Outdoor Life - March 2017.pdf

february– march 2017

CONTENTS Hornady’s new 6mm 108-gr. ELD Match bullet is making waves in long-range competition. p. 41

vol. 224 • no. 2

DEPARTMENTS THE LIFE 7 8 11 12 13

Waypoint: A Manitoba fish-head Letters, plus reader deer snapshots Editor’s Journal Old-school tech, from the archives This Happened to Me: “I was swept out to sea!”

GEAR 15 20

Apps that turn smartphones into required hunting gear Turkey choke shoot-out

FISHING 25 28 30 32

The hottest billfish bite of the season is on Tactics for wintertime browns Load the boat with open-water walleyes How to catch fish on lake points

HUNTING 73 76 78 80

A primer for hunting Florida’s wild Osceola turkeys First questions for an outfitter Rate coyote setup spots How to find more shed antlers

SHOOTING 83 86 88

Melvin Forbes’ ultralight NULA rifles still set the standard DIY custom turkey gun project Gun test: Kimber Hunter 6.5 CM

OFFHAND SHOTS 98

A favorite knife, recovered

34 NEXT TECH

A look at what’s coming up in shooting, fishing, and wildlife management.

FEATURES THE GOBFATHER

James Dickson, significant to the wild turkey’s successful past, peers into the challenges of its future. by jim casada 4 february/march 2017 outdoor life

58 JUNGLE LORE REDUX

Jim Corbett’s famous Rigby rifle, killer of man-eating leopards and tigers, returns to India. by andrew mckean

67 THE UNKNOWNS

Fifty years after it was discovered, chronic wasting disease still baffles experts and hinders hunters. by tony hansen

COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF WILSON

BILL BUCKLEY

52

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Pine Falls, Manitoba / Feb. 14 / 11:01 a.m. Octogenarian Harry DeWille has always been a bit of a practical joker, and he didn’t miss an opportunity to kid around when a pair of guests dropped in on his icy Valentine’s Day. Photographer Tom Fowlks says his uncle, a local who was showing him around the area, walked up to DeWille’s fishing hole and—before he got a good look at the pike on the ice—asked the man, “What are you catching today?” Without missing a beat, DeWille shot back, “Mermaids.”

WAYPOINT

section edited by natalie krebs • photograph by tom fowlks

outdoor life february/march 2017 7

whitetails (including a 13-point 5 ½-yearold buck this season). Kudos to you also for writing about tracking and taking northwoods bucks in the snow [“Fresh Tracks in the Big Woods”]. Those guys are true outdoorsmen. John Stanard Poplar Bluff, MO

L E TTE R S

THE BALL DROPS HERE GOLD STANDARD ▶ I’ve been reading Outdoor Life for 66 years, and the December/January 2017 double issue was one of the best. I commend you for the excellent article and photos on Southern rabbit hunting [“A Vanishing Legacy”]. That article brings back great memories in a day when kids cut their hunting teeth on deer, and when deer dominate outdoor media. Old geezers like me learned to hunt by chasing cottontails and swampers with beagles, and still-hunting squirrels on foot and by canoe in “Swampeast” Missouri. I was grown before our deer herd recovered enough to sustain good hunting. Since then, I’ve taken several dozen Ozarks

▶ I read your article in the Dec/Jan issue professing that airguns are “legitimate tools for big-game hunting” [“Air Strike,” Hunting]. Am I to assume OL readers will soon be reading articles that say bowling balls dropped from treestands are an effective tool for dispatching big game? The use of airguns and bowling balls both fall into the same realm of the absurd. Stan Kemmerer Spring Creek, NV

