Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2019 från American Frontiersman

Howdy, friends, and welcome to another packed issue of American Frontiersman . While Paul Calle’s wonderful cover artwork is called “Near Journey’s End,” this special fall 2019 edition is just getting started. Because hunting season is right around the corner, we’ve got all manner of articles to get you ready like a mountain man, with expert tips on sighting in a muzzleloader and a review of Traditions’ latest .50-caliber rifle. Then, once you’ve bagged a deer, we’ll help you butcher it properly without any waste, tan the hide for other crafting projects, smoke the venison to keep it tasty over time. We’ll even teach you how to make your own European-style skull mount and build your own cooking tripod in case you forgot to bring one along to camp. There’s…

For hikers and mountaineers, one of the biggest concerns about trail food has always been weight. For obvious reasons, you don’t want to carry more weight than you have to while on the trail, and that’s the core principle driving modern advancements in freeze-dried food. Go to any sporting goods outlet and you’ll find packages of any meal you’d care to eat, all weighing almost nothing and able to be stored for long periods of time. Hunters, backpackers and campers all load up their carts before their adventures and know they will be well fed. In the past, however, there were no freeze-dried foods or meals ready to eat (MREs). Hunters and trappers obviously needed good sources of food that would sustain them on their expeditions, but they had more primitive…

Twenty-one years ago, my wife and I moved out of the congestion of Salt Lake City to a tiny unincorporated town at the south end of the Great Salt Lake. The first home built on a brand-new street in town, we were soon followed by a second house right next door, and the Jones family moved in. For some reason, ever since Caden Jones was big enough to interact, he decided I was an OK guy to hang out with. I heard knocking on the front door, opened it, and there was 3-year-old Caden looking up at me. He wanted me to come over and play in the sandbox with him. And we’ve been buds ever since. Sadly, Caden had a hard time at school and was diagnosed with Tourette…

All of the big-game mounts in my home trigger fond memories of successful past hunts, and I admire them often. Among them are many European mounts, which are game skulls I’ve cleaned and whitened myself to avoid the $500 taxidermy bills for shoulder mounts. Here’s how I completed the latest specimen—a large bull elk I arrowed on public land in 2018—in my trophy room. 1. Remove The Cape Using a scalpel, I cut and peeled the hide from the skull. If you intend to sell the cape (where legal), employ the Y-cut (Google this for a diagram) and take care not to cut holes in the cape. 2. Clean It Up Next, I cut as much muscle and tissue off of the skull as possible, even removing the…

Ingredients • 1 deer heart • Wild-game caul fat (optional) Directions Prepare the deer heart by cutting off the top and coring out the inside, just as you would a bell pepper. At this point, you can wrap the heart in caul fat. The caul fat from wild game, such as bear and wild boar, works best because venison fat is waxy and distasteful. If you don’t have caul fat, skip this step. Heart is a perfect standalone food. Skewer it over an open flame. Skip the seasonings—they do a disservice to the quality of heart meat. Roast it at a height above the fire where it’s too hot to hold your hand for more than a second or two, but not so low as to touch the flame.…

If you love smoked meats, it’s no surprise. Man has smoked meats since before recorded history, so by now the taste for it might be in our DNA. These days, nine out of 10 people think of smoking meat as an advanced barbecue technique using little wood chips to impart delicious flavor to meats intended for immediate consumption. Many of those people probably also know that numerous medical studies link the consumption of smoked foods to an increased risk of cancer. For our ancient forebears, taste was less of a priority than not dying from starvation. Lacking modern refrigeration and freezers, they used a variety of methods to preserve their foods. For meat, smoking was among the most widely practiced techniques. Smoking for preservation is a different, and much longer,…

› Caliber: .22 LR • Barrel: 16.5 inches • OA Length: 32.76 inches › Weight: 5 pounds (empty) • Stock: Beechwood › Sights: Blade front, leaf rear • Finish: Nitride • Action: Bolt › Capacity: 1 • MSRP: $365 tried a variety of ammunition, ranging from match and target loads from Federal and Wolf to hunting loads like CCI Mini-Mags and Federal’s copper-plated solids. For kicks and giggles, I even threw in some of the stuff you might pick up at a Walmart. I didn’t break any records with the Scout, but I shot some good groups, everything considered. The best groups at 50 yards—just 0.78 inches—came with Federal’s Gold Medal Match and Game-Shok loads. The Scout was accurate with other loads as well, and the results in most cases were…

