Innholdsfortegnelse for February - March 2016 i Field & Stream

David E. Petzal answers your questions about guns, shooting, hunting, and life Q: Is the .325 WSM an effective elk round up to 500 yards, assuming the shooter is practiced and capable? —KARL W. BLANCHARD JR., JOPLIN, MO. A: Do you mean will it kill an elk quickly at 500 yards? Of course. Would it be my first choice for a 500-yard elk rifle? Nope. I can’t think of any first-rate, aerodynamic 8mm bullets that are available for it, which is a major consideration at that kind of yardage. There are, on the other hand, lots of them in .338. Q: Will the AR-15 one day be seen as a classic, like the Winchester Model 12 is today? What other modern guns will be tomorrow’s classics? —BEN PORATH, OMAHA, NEB.…

FOR THE FIRST time in years, things weren’t looking good for Fred Silverstein’s opening-day streak. Earlier that morning he’d borrowed a shotgun from the USO in Seoul, hitched a ride on an M35 deuceand-a-half cargo truck, and whistled for a stop in the Korean countryside when he saw ducks dropping from the sky. Now he stood at the end of a dirt path, in front of a small stick hut, flapping his arms with his thumbs tucked into his armpits, and gesturing toward ricefields a couple of hundred yards away. The stooped, elderly farmer who’d answered his knock wasn’t sure what to make of the skinny Tennessee boy in Army fatigues, holding a shotgun and quacking like a duck. That was in 1962, and Silverstein hadn’t missed an opening-day duck…

Cally Morris, host of The 15-Yard Files on fieldandstream.com, said we’d kill a turkey at 4 yards in this spot. I had my doubts. But the tom walked within feet of my wife, Michelle, who was hidden next to a root wad. When the bird squared up to the decoy, she drew her bow and nailed him —at exactly 4 yards. You didn’t hear many stories like this a decade ago because people didn’t bowhunt turkeys with any real expectation of success then. These days, even casual turkey hunters are killing spring gobblers with archery tackle. What has changed? There’s better gear, for one. Bowhunters in search of turkeys were among the first to embrace pop-up ground blinds, and that caused success rates to skyrocket. Modern decoys (see “Let’s Get…

PHEASANT HUNTING is, by any rational standard, crazy. You spend a bunch of time and money getting to someplace like South Dakota, where they have tons of birds and the government actually enables people to chase them. In most of the country, if the truck ahead of you pulls over and four guys with shotguns hustle out, a logical reaction is to put your vehicle in reverse and floor it. In South Dakota— where it is legal to hunt the ditches along public roads—you just smile and wave. Once you get to South Dakota, what you want to find is a motel made of cinder blocks—preferably inside and out. Cinderblock construction, generally, signifies a joint that will put up with dirty dogs, dirty shotguns, dirty boots, and the cleaning of…

› PHOTOGRAPHER: DUŠAN SMETANA + LOCATION: VENICE, LA. On a warm day just off the Louisiana coast this past October, Brady Smith, a Nebraska native, was enjoying his first time fishing for redfish when he and photographer Dušan Smetana decided to try something besides the typical grip-and-grin shot on the boat with this 20-pounder. “We stuck an 8-foot rod down to the bottom, and I thought I’d be able to stand by that water hyacinth and hold the fish above my head,” Smith says. Smetana adds, “The depthfinder said it was about 5 feet deep, so Brady stepped off the ladder into the water. The next thing I knew, he was submerged.” “The mucky bottom sucked me down,” Smith says. “I was trying to tread water and hold up the…

IT’S 10 A.M. and I have three hours before I meet my wife for a beach barbecue on the north shore of the island. Until then the flat before me—a huge expanse of turquoise water—is all mine. Along with the bonefish flooding in with the incoming tide. I wade in with the same caution I’d use on a big-game stalk, since bonefish spook easily. I stop when the water is just below my knees. Much deeper and I won’t be able to see the fish. An angler on foot simply can’t see as deep or as far as someone on a flats skiff. I put the sun at my back so it lights up the bottom of white sand and marl. I work out about 10 feet of line and…