JINXED ▶ I really enjoyed “The Ones That Got Away” [November 2016]. Coincidentally, that issue arrived the day before my own story unfolded. I had not yet seen a deer from a stand this past season, so I set up another one in what I believed to be

a promising spot. The next morning, I arrived well before daylight and slipped in as quietly as possible. At 7:40 a.m., I saw a huge rack coming through the tall grass. The words “Oh my God” escaped my mouth, and I got ready with my .308. The deer stopped, broadside, 30 yards in front of me, focused on something I couldn’t see. I thought, This is too easy. In my mind, I had already field-dressed him, called my buddies, and taken pictures. I took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. Click. I chambered another round and... click. I chambered the third round: click. I usually carry my .357 revolver with me, but I had left it in the Jeep that morning. It would have been an easy pistol shot. After what seemed like an eternity, the buck walked off, never knowing what had just transpired. After I got over my mental breakdown, I went home and disassembled my rifle. I discovered a piece of pine bark on the bolt face. It must have gotten lodged in there while I was climbing a pine the day before. Lesson learned: Keep the empty chamber closed when climbing a tree, and always take my trusty .357 as backup. George Reid via email

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THELETTERS LIFE ↙

ALL IN THE FAMILY

NOT FOR SALE

I loved the article “Family Ties” [Editor’s Journal, November]. I, too, have twin teenage sons, and everything in that article resonates with me. I always worry that I’m not making our outdoor excursions enjoyable, with my stern directives and constant reminders of gun safety, land management, etc. And as my boys grow older, they are becoming more and more involved with school, sports, and friends. But in spite of it all, they are still excited to go hunting with me. This column reminds me that the time I have with my boys is only getting shorter. I am going make a concerted effort this year to relish every moment we share outdoors. Russell Camp Amarillo, TX

▶ I read “An Open Letter to Our Next President” [Dec/Jan]. I, like many who hunt and fish, rely on public lands and do not want even one acre of these lands sold for any reason. In fact, I would suggest that we not only be permitted to access a river or stream, but also a landlocked piece of public land. It does no good for us to retain our Second Amendment rights if the only place we have to use them is at a private shooting range or a hunting property we can only access by paying a millionaire’s fee. Bob Coet Pueblo, CO

▶

BLACK IS BACK ▶ Thanks for a great November issue. But I read your muzzleloader test [“Reality Check,” Gear] and was left wondering: What is the point? After I saw the movie Jeremiah Johnson, I got a CVA kit and built a rifle that I used to kill deer before a special season was even thought up. When you remove the challenge of the hunt and the skill to use a weapon, what have you got left to be proud of? Roy Thompson Buffalo, ND

BATTLEFIELD TO BACKWOODS ▶ When I started deer hunting in 1979, rifles were as you listed in “State of the Deer Rifle” [Shooting, November]. I was 11 and had just passed the newly instated Hunter Safety program. During the six preceding months, my dad had me practicing with his “military rifle” from the Civilian Marksmanship Program: a .30-caliber M1 carbine. The only thing my dad and I saw that season were does, which were off-limits then. The next year I killed the biggest buck our neighbors had seen in years: a 7-point, with a spread smaller than a basketball. I used that M1 carbine for years until I complained to my dad. I wanted a larger caliber with more knockdown power. What came next? Another CMP “military rifle”: the Springfield 1903/A3 in .30/06. Two seasons later, in 1986, I again tagged a new local record. This time he was a 10-point that could have fit two basketballs inside its spread. We had local traffic coming to see the buck for days. Hail the military rifle for hunting. Shoot what you have, and learn to shoot it well. Bryan Cirar Owensville, MO

MAXIMIZE YOUR POTENTIAL

ALSO NOT FOR SALE ▶ Joe Arterburn’s article “The Value of a Gun” [Offhand Shots, October 2016] was maybe the best I’ve ever read on the subject of guns and their worth. We need more like it. Boomers (pardon the pun) like myself can relate. Arterburn’s gun was a Fox side-by-side; mine was an old Model 37 Winchester single-shot that my dad gave me. Like any kid, I immediately carved my initials into the stock. That was 52 years ago. While riding in our UTV one day this past summer, my grandson Cash noticed the old Winchester hanging, unloaded, in its gun rack. I told him the story of the old gun and said I may give it to him one day. Arterburn’s column brought to mind all the great times I had with that gun. And the way he ended the article reflected my thoughts exactly. Keep up the good work. Mike Barnhill Lawley, AL

