Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2016 i Outdoor Life

Shooting muzzleloaders can be frustrating, and I’m not talking about the extra steps and mess involved with loading and fi ring them. No, the frustration stems from the size of the groups most hunters get from their rifles, which rarely seem to match the performance they’ve read about on the internet or seen on television . The editors of Outdoor Life feel your pain. So we shot four regular muzzleloaders with readily available pelletized powders and bullets—just like the vast majority of hunters who use this type of gear do—and recorded the results. The data here is a good representation of what you can expect from your own off -the-shelf hunting setup. THE TEST Four staff editors each picked a muzzleloader and two types of bullets. We used 100-grain charges…

I peeked over the gumbo bank of the prairie stream and counted 14 does and yearlings grazing in the dry creekbed about 250 yards upstream. It was early November, and because the peak of the rut was only a week away, I suspected a buck wouldn’t be far from this bunch of does. But despite glassing up and down the valley, I couldn’t spot antlers. Then I turned my binocular uphill, to the rimrocks on the ridge. There was the buck, bedded in the shade of a sandstone outcropping. Killing that deer—a wide but light-racked 4-point—was a matt er of reversing my approach to the does, keeping my profi le hidden in the sagebrush until I was out of sight around a bend in the creek. Then I made a…

It was the spring of 2015 when Cameron Coble’s buddy picked up a 98-inch shed that set all the wheels in motion. But unlike most people trying to hunt Iowa, Coble didn’t decide to just take a weeklong rut-hunting trip there. He decided to move, packing up his belongings and heading to a piece of public land in southern Iowa near where the giant shed was found. He set up camp and got to work fi nding a temp job to pay the bills. For the next three months, Coble lived out of the back of his Ford Explorer. During that time, he was either working his temp job, scouting, or hunting. “Essentially I guess I was homeless—except I was chasing deer,” he says. There certainly were big deer around,…

I WAS 12 YEARS OLD and tiny. Barely big enough to hold my Savage 110 steady when I shouldered it. With my dad and our neighbor Bill Miller at my side, I’d headed out for my first deer on Maryland’s youth hunt. Bill and my old man had tested me on the floor of our garage a few weeks earlier. Could I hold the rifle? Did I understand what it truly means to pull the trigger when it is pointed toward a living target? After I passed that test, Bill took me to the range and I demonstrated adequate accuracy using his patented handloads in .243 Win. With approval from the men, and shooting sticks to ensure I was steady on the crosshairs, we headed out. All morning, I fought…

“STAY IN YOUR STAND.” “Stop getting down early.” “You won’t kill anything walking around with a bow.” Those were just a few of my dad’s regular admonitions during my early days of hunting Indiana deer. Sitting still was not a skill I possessed, and on this rainy November day, my 13-yearold self thought it best to abandon my post to pick my way through the woods and brushy beds. What did my old man know? It was a steady rain and strong wind, perfect stalking weather. My dad was sleeping in the truck. He had no desire to sit out in this, yet here I was, braving the weather. So emboldened and seven minutes short of my father’s 9 a.m. minimum-sit requirement, I lowered my bow to the ground and…

IN THE HILLS OF my West Virginia home, there are patches of woods that are simply different. They look different. They smell different. The way you feel when you walk underneath their canopy is different. Pine thickets, laurel bogs, mixed hardwood forests—they all have their unique qualities. But to me, a beech hollow that is shady and dark with moss-covered rocks protruding from the pungent earth is a magical place. There is generally a spring bubbling up from under a rock and flowing through a patch of wood ferns to add to the mystique. Oftentimes, you will walk up on an old giant beech that shows its scars of previous human encounters— an old rusty piece of fence wire sticking from its silver-gray bark, or the initials of someone’s loved…

NoBody ever really got a good look at “Big Daddy.” All we knew was that he was a big buck, and so we gave him a name. Every time we hiked away from camp with our guns and lunches to hunt the mountain, we’d tell one another to shoot straight when Big Daddy came along. Only nobody ever saw Big Daddy after that first time. One fall, I was in my stand when a single shot rang out. Ten minutes later, Mike, the most successful and reliable deer hunter in our gang, showed up at the bottom of my tree. “Aaron, I’d like to introduce you to Big Daddy.” I leapt from the tree and followed Mike to his stand. Mike walked 10 yards from the base of the tree…

