Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2023 i Petersen's Hunting

IT’S IMPORTANT for all of us to help others become hunters, and it’s amazingly rewarding. Research suggests there are roughly 25 million Americans who are interested in learning to hunt. Many of these aspiring hunters did not grow up in and around hunting, and they are the ones we really need to mentor to diversify and expand hunting participation. NDA’s Field to Fork program is a food-focused hunter recruitment program for adults from nonhunting backgrounds. Field to Fork’s goal is to sustainably increase and diversify participation and societal acceptance of hunting by building, empowering and educating a diverse community of mentors and new adult hunters who enjoy a shared passion for deer hunting. Field to Fork invites adults outside of the traditional hunting culture to learn self-sufficiency in hunting and…

Every hunter understands the frustration of capturing 1,000 photos of blowing grass or tree limbs. Moultrie’s Edge Pro cam uses advanced AI, including user-selectable zones and species, to only capture target animals and exclude areas in the frame that may cause false triggers. This means more battery life and less time sorting through useless photos. $180; moultriemobile.com After last season’s successful launch of their Proximity line, Kuiu has introduced a second series of clothing dedicated to deer hunters. The Encounter Jacket brings midseason versatility in the form of a quiet, bonded exterior and warm fleece lining. Designed to be silent, it features magnetic pockets and quiet zippers. The line also includes a vest, pants, t-shirt and base-layer pants. $239; kuiu.com There is a lot of doe pee on the market,…

I was going through the gate when I saw Doc, the landowner, coming toward me on his side-by-side. He was wearing an insulated flannel shirt and the faded orange cap that he always dons during hunting season. Doc had made his rounds that morning, feeding cows and checking fences, and I could tell by the way he was motioning at me that he’d probably seen some deer along the way. It was November 17, muzzleloader season in Tennessee, clear and cold with a blistering north wind. I was late getting to the farm, but planned to hunt the rest of the day. “My friend, I wish you’d have been with me this morning,” Doc said, meeting me at the gate. “I saw a bruiser of a buck.” Doc doesn’t hunt…

MOST PENITENTIARIES rely on metal bars and razor wire, but my personal prison has neither locks nor walls. It’s about 15 feet high and ratchet-strapped to the trunk of a handsome straight-grained tree. I’ve served years of involuntary custody in treestands over the course of a few days in October, and when confined to a climbing stand in the cold winds of December, I’ve endured multiple life sentences in a single numbing weekend. My incarceration has nothing to do with the stand and everything to do with my disposition. I’m a wide-roamer, and in nearly every aspect of life, would prefer to make my own luck than wait for it to arrive. When stranded in a treestand, I’m distracted by the reality that it’s a tiny stationary point in an…

Busted! Every hunter who has walked the woods has experienced the heartbreak of watching a big whitetail buck bound away with its tail raised in alarm. Usually a white flag signifies surrender, but in this case it’s the hunter who is forced to throw in the towel. Spooking a mature whitetail makes it almost unkillable, at least for the rest of the day. Better to back out, regroup and make a new plan. The good news is a whitetail buck has a home range. Unlike elk, which will clear out of the country at the first push of pressure, a buck should reappear within a day or two, especially during the rut when hot does keep them moving.…

BULLET BASICS This is Barnes’ traditional deep-penetrating, bone-breaking all-copper bullet in its purest form. It’s a flat-base design, which makes for easy accuracy. The nose features a massive hollow cavity to ensure dramatic expansion. And the shank has several grooves to reduce bearing surface and keep pressures low so it can be driven fast. Although it doesn’t have as high BCs as the Tipped TSX and LRX versions, the standard hollow-point TSX has the edge in terms of deep penetration. As such, it’s a prime choice for crossover use on moose, bison, big African antelope and dangerous game such as Cape buffalo. TESTING GROUND My friend Austin Brown recovered the bullet shown from a huge free-range kudu bull he shot with Kowas Hunting Safaris in Namibia. With his PH and…

By a large margin, North America’s most popular big-game species is the whitetail deer. According to the National Deer Association, more than 6 million deer are taken yearly by hunters in the U.S.; Canadians kill their share as well. It makes sense, then, that companies produce ammunition specifically tailored to taking whitetail deer. There’s a difference, though, between stamping whitetail on the box and creating ammunition specifically tailored for that species. With the Whitetail line of ammunition, Norma has done the latter. Norma has been a leader in the ammunition industry for more than 120 years, having been founded in Oslo, Norway at the turn of the previous century. What began as a tiny manufacturing operation in Åmotfors, Sweden, with one woman running two machines, eventually snowballed into a company…

IF I STARTED this piece with the words, “The old buck gathered himself to go . . . “ regular readers would doubtless yawn and say to themselves, well, the whitetail freak is at it again! But they might do a double-take if I finished the sentence, “and, chattering shrilly, dived into a hollow in the big oak’s trunk.”.” I’d be talking, of course, about an old “buck” fox squirrel, but I still wouldn’t be out of character as a whitetail deer fanatic. The reason is simple; if there’s any outdoor pursuit that qualifies as “practice” for hunting whitetails, squirrel hunting is it. In most of America’s woods, the man who can regularly take a .22 rimfire rifle in hand and return in a few hours with a limit of…

After the shot, the pig was running hard, vanishing into yellow grass at the crest of the ridge. There had been no reaction—other than the kick into a higher gear—but sometimes there isn’t. The shot wasn’t far; my swing and lead felt good. Sometimes you feel sure, but you can be wrong. My companions were less certain. Downright skeptical. We piled back into the Jeep and circled around, intending to quickly check for blood on the clear dirt track on top of the ridge, just past where the pig disappeared. There was no blood and no fresh tracks, because the pig lay stone dead short of the road, close to where it was last seen. The bullet entrance was where it should have been, low on the right shoulder with…

THE BONE-CHILLING December breeze cut through every layer of clothing I had on as the sun rose on opening day of the Illinois second gun season. Shivering nearly uncontrollably, I sat motionless, suspended 30 feet above the wooded floor, watching and listening for the slightest indication of life. But for the clamoring of a flock of turkeys roosted behind me, the woods were seemingly void of life. Minutes slowly drug into hours as my mind began to wander and the mental games set in. By 11 a.m. I had not seen hair nor hide of a deer, and my extremities were completely numb. Had a shooter buck stepped out and presented a fleeting opportunity, I doubt I would have even been able to pull the trigger as the motor-skills of…

“HUNTING isn’t supposed to just be about the kill,” they say. We often hear that lament when the hunt is unsuccessful. Those words are supposed to be comforting and conciliatory, but often they fall short of the mark. Fact is, hunting indeed involves all the facets of the outdoors. Seeing trees and brush slowly appearing in the new morning light, hearing the woods come alive, eagerly anticipating a buck suddenly appearing or hearing a bull elk bugling —all of these scenarios and more are the nonconsumptive rewards of the hunt. Just being outdoors and away from the world’s problems especially during these days of tension and turmoil is a perfect way to temporarily abandon those troublesome issues. All well and good. Hunting certainly captures all those moments, but let’s look…