SINGULARLY SILLY I read with interest and some amusement your test on binoculars [Gear, October]. The interesting part is your attempt to correct the public’s grammar without really stating it, as other writers have done. Although the author did not specifically say the plural term of “binoculars” is incorrect, he did repeatedly refer to the optics in a singular term: “binocular.” But hell’s bells—they’ve been referred to as binoculars since day one. Are we now going to also change pants, trousers, glasses, goggles, scissors, pliers, tweezers, shears, and so on? All of these items are really singular, but are referred to as plural objects. Leave it alone. We’ll never change. Ed Huck Franklinville, NJ ▶

P.S.: By the same token: Why is a “bikini” singular when there are two parts, hmm?

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THE LIFE READER SPOTLIGHT ↘

THE TAG TEAM

DEER SEASON MAY BE IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR, BUT IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CELEBRATE. HERE ARE A FEW HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2016–2017 SEASON. WANT TO SEE YOUR OWN PICTURE IN OL? START BY SHARING YOUR STORY WITH US AT OUTDOORLIFE.COM/DEEROFTHEYEAR

MAUREEN PHILHOWER, 52

CALYN YOUNG, 25

Lafayette, NJ Despite getting my ACL replaced one week earlier, I had to hunt the rut. My husband helped me to the blind, and at 8 a.m. I shot this buck with my crossbow. By the time I crutched to where the deer had fallen, I was exhausted. And it shows: My husband took this photo without my knowing.

New Cordell, OK I took my bow and got settled on the ground hours before legal light on the morning of the rifle opener. At dawn, I saw the neighbors heading to their stands without care for the wind, and I knew they would be pushing deer my way. I tweaked my setup and grunted this buck in to 55 yards.

RJ SCHUPLER, 14

DALTON SPENCER, 15

Long Island, NY After more than a year of practicing with my bow in the backyard, I got a chance to take my first deer with a compound on the north shore of Long Island. I drew on this button buck at 7 a.m. during the rut, skinned it myself, and cooked baconwrapped venison for our family dinner that night.

Adna, WA The same day I found out I needed knee surgery, my dad and I went out to hunt near the river. He spotted this buck, and in the span of half a second, I somehow managed to breathe, pray, wet my pants a little, and pull the trigger while aiming at the biggest blacktail I had ever seen in real life.

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THE LIFE

EDITOR’S JOURNAL

↙

Andrew McKean Editor-in-Chief Sean Johnston Design Director EDITORIAL Managing Editor Jean McKenna Executive Editor Gerry Bethge Senior Deputy Editor John B. Snow Senior Editor Natalie Krebs Assistant Managing Editor Margaret M. Nussey Assistant Editor Tony Hansen Editorial Assistant Hilary Ribons ART Art Director Brian Struble Associate Art Directors Russ Smith, James A. Walsh PHOTOGRAPHY Photography Director John Toolan Photo Editor Justin Appenzeller PRODUCTION Production Manager Judith Weber DEPARTMENTS Fishing Editor Gerry Bethge Hunting Editor Andrew McKean Shooting Editor John B. Snow WEB Digital Director Nate Matthews Online Content Editor Alex Robinson

Anthony Licata Editorial Director CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Joe Arterburn, Michael Bane, Bill Buckley, Tom Carpenter, Josh Dahlke, Brad Fitzpatrick, Tyler Freel, John Haughey, John Haviland, Todd Kuhn, Ben Long, Tim MacWelch, Colin Moore, Michael Pearce, Ron Spomer, John M. Taylor, Bryce Towsley EDITORS EMERITI Jim Carmichel (Shooting), Jerry Gibbs (Fishing), Patrick F. McManus (Editor-at-Large), Bill McRae (Optics), Vin T. Sparano (Senior Field Editor) CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS Nick Ferrari, John Hafner, Kevin Hand, Donald M. Jones, Mitch Kezar, Joel Kimmel, Ryan Kirby, Lance Krueger, John Phillips, John Rice, Tony Shasteen, Vincent Soyez, Jeff Wilson

