Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i Petersen's Hunting

TALK ABOUT coming full circle. In December 2023, hunters and others who enjoy the outdoors gained perpetual public access to nearly 55,000 acres of private land in eastern Kentucky. The landscape-scale conservation agreement by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) is the largest conservation easement in state history. KDFWR now manages the land as the Cumberland Forest Wildlife Management Area for wildlife habitat, public recreation, sustainable forestry and clean water. The transaction also connects 274,000 acres of elk range stretching into neighboring Tennessee and conserves important riparian habitat as many streams cross the property. Bottom line, it’s a win for elk, deer, wild turkeys, black bears, hunting, fishing, public access, natural…

Like ‘em or not, scalpel knives are incredibly practical in the backcountry as long as extreme caution is exercised. Few, if any, scalpel knives are as light and functional as Hogue’s Expel Folding Scalpel. It weighs a mere 1.5 oz. and most importantly, features a Dual-Action Flipper Tab that functions as both a lock and ejector for the scalpel blades. The ability to detach these razor-sharp blades with the push of a button is game changing and will undoubtedly save countless knicks, cuts and sutures. It may even save a life or two. $115; hogueinc.com The Badlands new ATX25 is a comfortable, capable and lightweight day pack built for running ridges in pursuit of bugling bulls and packing out your hard-earned meat after punching your tag. Its 2,500 cubic inches…

In the beginning it was the 7x57mm Mauser and it was good. After we faced it in Cuba—and the Brits faced it in South Africa—it became a world-standard sporting cartridge. It still is, and happens to be my all-time favorite whitetail cartridge. The thing is, it is not fast and falls into a medium-range cartridge. Likewise, its modern ballistic twin, the 7mm-08. The 7x57 did two things for the gun industry. First, it established that a 7mm uses .284-inch diameter projectiles. Make the conversion: 7mm equals .276-inch; .284-inch equals 7.21mm. No idea why Peter Paul Mauser chose .284-inch and called it “7mm.” Canada’s .280 Ross used .287-inch; other British and metric “7mms” used various diameters. The 7x57’s popularity ensured that modern 7mms all use .284-inch bullets. Second, the 7x57 was…

I STARTED guiding elk hunters in western Montana shortly after high school and have continued every season since. That was more than 20 years ago. Back then I did not have a GPS, cell phones did not work in that part of the country and I did not own a rangefinder. To know what it looked like over the next ridge you had no other option but to lace up the boots and go for a hike. A far shot on elk was 350 yards, and it seemed like very few nonresidents hunted elk without an outfitter. From when my grandpa guided hunts in the Bitterroot-Selway in the 1970s to when I started hunting the same areas 20 years later, not that much had changed. I just had slightly better binoculars.…

Few, if any, of Mother Nature’s spectacles are more impressive and equally awe inspring than witnessing rut-crazed, bugling bulls battling it out for breeding rights. Experience it just once and you will be forever changed, eager to do whatever it takes to experience the sights, sounds and adrenaline rush that coincides with hunting these lovestruck bulls during the peak of the September rut. Truth be told, elk hunting is inherently difficult, pushing sportsmen and women to their physical, mental and emotional limits. However, the fleeting moments of success, headlined by ivory-tipped antlers, hundreds of pounds of lean protein and irreplaceable mountain memories, far overshadow the monumental challenge that is elk hunting. For 11 months, you have dreamed about and prepared for the chaos of September in the elk woods. Don’t…

BULLET BASICS Hammer is a relatively new bullet maker that’s become known for great accuracy. The company’s bullets are turned on a CNC lathe out of copper alloy. Moderate boattails increase aerodynamics without compromising precision. Deep hollow cavities in the nose maximize expansion. Hammer bullets expand into four large petals, which sheer off and spiral away from the shank, creating auxiliary wound channels. The shank typically becomes a blunt cylinder of the original diameter and penetrates deeply. TESTING GROUND Brenda Weatherby used her 6.5 Weatherby RPM rifle to take a free-range, public-land chamois from 155 yards, while on a DIY hunt in New Zealand. Chamois are legendary mountain animals, known for the incredibly steep country they inhabit more than for toughness. Body weight of the variety found in NZ is…

Maybe it’s a backlash to all of the long-range nonsense, changing laws relating to straight-wall cartridges for Midwestern deer hunting or perhaps it’s just part of a cycle—either way, there’s no debate that lever-action rifles have made a serious comeback. Lever guns were North America’s do-it-all carbine a century before the AR hit the shelves and remain incredibly versatile today. In fact, with the features found on factory-built lever-action carbines these days, they are more useful than ever. Why would you want to hunt with a lever-action and its limited range when your $10,000 faux sniper rifle can spit high-BC bullets at elk over the horizon? Well, maybe you want to hunt for a change? Put down the ballistic calculator and start crawling. Sneak up to iron-sight range with a…

