Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i Game & Fish West

Hunting season had an early, and unlikely, start for me this year. Rather than shooting doves in September, I was chasing an invasive insect called the spotted lanternfly in August. A charge of table salt fired from an air-powered Bug-A-Salt gun is an adequate load, though the effective range for guaranteed one-shot kills is no farther than 3 inches. Spotted lanternflies have yet to adapt to hunting pressure and it’s not difficult to approach them to nearly contact distance. I found, over weeks of trial and error, that it’s best to direct the salt to the insect’s softer underbody. Shooting its multi-colored wings merely results in a wound. There is no daily or possession limit, which is a good thing because my family and I took hundreds of them. Kidding…

If I were in charge, I’d have a fairly long list of things I’d like to see changed. At the very top of that list ... the month of November. Specifically, the month is far too short. The greatest of deer hunting months should last at least three times as long. But, of course, I’m in charge of almost nothing, so we are left with but a few short weeks to take advantage of this deer hunting nirvana. Sadly, like just about every other bowhunter, I have to work for a living and, for me, that’s essentially a 9-to-5 gig plus as many side hustles as I can fit in to cover the cost of college for two kids. BUTT HURT Vacation time is limited and weekends never last long…

A freezer full of venison has always been a badge of honor among most deer hunters, and although lately there has been even more emphasis on hunting for meat, I still suspect every whitetail hunter at some point in life wants to kill a big buck. We may proclaim that we can’t eat antlers, but our dreams aren’t filled with huge hindquarters. I don’t know any hunters who have ever regretted shooting a buck because it had too many points or its spread was too wide, tines too tall, rack too heavy. We’ll take as big a buck as we can get, and we either apply skill and effort in an attempt to find a trophy or hope luck puts one in our shooting lanes. Either way, if we’re honest,…

I’ll never forget a friend’s excitement when he thought he had a potential record smallmouth on his line … or the look on his face when he realized it was actually a modest-sized northern pike. Before I could tell him to toss it in the live well, he plucked the hook with a pair of pliers and sent the fish home. What he didn’t realize, and what many anglers don’t know, is pike are delicious, especially if you can prepare the meat to taste like one of the most prized crustaceans of the sea—lobster. I confess, I was once like my friend. Unless I caught an abnormally large or feisty pike, fighting one was an inconvenience that robbed me of time that could be spent chasing more prized fish. But…

There are deer in these mountains that have never seen a hunter. And your best chance at spotting one of these big, old mule deer bucks is when they drift out of the tops and down toward the river valley in November. I first heard those words on a late hunt in Idaho. I heard them again in British Columbia. They ring in my ears whenever I find myself on a late-November or early-December mule deer hunt. It might be hyperbole, but it can be true in parts of the Mountain West. The Arapaho called it the “moon when the rivers start to freeze.” The Cheyenne called it the “deer rutting moon.” We call it November, but they had it right. When the snow begins to fall in earnest, mule…

The first time I hunted eastern Idaho’s Market Lake, I got mired in sucking mud that gripped my wader boots as firmly as the jaws of a leg-hold trap. With no dog to handle retrieving duties, I had waded out in a shallow bay to fetch a mallard, stepped in a boggy hole and was immobilized. While I was laughing at my self-imposed captivity—it was balmy early November so I wasn’t likely to experience hypothermia—my buddy yelled from shore that I should quit thrashing and make like an island. Birds were working our decoys. A flock of ducks was coming in hard, some already dropping their feet and braking with their wings, others uncommitted and staying high and suspicious. Problem was, I didn’t have my gun—I had left it in…

In 1926 Ford Motor Co. announced a 40-hour week for its factory workers and the College Board administered the first SAT for university and college admission. That same year Federal Cartridge Corp. listed 12-gauge shotshell load No. 123, more commonly known at the time as the Federal Hi-Power Favorite, on its price sheet in various shot sizes for $35.78 per 1,000 rounds. The company, then in its fourth year of business, recommended it for game from squirrels and quail to turkeys and wolves. Hunters have used load No. 123 in their escape from the grinds of work and school ever since. The Hi-Power Favorite was a 2 3/4-inch, high-brass, paper-hull shell with 1 1/8 ounces of shot loaded to a medium velocity equivalent to that produced by 3 1/4 drams…

REGIONAL RUT UPDATE From pre-rut to post-rut and all the excitement between, we’re covering the action this fall. Beginning Oct. 20, “Regional Rut Update” is an exclusive weekly report from the field with timely information on whitetail activity, big-buck kills and how to tag a trophy in the East, Midwest and South. ULTIMATE ADVANTAGE Check out our “Ultimate Season” collection of hunting articles and videos, including “How to Make the Most of Every Shot” by Adam Heggenstaller. GREAT DEER AMMO Read “New-for-2022 Deer Hunting Cartridges” for a look at rounds and loads that won’t let you down when a buck strolls into range this fall. BINGE ON BASS Spend some time honing your bass-angling skills when it’s too cold to fish by watching all three seasons (more than 30…

A campfire brightens a hunting or fishing trip with heat and light and promotes camaraderie among all who gather in the warm circle of its inviting glow. Cooking over an open fire is a ceremony that imparts a literal taste of the outdoors. It’s also a connection to our primordial past, presenting the opportunity to stare into flickering flames and wonder what our ancestors did before the invention of matches, lighters and other modern conveniences that take most of the rough out of roughing it. Along with tying a square knot and changing a truck tire, building a fire is an essential skill. In the old days, if you couldn’t start a fire, you were a cave bear’s next meal. Now, there’s no excuse. Here’s how to build a blaze…

