Innehållsförteckning för November 2017 från Outdoor Life

Deer hunting is mostly a passive pursuit. We position ourselves in a location where scouting and intuition tell us deer will pass. And we wait. Come November, however, active participation can pay off. Bucks are much more aggressive now that the rut is in full swing. Your tactics should match. Calling and rattling can be very effective. How do you know when to use them? Read on. SCENARIO 1 EYES ON THE PRIZE It’s midmorning and the tall-tined buck you have multiple trail cam images of is in sight. He’s just stepped out of the timber 250 yards away and is working his way along the edge of a cut cornfield, moving with a steady, deliberate pace, his nose to the ground. • What It Means: That buck is likely…

MY FIRST CENTERFIRE rifle was a Savage 99 in .243 topped with a 4X Bushnell Banner. That fixed-power optic is about as simple as riflescopes get, the next step up in evolution from peep sights. It has an unilluminated duplex reticle and capped turrets for windage and elevation. Though I’ve retired it, I have killed more animals with that rifle-and-scope combination than with any other I own, for reasons of both utility and familiarity (and also because it was the only deer rifle I owned for several years). Because it has so few moving parts, that old Bushnell is durable (after three decades, it’s still mounted on that Savage and still holds its zero). Because it has only a handful of sight references— basically the coarseness of the reticle and…

Finally, here’s your game plan if you’re the hunter who can hit the woods at a moment’s notice. Look at the calendar, the moon, annual trends, and, finally, the weather forecast. “I’m constantly watching cold fronts in October and November,” says Joe Elsinger. “In my opinion, it’s the biggest factor for deer movement outside of hunting pressure.” Elsinger is a successful public-land bowhunter from Iowa, and like many of the best hunters across the country, much of that success has been driven by timing his hunts around cold fronts. “I’m fanatical about being in the right spot at the right time,” says Elsinger. “And cold fronts are one of the best ways to figure that out. The best fronts feature a large temperature drop of 15 degrees or more in…

TIP Does the black bear in your trail cam photo look like Chewbacca? It’s likely a youngster. Typically, a mature boar will have shorter fur. A PICTURE MAY be worth a thousand words, but for deer hunters, it can be worth a few more scorable inches. Need proof? Post a trail camera photo of a buck on a social media site and ask fellow hunters to score it. You might get one or two accurate estimates. The rest? Not even close—and you can bet that most will be on the high side. Bucks that are real-world 110-inchers suddenly become 120s. And borderline 140s turn into B&C bucks. Why are so many hunters so bad at judging a buck’s score? Few people actually put a tape to a deer,” says Boone…

If you can’t shoot faster than that, you might as well not shoot at all.” That was the rather blunt directive I received from a grouse-hunting guide a few years back. And while it may not have been the most diplomatic way to convey his message, the guy was absolutely right. I had done my due diligence before the hunt; I had spent time on the range, and I could smash 20 or more skeet targets every time out. But when it came to knocking down birds in real time, I was floundering. We don’t typically associate being in a hurry with improved shotgun technique, but it is possible to become faster and shoot more accurately at the same time. This is especially important late in the season, when birds…

Around the time I turned 10, I learned to drive Dad’s stick-shift Ford pickup on gravel roads around our Nebraska farm. As each of my three boys neared that age, I taught them to drive on the same roads, first in my automatic Ford pickup. Later, they graduated to their grandfather’s red stick-shift Toyota pickup, the floorboards so rusted out you could see gravel zipping underneath. A kid should know how to drive a stick shift, I figured, and there wasn’t much they could do to hurt that old Toyota. It was usually hunting season when we were back at the farm, and sometimes we’d take a midday break for lunch and park on the hill by the shop, and the boys would take turns driving the quads on dirt…

I had the idea to turn a school bus into a mobile hunting lodge a few years back, and it had been hovering in the back of my mind ever since. But I finally decided to pull the trigger on the project when I realized I might be able to help in the fight to keep public lands accessible and open to the public. The bus seemed like the perfect portable billboard as I traveled between public parcels and raised awareness about the current political battle. My plan is to travel for one year, spending time on public lands and taking part in many of the recreational activities these lands have to offer, including hunting and fishing. It’s shaping up to be one hell of an adventure. I hope you’ll…

HOW WE TEST EVALUATING HUNTING packs is ultimately an exercise in personal preference. One person may want a zipper here or a compression strap there, or would prefer a strong internal frame over a bow or rifle carrier. A pack that fits a shorter, stouter frame won’t fit a taller, lankier person. There’s also the matter of use. A Western elk hunter has a different expectation of a pack than an Eastern whitetail hunter. We tested packs with those variations in mind, leaving plenty of room for subjectivity but also evaluating the objective aspects of each submission. We measured the capacity and weight of each pack and the range of adjustability of straps and belts, and then awarded points for versatility (ability to haul a gun or a bow, meat,…