GIVEN THE growing number of women taking up the maledominated sports of hunting and shooting, it’s likely that you, as a man, may teach a woman to shoot. Or you, as a woman, may learn from a guy. Since Caitlyn Jenner is the only person I can think of who can share both male and female perspectives on sport, and she’s not returning my calls, I teamed up with Holly Heyser of the California Waterfowl Association for this topic. Heyser has taught women to shoot and been taught by men. Together, we came up with this advice. MEN TEACHING WOMEN Guys, you may know a lot about shotguns, but you have no idea what it’s like to be a woman at the shooting range. Start by imagining yourself the…

I FINALLY BROKE DOWN and bought an AR because I finally broke down and learned how to use the GPS in my car. The GPS came with a book of directions that was roughly the thickness and weight of the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, and had obviously been written by Klingons, or Bill Heavey. Finally I went to the dealer, and he explained how the thing worked in 87 seconds. The GPS turned out to be absolutely terrific, so I decided to take the next step in embracing 21st-century technology and get a black rifle, too. The first time I fired an AR was in the summer of 1965; it was one of the civilian models that Colt made, and it didn’t impress me much because I was already part…

AFTER DEER season, you can put away your blaze orange but not your rifle. Instead, hang a predator call from your neck, put on your warmest camo, and call up a buddy. Coyotes are desperately hungry right now—when they’re constantly burning energy to stay warm. As a result, they become less cautious and more inquisitive, making late winter a hunter’s best chance to call one in. After a fresh snow, get outside and look for tracks. If you find a pattern—or simply a lot of tracks—you’ve found where to start your quest. RING THE DINNER BELL Hungry coyotes will loiter in heavy cover near livestock or concentrations of deer. If there’s a farm or a nearby cropfield that attracts herds of animals, set up on a field edge and…

CABELA’S X-BIONIC FIRST-ON-SKIN ENERGIZER SHIRT AND PANTS $179 each •cabelas.com Once you get past feeling like you’re dressed for the Hunger Games, you’ll come to love this new thermal combo from Cabela’s. Here’s why: The 3D Bionic Sphere System (who knew long johns could be so techy?) transforms your sweat into thermoregulating power, keeping you cool or warming you up, depending on the conditions, and helps you maintain an optimal body temperature of 98.6 degrees. They also dry quickly and are as comfortable as can be. Wear these under your waders, and suddenly a bitter-cold steelhead river doesn’t seem so bad. —Colin Kearns VAN STAAL X-SERIES $739–$839 •vanstaal.com Like the original Van Staal reels, the new X-Series are machined out of aircraftgrade aluminum. What makes this reel different is an…

WEARING TATTERED logging chaps and wielding a chain saw, Dr. Craig Harper looks a little like a ’90s slasher villain. The disgust in his voice is audible as he stares into the timber. “Just look at this,” he says. “It’s summertime and I can see 100 yards. There is no understory. If your woods look like this, you have problems a food plot won’t fix.” Harper cranks the saw and cuts a deep ring around the trunk of a towering maple. Then he pulls a spray bottle from his belt and pumps a few good squirts of Garlon 4 into the ring. “There. That tree is now dead,” he says. It’s the happiest I’ve seen him yet. This is a part of the timber-stand improvement lesson from the Quality Deer…

In this space five years ago, F&S broke down the country’s unprecedented whitetail boom. We graphed the massive surge in deer numbers, the rocketing spike in B&C and P&Y entries, and the run of state-record animals. We detailed the best deer hunting this country has ever known. Now, the bubble has burst. In just a few short seasons, buck harvests have fallen by 40 percent in some Midwestern states, and in seven of the country’s top trophy- buck states, the number of B&C and P&Y entries has plunged by more than half. It’s not all bad, however. Female participation remains on the rise, new crossbow seasons are boosting opportunity, and some states are actually producing more and older bucks than at the height of the boom. Plus, there’s one thing…

Guides are a different breed of fishermen. When you log as much fishing time as they do—hundreds of day a year, with clients of varying skill levels—your perspective on the sport becomes shaped by efficiency and reliability. Everything a guide does on the water—from the tackle he carries to the skills he masters to the fishing trends he follows or dismisses as b.s.—is dependent on how much or how little these things help him catch more fish. It’s that kind of determination that separates the professional guides from the part-time pretenders. With that in mind, we reached out to some of the hardestworking and most successful bass, trout, and walleye guides in the country to learn their trophy secrets and tricks of the trade. Their answers and advice come from…