American Tactical Nova Liberty American Tactical has been involved in firearms manufacturing and importing for many years, and it’s recently gotten into the airgun game. The new Nova Liberty PCP air rifle is available in .177 or .22 caliber. It comes with a synthetic or wooden stock, and this side-lever, bolt-action air rifle features an onboard 200cc reservoir. It also comes equipped with an adjustment knob to control the power. (americantactical.us) APS Limited Real Action Rifle 3.0 A Hong Kong company specializing in less-lethal and airsoft technologies, APS Limited has been around for more than 15 years and is now branching out into the airgun realm. Its Real Action Rifle 3.0 is a .22-caliber, magazine-fed, bolt-action pellet rifle utilizing five individually pressurized cartridges with pellets loaded into the nose. The…

The ability to make a projectile weapon out of virtually nothing in any wilderness setting is a skill of great value. Your hunting range is increased over that of the thrown spear or rock, and the likelihood of getting dinner similarly goes up with that range. With a minimum of energy expenditure, a quick and dirty version of a bow can be made that will surely be a survival asset. Birds and small game beware! The most important part of making an effective survival bow is the selection of wood. It isn’t easy either, since Mother Nature doesn’t make trees and shrubs straight in most cases. Wood like pine is straight, but because of other characteristics it has, it is almost useless for bow making. The ideal material is flexible,…

“Up the South Slope” By David Wright It was September of 1833. Captain Joseph Walker looked out over the vast plain of the Humboldt Sinks and felt uneasy. It was open country. He and his 60 men had traversed north of the Great Salt Lake, then followed the course of the Humboldt River for days across some of the most barren territory he had ever seen. Along the way, some of his men out on hunting expeditions reported seeing Diggers, also known as Paiute tribesmen. Walker and his men eventually came to a place where a number of lakes converged and decided it was a good place to set up camp. He ordered his men to make a crude breastwork consisting of bags of supplies and saddles. Before they were…

We get it. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time in the day to go making your own snack food. So before you head out on your next trapline run or hunting adventure, stuff your pouch with some Old Trapper beef jerky. I recently scored four of Old Trapper’s tasty styles—Hot & Spicy, Old Fashioned, Peppered and Teriyaki—but it’s tough to pick a favorite! They’re all super-tasty. Now 50 years old, Old Trapper takes great pride in producing world-class beef jerky. Old Trapper starts with the highest-quality beef that is slowly marinated and then, in keeping with its traditional process, carefully placed by hand on smoking racks. The result is a healthy, take-anywhere snack that is low in calories yet high in protein. Old Trapper’s featured jerky products include 10-ounce individual…

Ingredients • One venison shoulder blade, bone-in • Salt and pepper • ½ cup oil • 2 Tbsp. butter • 2 quarts stock (wild game or beef) • 2 sweet onions, sliced • 10 cloves garlic • 2 sprigs parsley, whole or chopped • 2 sprigs oregano, whole or chopped • 2 bay leaves • 2 sweet potatoes, cut into bite-sized chunks • 4 carrots, sliced • 2 stalks celery, diced • 2 cups mushrooms, sliced Directions Season your bone-in shoulder liberally with salt and pepper. Bring a Dutch oven to medium-high heat and add oil and butter. Brown the meat on all sides in the Dutch oven. Remove the meat and allow it to cool. Next, in the juices left over from browning the meat, add the sliced onions…

“I feel stupid,” I declared. “You should. You left the cooking tripod at home,” my buddy Wade said without any trace of kindness in his voice. “I guess you can stand close to the fire and just hold the Dutch oven over it ’til the stew heats up, or you can come up with a tripod that’ll work. While you handle that, I’m going to head upstream a little ways to hopefully catch us a trout or two for appetizers—that is, if you didn’t leave the skillet at home.” It wasn’t that we had to have the tripod to heat up the stew over the fire, because I didn’t forget the camp stove. However, for over 20 years, it had been our camp tradition to heat up Wade’s “best ever…