For those with a tight schedule and limited vacation time, being able to plan your rut hunts is crucial. Fortunately, most research indicates that this is possible. When it comes to the timing of the whitetail rut, many in the scientific community believe that photoperiod (the amount of light over a 24-hour interval) is at the core of everything. “It’s a domino effect,” says wildlife biologist Matt Ross of the Quality Deer Management Association. “As the photoperiod changes, testosterone increases in a buck. There’s a direct line between the deer’s eyeballs and the pineal gland in the brain, and that releases a type of hormone, which tells the testes to produce more testosterone. And it’s the same thing with does—the photoperiod drives the timing of her estrus cycle.” These changing…

COLD BAY, ALASKA, isn’t much of a destination for tourists, or anyone else for that matter. The year-round population is said to be somewhere around 100 people, give or take, but after spending a week there I think that number is inflated. You end up seeing the same faces whether you’re at the bar, the grocery store, or the post office, or walking around the town’s packed-gravel roads. What is certain, however, is that there are more houses than people, many of which look abandoned, having been beaten down by the salt and wind and cold. Without doubt, Cold Bay also has more communications gear per capita than any other place on the planet. The treeless tundra-covered hills in and around town bristle with antennas, radar domes, oversize convex dishes,…

As with most semi-auto pistol cartridges, the 10mm Automatic was developed for gun-fighting and personal protection rather than hunting or general recreational shooting. The FBI adopted the round in the wake of the infamous Miami shootout in 1986 that left two FBI agents dead and several others wounded. The inability of the eight agents in the gun battle to quickly stop two heavily armed criminals caused the FBI to reevaluate how they armed and trained their agents. But the 10mm Auto was a bit too much gun for the rank-and file FBI personnel, and the agency soon backed away from this potent round. However, the underlying criteria that the FBI wanted from the 10mm Auto—the ability to defeat tough barriers like clothing, automobile glass, sheet metal, and drywall, yet still…

Twenty-eight years ago this fall, I found one of the great treasures of my life. I was the dirt-poor editor of a weekly newspaper in eastern Montana and an aspiring mule deer hunter, walking a dry creekbed below a ridge of adobe knobs, when something in the sand caught my eye. It was the aft 3 inches of a bonehandled knife, the burnished brass lanyard hasp glinting in the sun. I dug out the rest of the knife and knocked the slag off the blade. It was obviously well made, because it had withstood the elements in decent shape. It cleaned up nicely. Owing to my poverty—but also the quality of the steel—that knife became my main deer-gutting, elk-skinning, and meat-cutting blade for the next several years. I made a…

IF WE USE YOUR STORY, WE’LL SEND YOU THIS BOOK! ”THIS HAPPENED TO ME” HAS BEEN A FIXTURE OF OUTDOOR LIFE SINCE IT FIRST APPEARED IN 1940. WE’VE SINCE COMPILED SOME OF THE MOST HARROWING, HAIR-RAISING MISADVENTURES READERS HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED IN A SINGLE VOLUME. IF WE RUN YOUR STORY, YOU CAN PORE OVER THE 183 PAGES OF THIS ACTION-PACKED BOOK KNOWING YOU’RE IN GOOD COMPANY. WANT TO BUY A COPY INSTEAD? THEY’RE AVAILABLE AT OUTDOORLIFE.COM/THTMBOOK STORYTIME We publish true adventures. Only those used will be acknowledged. Send to THTM@OutdoorLife.com (preferred), or Outdoor Life, THTM, 2 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Include a daytime phone number.…

Conventional wisdom directs that biggame hunters should wait a minimum of a half hour to pursue their quarry aft er any shot that requires trailing. The idea is that an animal doesn’t always die right away, and by giving it time and space to expire, you’re not spiking its system with adrenaline that might cause it to run farther. Waiting lets an animal bed down and bleed out, aiding your eventual recovery. But on a recent safari for Namibian plains game, my professional hunter didn’t wait even 30 seconds after my shot. He would chase game that fled after a hit, leaving me to scramble for my safety and run after them both. I was intrigued by this rule of the bush—unless you see your quarry drop, grab your shooting…

Now, if you’re one of those hunters with a little more flexibility when it comes to scheduling your rut hunts and have an interest in digging a little deeper into rut theories, here’s your next step: Keep in mind the aforementioned photoperiod insights and then add in the potential impacts of the moon and annual patterns. More than 20 years ago, New York outdoor writer and photographer Charles Alsheimer and Pennsylvania commissioner of wildlife Wayne Laroche began a study that continues to captivate the deer- hunting community. Their research was aimed at tracking and understanding the timing of the rut by analyzing multiple data points, such as cardeer collisions, trail cam photos, air temperature, weather fronts, moon phase, and in-person observation. What they found, contrary to many other studies, was…

A sk your hunting or fishing buddies about the craziest things they’ve found in the woods and waters, and get ready for some dandy stories. I did just that a few years ago, quizzing a friend who grew up along Montana’s Yellowstone River about favorite finds in a lifetime afield. One year, when the river was especially low, he was fishing a rocky riffle that had been used as a ford by the Crow and Cheyenne for centuries, and later by buffalo hunters. Something in the shallow water caught his eye. He waded out and pulled up an old rifle. It was a rust-encrusted Winchester, the lever open as though its original owner had been in the process of jacking a shell into the chamber when the gun was lost.…