Gregory D. Gatto Vice President, Publishing Director Associate Publisher Jeff Timm EAST (212-779-5012) Eastern Sales Matthew Levy (Manager), Frank McCaffrey, Chip Parham, Lee Verdecchia (Digital Sales Manager) MIDWEST (312-252-2847) Midwest Sales Manager Doug Leipprandt Southern Sporting Goods Manager Katie Logan DETROIT (248-213-6154) Detroit Sales Jeff Roberge (Detroit and Sporting Goods Advertising Director) Sporting Goods Sales David Hawkey WEST (310-227-8947) Sporting Goods Sales Brian Peterson DESTINATIONS (212-779-7172 X221) Eric Genova INTEGRATED MARKETING SOLUTIONS Executive Director, Integrated Marketing Brenda Oliveri Alex Garcia, Amanda Gastelum, Charlotte Grima (Directors) Executive Director, Brand Integration Beth Hetrick Eshonda Caraway-Evans, Lynsey White (Associate Directors), Shaneza Rahaman (Manager) Creative Services Steve Gianaca, Sarah Hughes, Gabe Ramirez, Ingrid Reslmaier OUTDOORLIFE.COM Justin Ziccardi (Digital Campaign Manager) Senior Public Relations Manager Molly Battles Financial Director Tara Bisciello Advertising Coordinator Nicky Nedd CONSUMER MARKETING Robert M. Cohn (Director), Lynda Chiarella (New Business Director), Stephanie Fry (Planning Director), Jean Breunle (Retention Manager), Christina Saunders (New Business Manager) Single Copy Sales Tony DiBisceglie, ProCirc Retail Solutions Group Group Production Director Michelle Doster Production Manager Stephanie Northcutt Human Resources Director Kim Putman

Tomas Franzén Chairman Head of Business Area, Magazines Lars Dahmén Chief Executive Officer Eric Zinczenko Chief Financial Officer Joachim Jaginder Chief Operating Officer David Ritchie Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Burnham Murphy

Cutting Edges OUR FIELD SPORTS HAVE ALWAYS HAD AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP WITH TECHNOLOGY

T  

he first thing I noticed about Jim Corbett’s tiger-killing rifle, when I finally got to hold it, is how light and lithe it is. Chambered in .275 (the imperial equivalent of 7x57), the most famous dangerous-game gun in history is basically a bolt-action deer rifle. The caliber and configuration make sense when you see the rugged landscape Corbett hunted early in the last century, the terrain I toured with the Rigby rifle last spring and write about beginning on p. 58. India’s big cats lived (and still live) in tangly jungle and steep mountains. A heavy double-gun would have been unwieldy. Corbett’s rifle looks old-fashioned now, but at the time it was presented to him in 1907 (for killing a tiger responsible for 436 deaths), the rifle represented cutting-edge technology: a hot new caliber capable of

delivering modern bullets that were plenty lethal for tigers weighing 500 pounds, a fast action for quick followup shots, and a magazine that held four shells. A century later, technology looks different. Today, when game wardens in India are called to hunt down man-killing cats, they deploy military-grade weapons: nightvision goggles and automatic rifles. But the purpose of this gear is the same as it was in Corbett’s time: to kill a predatory cat and restore public safety, not to give the wild animal a sporting chance. There’s a fine line between those goals, and it’s one I kept seeing as we developed the cover feature (p. 34) on technology that is changing how we hunt and fish. Our field sports are characterized by restraint. As much as we want to bag more game and land more fish, we deliberately limit our effectiveness. We don’t use night-vision goggles to hunt game, or use explosives to kill fish. We are selective in our use of technology. We think nothing of using satellite signals to find property boundaries or sophisticated sonar to find fish, even though we may challenge ourselves by using a recurve bow or a barbless hook. Is there a limit to technology in the field? You bet. When we use drones or thermal imagers to find game, we are crossing that fine line. But when we use technology to become more accurate shooters and more capable anglers, we are tapping into the same instinct that Jim Corbett did to become a more lethal hunter.