This symbol, which once unified deer hunters, now sits on a fault line of technology, politics, and generational differences. The guns that graced racks in deer camp in decades past all had a similar look and feel. There could be a Model 70 Winchester, a Savage 99, a sporterized Mauser, a Model 8 Remington, and a Weather by Mark V lined up at the end of a day’s hunt, and no one would bat an eye—though there might have been some good-natured ribbing directed toward the owner of the Weather by, with its skip-line checkering and flashy inlaid diamond decorations. And it goes without saying that the owners of those guns wouldn’thave gott en into a finger-pointing shouting match about what their rifles “represented.” Contained within the subtle but significant…

A tail goes up and dawn is shattered By a gust of wind. You don’t give it much notice Just a common horses’ thing Maybe chuckle to yourself If it keeps continuing. But as for me I like the slightest hint of competition So one day I surprised my mount With my own fair rendition. I forced one out and soon was met With an astonished gaze Blaze knew it wasn’t Preacher Who knew it wasn’t Blaze. Two geldings used to passing gas Alone, or with each other, Were quite surprised to hear my blast And so, I ripped another. They both looked up in disbelief Each showed a toothy grin It soon became apparent that They wouldn’t let me win. Their tails came up in union And methane filled…

ARGALI SHEEP/ MONGOLIA/SEPTEMBER  Author George H. Landreth claimed to be the fi rst American to take a Mongolian ram. This opportunity came about when he visited the Mongolian embassy and pitched the idea of sheep hunting. Aft er explaining the conservation benefi ts, he opened a copy of Outdoor Life to the “Where to Go” advertising pages. The promise of tourism dollars sett led it. Half a dozen bureaucratic calls later, he had secured permission. “The big Siberian argali of Mongolia’s Altai Mountains is the heaviest by body weight of the world’s wild sheep—the full-grown rams weigh up to 400 or 450 pounds,” Landreth wrote. “I started glassing, and in half an hour I located 19 groups of argalis. I had come to a sheep hunter’s paradise.” The total…

KEY ACCESSORIES RANGE ROD A heavy range rod with a generously sized handle is a smart addition to a muzzleloader’s kit. It provides a lot of extra leverage when seating bullets, and saves time during the reloading and cleaning process. ($34; cva.com) BULLET STARTER These come in various configurations and different materials. Basic plastic ones work fine, but you can get them with nice wooden handles and brass fittings too. This Thandled version from Traditions comes as part of the Load-It Kit, which includes holders for bullets, powder, and primers. ($26; traditionsfirearms.com) FOAMING BORE CLEANER: The solvent attacks fouling from powder, plastic, copper, and brass. ($9; traditionsfirearms.com)—J.B.S. TOOLS OF THE TEST POWDER PELLETS: You might not have known that muzzleloader pellets come in colors other than black, but…

Adam Hill’s annual out-of-state rut trip was off to a rough, yet not completely unexpected, start. Bottom line? Don’t count on solitude when you’re hunting the rut—in Kansas, on public land. After 11 straight days of interrupted hunts, Hill’s frustration level had maxed out. It was time to adapt and pivot. “I was to the point where I was willing to hang a treestand on a telephone pole along a gravel road if it meant that I wouldn’t see anyone else,” says the 42-year-old Kansas City, Missouri, police offi cer. “It was that bad.” Rather than go the telephone pole route, Hill scoured the acces- sible territory until he found a shallow farm ditch. A quality rut location it was not, but he’d seen deer use the old ditch in…