Sighting in a new muzzleloader is a two-step process. The first step is finding the best load for your gun, which involves three variables: ball diameter, patch thickness and powder charge. Some people prefer a smaller-diameter ball for easier loading while others feel that a very tight ball is required for accuracy. Generally speaking, a middle path usually works best, but not always. A ball diameter 0.1 inches less than your nominal bore diameter usually works fine—for instance, a 0.44-inch ball in a .45-caliber rifle, or a 0.49-inch ball in a .50 caliber. However, some guns will shoot better with balls that are 0.005 inches bigger or smaller. The only way to know is to do some experimenting. Typically, I’ll start with a ball 0.1 inches smaller, and if I…

In 1958, Townsend Whelen wrote a book called On Your Own in the Wilderness with Bradford Angier. As the title suggests, the main topic of this wonderful book is true wilderness camping, and it’s written by men who have certainly been there. There are chapters dealing with tents and tent stoves, the campfire, outdoor tools, pothunting, furs and rawhide, provisioning, cooking, water and many other topics. There’s also a plethora of  information regarding the Whelen tent. Colonel Whelen was the authority—after all, he perfected it and spent over 400 nights in his! The book goes into detail about the tent and its virtues and versatility, so much so that it can be considered an unofficial owner’s manual for this excellent wilderness shelter. There’s even enough information, accompanied by detailed diagrams,…

Trapping blind, or blind setting, is nothing new. Most early trapping methods relied on an unsuspecting animal traveling along and stumbling into an awaiting capture system. Those consisted of snares, pitfalls and other fatal deadfall-type devices. Here, we’re specifically going to explore setting modern-day traps “blind” for unwary furbearers and game for meat and hides. The main advantage of trapping blind or using blind sets is the fact that your intended target is unsuspecting and will be caught completely off guard. Most successful blind sets take advantage of an animal’s nonchalant travel. Most undisturbed animals travel at a certain pace from place to place. Now, they will get sidetracked by game opportunities and naturally and instinctively pause to listen and observe their surroundings. As they travel down a certain path,…

“WHAT A WASTE!Ó I exclaimed as I contemplated the pile of deer skins in a dumpster out behind the commercial deer butchering shop. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen a shop or hunting club throw away a large number of deer skins taken from game that were being butchered. Each deer season, an untold number of deer skins end up in the garbage can, a waste of a valuable resource. This waste could be converted into a nice buckskin jacket, a gun case, moccasins, a rug or a wall piece if deer hunters would put a little time and effort into tanning their deer skins. This process is simple to learn, and while it does take some time and a lot of work, it can be a fun project…

Ingredients • One deer’s leg bones • Olive oil • Salt • 2 medium onions, chopped • 3 large carrots, chopped • 3 celery sticks, chopped • 1 head of garlic, halved • 4 bay leaves • 2 Tbsp. thyme, finely chopped • 2 Tbsp. rosemary, finely chopped • 1 Tbsp. black peppercorns Directions Coat the bones lightly in olive oil and salt. Place them on a cooking sheet and roast them at 400 degrees, until they’re browned. Add the roasted bones to a large stockpot and fill it with water. Add the vegetables, herbs and peppercorns and cover the stockpot with a vented lid. Allow the stock to simmer for eight to 12 hours. Check the liquid level periodically and test for taste. As it simmers, the liquid…

Air Arms TS400 Air Arms recently introduced the new TS400, a .177-caliber air rifle specifically designed to achieve faster shooting times. Developed in conjunction with British shooting coaches involved in a new shooting discipline called Target Sprint, this 6.75-pound, single-shot PCP model incorporates a new cocking system. This facilitates more fluid movement without the shooter taking their eyes off the target. The basic rifle has a white, ambidextrous sock with an adjustable cheekpiece and buttpad, but more colorful stocks are available. (air-arms.co.uk) AirForce Airguns Texan LSS AirForce Airguns has made a few changes recently, including purchasing Rapid Air Weapons (RAW) of Tennessee, but one of its most interesting rifles is currently the Texan LSS, which is an integrally suppressed version of the original big-bore AirForce Texan. Currently, the Texan LSS…