ANDREW MCKEAN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF [email protected]

Chief Digital Revenue Officer Sean Holzman Vice President, Integrated Sales John Graney Vice President, Consumer Marketing John Reese

SIMON BARR/TWEED MEDIA

Vice President, Digital Operations David Butler Vice President, Public Relations Perri Dorset General Counsel Jeremy Thompson

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outdoor life february/march 2017 11

THE LIFE FROM THE ARCHIVES ↘

TECH THROWBACK

TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS MAY SEEM OUT OF PLACE IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS, BUT THIS TREND IS REALLY NOTHING NEW BY NATALIE KREBS

D

epending on your relationship with technology, this issue of Outdoor Life will either delight or dismay. There are more than a few sportsmen and -women out there who pooh-pooh the latest gadgets designed to solve the problems hunters, shooters, and anglers like to gripe about. But for those

who think the latest wave of outdoor tech has finally gone too far, just remember that the following three fixtures of the modern outdoor world were once considered groundbreaking. They ultimately became the norm for many hunters everywhere, which raises the question we try to answer starting on p. 34: What’s next?

CAMOUFLAGE ▶ OL introduces its readers to the

concept of camo in a May 1919 column titled “Nature’s Camouflage.” The author defines camouflage as a “new French word” that means “to deceive the eye, an optical delusion.” In a 1941 column, “What Sportsmen Can Learn from the Army,” we admit hunters could theoretically disguise their clothing and smear their faces with mud to better blend in, but we advise against it since a fellow hunter might mistake the camouflaged hunter for game. Instead, we recommend avoiding all abrupt movements (as we still do). In 1947, a lineup of suggested clothing shows six hunters in six different hunting getups (left). Not one person wears camo. In the early ’60s, OL begins depicting hunters in crude patterns of mottled camo. We also publish a discussion of clothing and camo tips for bowhunters hoping to get closer to their quarry.

TRAIL CAMERAS

OPTICS

▶ When hunter George Shiras grew

▶ Our 1929 article “Considering the Hunting

restless in the off season, he channeled his frustrations into chasing wild game with a camera instead of a gun. He started taking photos in 1889, and ultimately devised what was likely the first rudimentary trail camera: He used trip wires to remotely trigger bulky cameras in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The results were stunning for the time, and OL devoted columns in multiple issues to Shiras’ contraptions and the remarkable photographs they captured. But it wasn’t until 2003 that the first roundup of commercially available trail cameras appeared in the pages of OL.

Scope” calls the riflescope “the greatest piece of conservation equipment ever invented.” Author Col. Townsend Whelen declares the new optic here to stay for its role in achieving greater accuracy for more humane kills. Using a scope would also, he speculates, eliminate mistaken target identity, thereby protecting off-limits species and fellow hunters. In 1901, we write of binoculars: “Splendid instruments for sportsmen…selling in large numbers for both sporting and military purposes. Though only introduced about a year ago, over 2,000 of them have already been sold.”

12 february/march 2017 outdoor life

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THE LIFE

THIS HAPPENED TO ME

↙

ANDRE TRUDEL, WOLFVILLE, NOVA SCOTIA i set up far from shore during low tide, and used a fallen tree trunk for cover.

i was hunting ducks on the mud flats of the bay of fundy.

the birds were plentiful, and i had a fine day dropping ducks. i was having such a great time, i didn't notice the incoming tide until it was too late.

I had been hunting a high spot on the flats, so now i found myself on a shrinking island. The water was too deep to walk back. I decided to sit on the tree and float to shore. Instead, the rising tide swept me out to open water!

Twelve hours later, the trunk beached itself in the early dawn. my waders saved me from hypothermia: my legs had been submerged overnight, but i stayed dry.