There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for the recent surge in the popularity of binoculars with on-board rangefinders. They are simply superior. Once you’ve hunted with one, and delighted in the ability to instantly range any object you’re looking at, it’s nearly impossible to go back to a two-optic system. Having to lower one’s binocular, dig out a rangefinder, find the target or animal in that little lens, range it, and then put it back in the pouch before moving to your rifle is time-consuming, fiddly and just plain awkward. Back in the early days of rangefinding binos, color purity was generally compromised because of the internal filter necessary for projecting the numbers on. Plus, lens coatings had to be degraded so as to allow laser pulses through. Not so any…

WHILE STANDING inside Hornady’s expansive Grand Island, Nebraska factory, it’s hard to imagine this space is the result of one man’s experiments to improve bullet design. However, that’s exactly how Hornady began, and how one man’s name would become synonymous with modern bullet and cartridge design. Joyce Hornady’s namesake brand has become one of the pacesetters of modern cartridge and bullet design, challenging long-held beliefs and producing products that have not only dominated the ammunition market, but have forever changed it. A HUMBLE START Joyce Hornady was born in 1907 in Colorado. His father was a Methodist minister who died when Joyce was young. Joyce Hornady sold dental supplies, tried his hand as a dairy farmer, worked as a deliveryman, and started a family with his wife Marvel in Nebraska. Life…

WHEN I SAW my first elk in Yellowstone Park, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was fascinated. I was raised in the East and had read about the big animals in outdoor magazines. To actually see a live one was a thrill. The other students in the bus rushed to the windows to see the herd. Our wildlife class at Utah State University was visiting the park in 1962 to observe animals and learn about the issues Yellowstone was having caused by too many elk. After graduating, I hunted elk for several years before punching my first tag. As a young forest ranger, I was in good shape and hunted hard but I couldn’t close the deal. My elk hunting odyssey began in 1964, and with one unsuccessful year after another,…

WHEN SALAMONIE Jaw eased the canoe onto the rocky shore of the small island, I thought he was going to take care of nature’s call. Instead, he produced a large coffee can, small backpacker’s stove and a package of tea. I was puzzled. “Do you know where hunting camp is?” I asked politely. “Never been there,” he answered. “Don’t you think we should follow the boats?” I asked. “The chief said we should stay together.” The young Inuit guide (the only one in our party who spoke English) thought about that a moment. “You right,” he said. “No time for tea.” This incident clearly illustrated the rugged nature of people inhabiting the far north. Survival is taken for granted and with much confidence, often with little or no advance planning.…

Putting on a backpack goes way beyond simply shouldering the pack and tightening everything down like it’s gonna run away. A backpack is a chain of things that all work together at evenly distributing weight. A good pack is a workhorse, made to handle way more than we can. If we don’t know how to handle them, we’re gonna have a bad time. So, let’s get into it. Here’s how to properly put on a backpack so you get the best performance possible. Before you do this, you need to make sure that your backpack is sized properly. It’s crucial for performance. This means proper waist belt and torso size. 1 START LOOSE A backpack is not a “set it and forget it” piece of equipment. Each time we take…

When I finally picked the 6x6 herd bull out from the tangle of aspen and pine saplings, all I could see was the point of his shoulder, one side of his face, and the whale-tail formed by the 5th point and main beam on one antler. That was enough. The herd was nervous, and this was the first glimpse I’d had of him after being right amongst ’em for some time. I knew this was likely the only opportunity I would get. My 6.5 PRC cartridge was on the light side for big bull elk, but my bullet was ideal: I was shooting a super-accurate 127-grain Barnes LRX, and I figured it would penetrate adequately even if I struck heavy bone. The seconds were ticking. I glued the crosshairs to…

Few sounds trip my predatory instincts more than that of a deer walking through dry oak leaves. And every experienced whitetail hunter knows that when it comes to natural food sources, none affect deer behavior quite like acorns. It’s a common refrain that once the white oaks begin dropping their fall fruit, whitetails virtually abandon other food sources, making time spent around food plots, crop fields and feeders futile. Harvest rates, which are often lower during peak mast years, seem to reflect that. Deer are simply more difficult to see—and shoot—in the trees than they are in open fields. Yet, it’s important to remember that whitetails are browsers that require a varied diet, even during bumper acorn crops. Abundant mast certainly presents challenges to hunters, but you don’t have to…

“ALMOST TEN O’CLOCK. If we’re going to make a move, we’d best do it now.” Somewhere behind gray clouds the sun was slipping down, the beginning of a long Arctic twilight settled in and Dave Dye was ready to move. More than a mile of tundra and alder thickets separated us from a big, sow brown bear being courted by a good-looking boar. “Let’s go,” I replied, pitching extra stuff from my pack. Across the flat the ground rose in gentle hummocks I called the Bench. Farther left was a big depression Dave called the Bowl. Above both, the ground rose ever more steeply, finally ascending into a vertical face, still sheathed in ice and snow. More than an hour earlier we’d glassed the sow coming off the ridge, descending…