Field & Stream July 2015

› PHOTOGRAPHER: BRIAN GROSSENBACHER + LOCATION: BLACKFOOT RIVER, MONTANA ✖ The salmonfly hatch was in full force as angler Jimmy Lampros and photographer Brian Grossenbacher floated the North Fork of the Blackfoot River in June 2013. “Fish were rising, but the current was too fast to cast,” Grossenbacher says. “We pulled the raft in as soon as we could. But to get to the spot we wanted to fish, there was no good way to walk back upriver. The farther we hiked, the steeper it got, until we had quite a slope between us and the water. So Jimmy, who played baseball in high school, slid about 30 feet down the bank like he was sliding into third base, then kind of bounced and landed with a splash. It was…

Reading tales like Petzal’s “So You Think You’re Tough?” brings my own toughness into question. I would rate it (roughly) somewhere between a stick of butter left on the counter and a Hershey bar on the dash of a car in June. Brian Woodford, Correctionville, Iowa A TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW Re “So You Think You’re Tough?” (May 2015): I noticed a tracker in Cameroon had a bloody bandage around his hand and was told he took a poacher’s bullet through his palm. I suggested he see a doctor and was told that the injury had happened over a year earlier. Another time, in the Central African Republic, a tracker sliced the sole of his foot to the bone with a panga machete. I taped it together with my duct…

Everybody has a fish story. (It was this big!) But only F&S can bring you The World’s Best Fishing Stories, edited by senior deputy editor Colin Kearns. For 120 years, we’ve sought only the finest angling tales, and this new hardcover anthology comprises the best of those published in the last decade. “What matters in a fishing story,” writes Kearns, “is the quest—on which you meet rich characters, explore new wild places, and encounter challenges you never expected.” This collection features more than 20 such adventures by some of the country’s top writers. Take a 50-day float trip with Jim Harrison. Share Thomas McGuane’s tarpon addiction. Chase salmon with Philip Caputo, and hit the water with Heavey, Nickens, McCafferty, Deeter, Cermele, and other F&S favorites. When you can’t get out…

THERE’S NO finer sound than the poink of a plastic frog landing on a lily pad. The bass finning beneath must feel the same way, given their reactions, though I can’t imagine a real frog landing with such a meaty flop. This is what I was discussing with my friend Tony as we watched my Spro Bronzeye Frog come to rest on a pad. I reeled up a little and skipped the bait onto a new perch. Five feet away, a pad shivered. “Better get ready,” Tony warned from the stern. I nudged the frog off the pad and into a pocket of open water, as if to suggest a real frog too nervous to sit still. When the bass blew up, I coolly drove the hook into pure air.…

Q & A Should every shooter keep at least one rifle in a military caliber for use in defense of country? —WILLIAM TEIFKE, BIG RAPIDS, MICH. A: Keeping a rifle of military caliber in your home to defend the country is pretty useless unless you have some military training to go with it. It takes a period of intensive schooling to produce a competent combat soldier, and if you lack this, you will be killed quickly. Israel and Switzerland require military rifles to be kept in the home, but by reservists who have done three years, and 21 weeks, respectively, in uniform. Q:What vintage scope would you recommend for an older rifle? —JEFF SHOULTS, POTOSI, MO. A: I would not recommend any of them and suggest that you drop…

IF YOU INVENTED a product that made jackhammers quieter, everyone would say, “Wonderful!” If you created a medical device that saved people’s ears from high-decibel hearing loss, you might win a Nobel. So why is it that the masses and most lawmakers look askance when such technology is applied to firearms? It’s time for that to change. Hiram Percy Maxim invented the firearm silencer in 1902 in lockstep with another of his inventions, the automobile muffler (the value of which nobody questions). His Maxim Silencer didn’t render a supersonic round totally silent, but it went a long way toward it and protected ears from muzzle blasts. In 1934, however, silencers became heavily regulated by the National Firearms Act. While a $3.25 silencer remained legal for qualified applicants, a required $200…