STORYTIME

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 illustration by tony shasteen

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.

outdoor life february/march 2017 13

APPS FOR HUNTERS ▪ TURKEY CHOKES

A smartphone loaded with hunter-focused apps ready for field use.

FIELD TEST

CREATIVE MARKET (PHONES)

GAME FINDERS

SIX TOP IN-FIELD APPS DESIGNED TO TURN YOUR SMARTPHONE INTO A MUST-HAVE HUNTING TOOL BY TONY HANSEN

section edited by tony hansen

outdoor life february/march 2017 15

GEAR APPS FOR HUNTERS ↘

The smartphone has become as vital a piece of gear for most hunters as our guns and bows. These little devices are good for texting buddies from the stand, playing games to stave off boredom, taking those annoying camocentric selfies, and—yes— actually helping us to kill more critters. As cell service has become more reliable and devices more sophisticated, the phones we carry in our pockets can do far more than make calls and snap photos. Most feature built-in GPS and available satellite imagery, and mapping detail is better than ever. Battery life continues to improve, and portable chargers make it possible to employ a smartphone for hours on end while afield. The missing link has been applications made to harness all that technology. The world of huntingfocused apps is growing, and there are some top-notch offerings to be had. In this test, we take a look at six apps focused on helping you find your way in the woods and making the most of your time once you get there.

terrastride inc.

HUNTSTAND huntstand’s robust and useful feature set alone could have put it in a serious battle with onXmap’s Hunt for the title of Editor’s Choice, but the fact that it includes free parcel boundaries gave it the decisive edge. Let’s start with the mapping. HuntStand’s system allows you to choose an array of map views, ranging from satellite aerial imagery to topographic to standard views with road names. The maps function as expected, and image quality is excellent (so long as you have an adequate cellular signal). The parcel boundaries can be turned on or off, and they provide property lines. You will encounter some areas that do not offer parcel details (of the 14 Michigan counties I tested, two did not), and the boundary lines are all you get. No landowner information is provided on the app, though the desktop version does include those details, and you can’t tell which property is public

versus privately owned, which is definitely a disappointment. Still, it’s the only app I’ve found that offers parcel boundaries at no charge. Unfortunately, a recent update to the app limits the number of parcels you can tap for details to 10 per month, and it appears HuntStand may soon charge for additional parcel details. Still, in-field applications are many. You can record sightings of game and create map boundaries. The weather feature is handy, if a bit clumsy. The overall user interface is intuitive and easy to master. It has a useful measuring tool for determining distance between points, and you can calculate acreage. One beef: The ads are annoying. But that’s to be expected of a free app. The desktop version has even more features, and you can sync data from the field to the desktop.

overall score: 84 huntstand.com

GEAR

APPS FOR HUNTERS

↙

HOW WE TEST

onxmaps

huntlogix, llc

HUNT

SCOUTLOOK HUNTING

the hunt app from onXmaps has been the standard by which other apps are measured when it comes to in-field navigation and data management. Prior to the creation of HuntStand , onXmaps was the only app available that allowed you to quickly view property boundaries in real time while afield. The app itself is free, but the property boundaries and parcel information layers require a subscription, with packages starting at $15 a month. The information is excellent, providing landowner information and acreage details, and it clearly differentiates between public and private lands. The app does gobble a fair bit of data. HuntStand’s maps and layers opened more quickly than other apps tested—particularly in areas with marginal cell service. To save on data charges and for operating in areas where cell service is unreliable, you can download the maps to the app via wifi and open them at any time, regardless of cell coverage. overall score: 78 onxmaps.com

scoutlook made its mark among hunting apps with the release of its weather-focused app and its ScentCone system. This feature indicates not only from which direction the wind is blowing, but it illustrates how the wind may spread your scent in the area. ScoutLook Hunting’s mapping system is similar to most navigational apps, offering satellite imagery and using the phone’s GPS signal to mark your location. What stands out in ScoutLook are the weather options. You can choose to view cloud cover and radar views, and cater the results to the type of game you’re hunting. The forecast is detailed and includes everything hunters need— wind direction, barometric pressure, moon phase, and so on. ScentCone and the app’s topnotch forecasting, plus its goodenough mapping system, creates a top-end free weather app. But it falls short on other hunter-focused features by comparison. overall score: 76 scoutlookweather.com