RYAN KIRBY HAMILTON, ILL. AS A TEENAGER I was obsessed with bowhunting. A cold front had blown in the night before and dropped a couple of inches of wet, sticky snow on our Illinois farm. But I had a plan, and a place—a huge oak tree that forked 11 feet in the air. With two massive limbs for cover, it was an unconventional gem of a spot. Plus, my dad was teaching his sons the family tradition of being cheap; because it wouldn’t require a store-bought stand, we simply hammered in a few steps to the fork and dealt with the leg cramps of standing as long as we could. I had the wind in my face as I climbed into the giant oak. My plan was to rattle. But…

I DREAMED FOR YEARS of moving to Montana. Flyfishing for wild trout. Hunting birds in vast prairies. Chasing deer, antelope, and, of course, elk. I assumed big bulls would be so thick I’d have my pick of the herd. I moved to Montana, and on opening morning of my first elk season in my adopted state, I found myself on a ridgeline above the timber near the Idaho border. Minutes later, a string of elk emerged from below and crossed the ridge 50 yards from my perch. In the group was a nice 5x6 bull. I studied him for a few seconds, held my crosshairs on him, practiced my shot. And let him walk. “This is my first hunt in Montana. I’ll have an opportunity at a 350 by the…

THE WHITETAIL WAS big for our area of southern Oklahoma. When I first saw him, I guess he would have scored around 150 inches, and every year he added about 10 inches to his perfect 10-point rack. For three years I hunted him during archery season, then muzzleloader and rifle seasons. My wife threatened divorce if I didn’t start spending as much time with her as I did hunting that deer. But although I had a number of encounters with him, I just could never get close enough to that buck to kill him. For three full seasons, I nursed a controlled but consuming obsession, passing up plenty of nice bucks to keep my tag intact for the 10-point. Then one day, it happened. Near the end of the bow…

O N NOVEMBER 21, 2004, in the woods of northern Wisconsin, a Hmong man by the name of Chai Vang trespassed onto private property, using the property owner’s treestand to hunt whitetails. Alerted to Vang’s presence, the owner approached the stand to warn the man off his land. Concerned, seven friends followed close behind riding on ATVs. Vang behaved as though he intended to leave, turning to walk away. But as he went, he removed the optic from his Saiga—an SKS platform rifle chambered in 7.62x39mm—then did a 180. Minutes later, six people lay dead, one of whom was a young woman, and two were wounded. Vang ran off on foot, reversing his blaze-orange vest to gray to avoid notice, but was subsequently arrested. He was unhurt. Aside from a…

It was a hunting strategy born of utter desperation. Deer season had grown old, and with just a week remaining to hunt, I didn’t have much left in my well-worn bag of tricks. There was only one stop left to pull out, and I found it while rummaging through an assortment of cardboard boxes in my garage. Eureka! Tinks, HS, Code Blue, Wildlife Research, Conquest, Top Secret, Wild game Innovations—I’d use every damn drop of deer scent I had. To heck with dabbing a few dribbles on a cotton ball and hanging it in a tree. My scheme was to completely saturate my hunting area with a variety of scent bombs and drippers. I’d either attract every buck in the county or else run them off into the next. The…

I was given the gift of identical twin boys. From an early age, they did everything together. They played catch with big, soft pillows that became red rubber balls and then hardballs, and suddenly Ellis was a nimble shortstop and Merlin a tenacious catcher. My baby twins now drive themselves to baseball practice after school. They’ve outgrown me in height and humor. But my boys, now high-schoolers, are both old-fashioned in a way—loyal, honest, hard working, disciplined. They grew up hunting with me—first doves and turkeys, then deer and elk. If there’s a problem with twins, it’s that they each get half the time they deserve from their father, and I noticed this attention deficit most acutely in the field. In those early years, when I asked them to tag…

TIP When hunting from a layout boat, use a jacket for a pillow. Propping your head up even slightly gives you a bett er fi eld of view. The appeal of the 75-mile-long Great Salt Lake is almost as powerful for waterfowl hunters as it is for birds. The lake has good public access, habitat that enables a wide variety of hunting styles, and extensive marshland that attracts a diversity of waterfowl species unrivaled elsewhere in the flyway—and probably the continent. I hunted the GSL last November in two very different ways. I rode an airboat into the remote interior of the lake, spread out hundreds of decoys, and shot dabbling ducks in a wilderness of alkali bulrush. Then I hunted diving ducks from a simple layout boat anchored in…