Hunting in Kansas gave me an opportunity to test Remington’s new Core-Lokt Tipped ammunition, and the bullet performed well on the range and in the field. Core-Lokt Tipped loads feature a new bullet that adds a green polymer tip to the conventional Core-Lokt design. The traditional Core-Lokt is typically a pointed-soft-point bullet, and the polymer tip offers several advantages, particularly at longer ranges. For one, the Core-Lokt Tipped has a higher ballistic coefficient (BC) and experiences less drag as it travels downrange. This reduces bullet drop and wind drift. The 150-grain Core-Lokt Tipped bullet loaded in the .30-06 rounds that I used in Kansas has a BC of .415, while the BC of a Core-Lokt pointed-soft-point of the same weight and caliber is .314. A polymer tip is also more…

In my binocular I watched the tan-and-white speck loitering at the base of hill transform into a mature pronghorn buck. He stood perfectly broadside among a herd of 15 to 20 antelope some distance from the rise where my guide, Brian Schiermiester, and I were crouched. We’d glassed the herd from another ridge about an hour earlier and had just put a stalk on them, army-crawling the last 100 feet. “How far is he?” I asked Brian, who had swapped his bino for a rangefinder. “About 450 yards,” he whispered back. My heart thumped. Ahead of this hunt in the vast, open country of east-central Wyoming, I’d worried I might have to take a shot beyond my comfort level to succeed. Now it was happening. While a reasonable shot for…

The last I saw of the bear, it was heading right to my friend, who was posted at the edge of the clearcut. A group of us were pushing, or driving, the saplings and thick vegetation, hoping to move a bear to the rest of our gang positioned in more open woods. A few seconds later, a shot rang out in front of me. Then another, and another. The bear had passed by my friend, all right. When I reached the end of the drive, popping out of the thick stuff 20 yards from the shooter, I couldn’t wait to get the story. I figured for sure he had killed the bear, but the worried expression on his face gave me reason to think otherwise. “It was so close,” he…

Hunters often obsess over minute details regarding their rifles and ammunition, but many seem to think their marksmanship is beyond reproach. It’s almost like they think because they’re a well-equipped hunter, they can always hit whatever they want. The truth is, you can have the best rifle, optical sight and ammunition ever made, but if you can’t place the bullet where you want it, you might as well be using a squirt gun. Don’t get me wrong, your gear matters. But to be an effective deer hunter, you gotta know how to use it. Practice is the key to shooting success, and there are many ways to train—with and without ammunition. I think most rifle hunters overlook how much dry-fire training can help them become a better shot. Then again,…

My late dad was a Western cowboy trapped in a Midwestern farmer’s body. He had worked on a cattle outfit out of Belle Fourche, S.D., as a younger man, and he longed to leave the soybeans and feeder pigs of our little Missouri farm for the big sky and the open range. When I moved to Montana, the first thing we did together was hatch plans for him to come elk hunting. We hunted a few general seasons for public-land bulls before we reckoned cow tags had shorter odds of both drawing and filling. He drew them, all right, but had trouble with the filling part. Finally, as I noticed that mountains and even hills were getting steep for him, he drew a cow tag for the Missouri Breaks near…

The morning began as others had over the past several weeks: Ducks swarmed overhead in the darkness and landed in the decoys as Dad and I got things ready for the hunt. However, when shooting time came, the ducks swung wide. They looked at the decoys, but wouldn’t commit. We changed things up by removing decoys with wind-driven wings and opening more landing zones. Still, no ducks decoyed. We could have pass-shot, but that’s not what hunting over decoys is about. “I’m going to move out to that bush,” Dad said. “Why don’t you head to the east end and see what’s happening?” The bush dad pointed to was 80 yards from our blind toward the far end of a flooded field. There was only enough room for one hunter.…

When my two buddies and I awoke to more than 2 feet of fresh snow outside the tent, we knew the situation was serious. It was the third day of a 10-day wilderness elk hunt. We were on our own, with horses, camped at 9,500 feet in the Rocky Mountains. By the time we finished breakfast, the snow was falling even harder. A storm had been forecast for the region, but it wasn’t supposed to hit for another week. Two hours later we scrambled to break camp, load the horses and head 18 miles down the trail. On our way down the mountain, we ran into a forest ranger who was heading into the high country to inform elk hunters of the magnitude of the storm and to get them…

A lightweight, flat-shooting rifle is the ticket for spot-and-stalk hunting on the prairie. The new Nosler Model 21 ($2,795; nosler.com) I carried weighs less than 7 pounds in 6.5 Creedmoor and comes packed with features. Designed in collaboration with South Dakota’s Mack Brothers, the action is blueprinted from birth on advanced wire EDM equipment. The one-piece bolt is spiral-fluted and can be taken down without tools, while the Trigger Tech Field trigger is user-adjustable. A threaded muzzle is standard on the Shilen match-grade barrel. The 100-percent carbon-fiber McMillan Hunters Edge Sporter stock further reduces weight. Federal’s Terminal Ascent ($70.99 per 20 rounds of 6.5 Creedmoor; federalpremium.com) combines features of a match-style projectile with those of a quality hunting bullet, such as a bonded lead core and a long, solid copper…