than 40 percent since 1966. In 2020, in response to this catastrophic decline, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever and a coalition of more than two dozen conservation and sportsman’s groups unveiled the largest grasslands legislative effort in organizational history: The North American Grasslands Conservation Act. In July of 2022, we’re proud to announce this historic grasslands bill was…

More hunters are taking it upon themselves to butcher their own game meat, and the right tools will help you complete the task. With Benchmade’s new 15500-3 Meatcrafter you can delicately carve your meals with the trailing-point CPM-S45VN blade that is designed to flex along the bone, but stays rigid enough to handle any cutting job. The handle is an OD green G10 laminate and fits comfortably in the hand, and the blade features SelectEdge technology to keep the edge sharp. $350; benchmade.com You can choose to wrap your meat in plastic wrap and butcher paper, or you can take the civilized approach and use the Chamber Vacuum Sealer from MEAT!. The chamber creates a vacuum that completely removes all air for unparalleled protection of your precious game meat. The…

When it finally happened it was almost too easy. We’d been on stand all morning with no action, then taken a break to change locations for the afternoon. Truth is, I’d have taken a longer break, but veteran guide Hector Arias knows his jungle and he had a feeling. We hiked up (another) ridge, climbed into (another) machan, and settled into hammocks for (yet another) long afternoon. I doubt we’d been there 15 minutes on a steamy Yucatan afternoon when Hector looked to his left and his eyes widened. I saw the animal, but couldn’t see the head through foliage. Hector raised his binoculars—the first time in several trips I’d ever seen him use them. “Shoot.” Well, actually, “Choot,” but I got the message: I didn’t need to see the…

WHEN LEWIS and Clark made their epic journey up the Missouri River to find a water route to the Pacific in 1804 they encountered a deer that looked nothing like the whitetails they knew at home. The large ears on the unfamiliar deer looked similar to those of a mule and it’s said they gave the mule deer its name. The explorers also must have noted the difference in the antlers as well. Unlike whitetails, the mule deer’s antlers forked and were much taller and wider. I was thinking about this when I guided a group of Pennsylvania hunters on a deer hunt in Utah in the mid 1960s. None had ever seen a mule deer before, and I knew from past hunts that they’d want to shoot the first…

Among all the big-game species hunters chase, pronghorn, colloquially known as antelope, get the least respect. They don’t carry impressive headgear, like that of an elk, but a true trophy pronghorn, with horns measuring 16 inches or more, is rarer than a six-point bull. Perhaps the biggest fallacy in all of hunting is that antelope meat is inedible. Nonsense. Treated right—cooled quickly in the field and cooked to medium-rare—an antelope backstrap is best eating game meat on the planet. What’s best about the pronghorn is their role as the gateway drug toWestern hunting. Miss a pronghorn, or blow a stalk, and there’s often another just over the hill. But don’t get the idea antelope are easy. With oversized eyes capable of seeing nearly 360 degrees around its head and vision…

BULLET BASICS Arguably the ultimate refinement of the monometal bullet, Barnes’s LRX (for Long Range X) features a sleek profile and generous boat tail. Its polymer tip is designed to maximize aerodynamics, protect the bullet during heavy recoil inside the magazine, and initiate immediate, reliable expansion on impact, even at lower velocities. Grooves around the shank of the all-copper bullet reduce bearing surface and chamber pressures, so the LRX can be driven fast. Plus they maximize consistency; this bullet is obscenely accurate. TESTING GROUND Friend and serious hunter Becca Golightly used the 265-grain LRX bullet shown to shoot a bull elk from 701 yards, using her .338 Lapua—an impressive shot in the rough Idaho terrain. Muzzle velocity with her load is 2,900 fps. Calculating for the altitude and temperature in…

After forty-five years of editing and writing firearms and hunting articles, you could say that I have become somewhat jaded in my likes and dislikes regarding those subjects. I know what I like and what I dislike. Mossberg’s newest Patriot incarnation left me with a positive impression as soon as I picked it up. You don’t read much these days about how a firearm “feels.” But I have found most enthusiasts either like or dislike a gun’s feel as soon as they lay hands upon it. I have always favored Colt revolvers over S&Ws for this reason. A Colt just feels better in my hand; likewise, a 1911 feels better than a P-35 Hi-Power. A trim Rigby bolt-action rifle feels better to me than a Remington 700. At first grasp,…

I enjoy living like a hermit for about the first 10 days of November. Rifle season opens the second Saturday of the month, and I plan to be in a bow stand every possible minute during the week and a half ahead of it. Last fall was no different, and the action in early November was good. Bucks were cruising and acting foolish, and I passed up a couple nice ones in the days immediately following Halloween. But since I had some bigger deer on my trail cameras and plenty of time, I wasn’t in a hurry to fill my tag. But then the slump began, putting the wheels in motion for the tale I’m about to share. I barely saw a deer at all during the final three days…