The same procedure was used to test all apps. Each one was downloaded to an iPhone 6 Plus running the latest OS. For apps requiring a paid service, I used either a free trial period or purchased a basic subscription (for onXmaps, a Michigan subscription was used). The apps were then used in the field in locations with known boundary lines to evaluate mapping location accuracy. For features that measured distance and/or acreage, I used a handheld rangefinder to verify accuracy. The apps were tested in areas of excellent LTE coverage, areas with marginal 3G coverage, and areas where cell service is not available. Loading times for map overlays and location services were measured using a stopwatch app. In-field use was evaluated while hunting. I recorded sightings of deer, treestand locations, and other points of interest. For apps offering the option to sync with a desktop version, I used a MacBook Pro from my home office to determine the accuracy of in-field recordings along with overall ease of use and utility. To assess the accuracy of the apps’ weather data, I compared it to data from Weather Underground’s mobile app. This included in-field readings of wind direction, wind speed, temperature, and precipitation forecasts. Solunar information, including sunrise and sunset times, were also checked for accuracy against data from Weather Underground’s mobile apps.

outdoor life february/march 2017 17

GEAR APPS FOR HUNTERS ↘

quiver app co

powderhook inc.

antler insanity

QUIVER

POWDERHOOK

ANTLER INSANITY

comparing this app to the others in the test is a bit difficult, given that its core functionality isn’t focused on mapping or navigation. But it is very much an app aimed at hunters, and thus worth including. The launch page features a useful weather forecast. Nothing special here, really. Once you start hunting, however, the app comes into play and is pretty cool. To begin, you simply tap “Start Hunt,” and the app will locate where you are, allow you to name the outing, and update the weather. From there, you can record any activity you want, including deer sightings, and add notes, images, etc. Each time you record an event, the weather, time, and moon phase are captured. Over the course of the season, you should begin to see data trends. Unfortunately, you need to do this deduction on your own. The app doesn’t offer any sort of analysis over time. This free app would be a lot more valuable if it had that functionality. overall score: 75 quiverapp.co

18 february/march 2017 outdoor life

powderhook’s concept is simple: You need a place to hunt and fish; the app helps you find one. At its core, PowderHook is a mapping app that includes public land boundaries. It’s a simple function, and one that the app does well. You can choose typical map overlay styles, including satellite imagery. Add public land boundaries and you can see at a glance where the nearest public ground is in relation to your location. Tap on any piece of public land and you’ll learn the name of the area and the available acreage, and you'll be offered a link to the area’s online information. That’s essentially the extent of the app’s functionality as it relates to in-the-field mapping and data management. The app does offer a social media component that allows users to connect and share information and content in a Facebook-like fashion. Overall, it’s a solid app for locating public land, but it offers little else in terms of mapping features or in-field applications. overall score: 67 powderhook.com

this free app has been available in the App Store since 2012, and has seen significant updates and revisions since then. But, it still hasn’t gotten things quite right. The user interface is somewhat clunky, and the graphics package can’t compete with others tested. One feature that is useful in the field, particularly when you’re hanging a new treestand or hunting a new area, is the ability to mark your location in the field for later navigational use. But Antler Insanity’s roundabout interface makes it a frustrating process. Marking property boundaries in the field is another feature that should see plenty of use. The trouble? It doesn’t seem to work. I tried several times to mark the boundary of a food plot but I couldn’t get the map to move over far enough to mark each corner. The sunrise/sunset feature is solid and even provides civil twilight times. But that single benefit isn’t enough to overcome the other shortcomings of the app. overall score: 64 antlerinsanity.com