Some people might think I’m a little obsessed,” says Steven Winters, a 40-year-old corrections offi cer from Onekama, Michigan. “But my passion for rut hunting is really my only vice. It could be worse, right?” Last October 30, it did get a bit worse for the 28-year hunting veteran, when what was supposed to be a quick recon trip to his river-bottom whitetail hotspot turned into a calamity. Winters had just returned from taking his boat downriver for a quick check of his trail cameras when, while trying to take his rig out, his truck’s emergency brake failed, sending boat, trailer, and truck to the bottom. It was the rut, though, and nothing was going to keep him out of the woods. After buying a new truck and getting his…

“DOUBLE DROPS, MAN! And I’ll tell you where to sit to kill him on opening day.” Tommy Cormier could have been full of crap, but there was something about his tone that had me sitting precisely where he told me to sit on opening day. After hours of inaction, I decided to walk up a doe. A couple of steps in, I saw the buck. Wide. Thick. Gnarly. Double drop tines. And totally oblivious to me as he chased a doe not 40 yards away. The final shot—my 7th (yeah, I reloaded)—from my slug gun finally got his attention, but he ran off, unscathed. Then I remembered: I had forgotten to replace the turkey choke in my Mossberg…

i was a 15-year-old freshman skipping school to hunt elk with Cope, my dad, in the Sweet Grass Hills of northern Montana. We had hunted nearly all day on Sterling Wardell’s ranch. The light was fading as Dad and I headed back to the pickup after an unsuccessful day. I remember the ache in my legs when Cope suggested that we look into a little hidden basin, just in case. As we eased to the edge of a clearing, my life was transformed. Just 150 yards in stood the biggest mule deer buck I have ever seen. I had thrown my gun to my shoulder and clicked off the safety when my dad whispered. “We aren’t hunting deer, son. We didn’t ask for permission for deer.” My heart sank. I…

RACHEL VANDEVOORT WHITEFISH, MONT I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH—or unlucky enough, I still can’t decide—that my first hunting season was the season my dad caught a glimpse of the monster buck that would obsess him. It was during the first snowfall of November in the big woods of northwestern Montana, and while the buck was gone in a flash, he left behind his track in the snow, a distinctive hookshaped print caused by one left toe overlapping the other. From that day forward, my father scoured the snow, mud, and soft earth for any sign of the hook-toed deer. Each encounter with the track or fleeting glimpse of the buck logged another waypoint in his mental GPS. On the days I joined him, he would recount the precise location of each…

TIP Late in the season, pressured elk don’t respond to aggressive calling. Instead, try lost, assembly, and long mews. It’s best to call only sparingly. 7 WAYS TO TAKE TOUGH ELK HOW TO STEP UP YOUR GAME PLAN FOR RIFLESEASON BULLS EVERY BULL AND cow has become crazy-tough to kill. Bowhunters harassed the animals for weeks. Muzzleloaders had their special shot. And now an army of orange-clads is messing up any remaining semblance of order on the mountain. THERE ARE PLENTY of platitudes meant to help you increase your chances of shooting an elk. Get in shape. Rise early. Avoid roads. Hike to the hinterlands. Find the black timber. Hunt hard. Don’t give up. And following that advice alone might get you just that: no bull. Don’t get the wrong…

Once the pull of fall turkey hunting seeps into your hunter’s soul, it doesn’t really ever leave—even after your vet tells you that the time has come to put down the secret to your success— your turkey dog . You see, I’ll always bea fall turkey dogger. But when a Fed Ex courier handed me a nondescript box containing Jake the Turkey Dog’s remains on November 5, 2011, it hit home for the first time. Without a dog, I’d either have hope that I would happen upon a bird while chasing other game or else devise a game plan rich with deceit, treachery, and deception. In short, my fall turkey hunting efforts were back at square one. 1PINPOINT PROTEIN Wild turkeys love acorns and beechnuts, but the primary reason turkey…