GEAR

APPS FOR HUNTERS

HEL AND SP FILES ERVIC E T O TA L SCOR E

BAT USAGTERY E

9

9

8

9

8

7

free/ 10

8

8

8

84

ONYXMAPS HUNT

8

8

7

9

8

9

$15/ 7

7

7

8

78

SCOUTLOOK HUNTING

7

7

6

9

7

6

free/ 8

8

9

9

76

6

9

6

9

7

6

free/ 8

8

8

8

75

6

7

5

9

7

7

free/ 8

8

8

8

67

5

5

5

9

5

6

free/ 5

8

8

8

64

AT A GLANCE

HUNTSTAND

QUIVER

POWDERHOOK

ANTLER INSANITY

PRICE

APP S

PEED

/VALU

OVE FUNCRTALL IONAL ITY USER INTER FACE FEATU RE SE T MA ACCUPRPING ACY INUTILIFTIELD Y OFF USABLINE ILITY

HUNTING APPS TEST RESULTS

E

↙

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GEAR TURKEY CHOKES ↘

CHOKE JOB

AFTERMARKET SCREW-IN CHOKE TUBES CONTINUE TO CHANGE THE FACE OF TURKEY HUNTING BY GERRY BETHGE

20 february/march 2017 outdoor life

INDIAN CREEK BLACK DIAMOND STRIKE

price: $55

price: $75

▶ Hoping to capitalize on the craze of the Winchester Longbeard XR, Carlson’s touts its Longbeard XR choke as shooting best when used with the popular Winchester loads. The choke features Triple Shot Technology, which is said to reduce pellet deformation, shorten shot strings, and result in fewer flyers. The choke is also ported to reduce felt recoil from heavy lead and Hevi-Shot loads. Though we weren’t able to achieve similar results with nickel-plated lead, the Carlson’s attained the best pellet-count score (227) at prime turkey range—30 yards.

▶ Indian Creek began racking up the rave reviews a decade ago after multiple wins in the National Wild Turkey Federation’s World Still Target Championships. The brand remains popular among not only turkey hunters, but waterfowl and predator hunters as well. The most expensive choke in our testfire, the Strike did not pattern especially well out of our test gun, underperforming at both 20 and 30 yards. It’s available for all popular turkey guns in 10-, 12- and 20-gauge and will accommodate all lead and hybrid heavy loads from No. 4 to No. 9.

choketube.com

HOW WE TEST AN INSIDE LOOK AT HOW WE PERFORMED THE CHOKE TUBE TEST

indiancreekss.com

O  

ur test was designed to compare five turkeyhunting-specific shotgun chokes. With our 12-gauge Mossberg 935, we fired three No, 6 1=⁵⁄₈ oz. Spectra Shot White Lightning loads through each choke at measured distances of 20, 30, and 40 yards. Using standard-issue turkey targets, we counted the pellet hits in the 10-inch centering circles for each choke at the specific ranges to calculate an average. It bears noting that 3-inch No. 6 White Lightning loads contain an average of 352 nickel-plated lead pellets per round, as compared to, for example, 3-inch No. 6 Winchester Long Beard XR loads, which average 425 pellets. Patterns out of your turkey gun may vary.

JUSTIN APPENZELLER (CHOKES)

Though famed 19th-century trap shooter Fred Kimble is often cited as one of the earliest developers of shotgun bore constriction, no one knows for certain who was first to discover that a slight reduction in the bore diameter of a shotgun barrel at its muzzle would increase its effective range. Winchester first introduced screw-in interchangeable chokes in 1961. Initially, the WinChoke system was greeted with a collective yawn. But the successful reintroduction of the wild turkey and the hunters’ goal of slinging a large number of pellets downrange in an effort to take down a tough target changed the concept’s trajectory forever. Today, a dizzying number of aftermarket screw-in turkey chokes are available. Is there such a thing as “the best”? We wanted to try to find out for ourselves, so we went to the patterning board with five offthe-shelf choke tubes.

CARLSON’S LONGBEARD XR

THE PERF FEC CT COMBINATIONS

SA AVAGE TROPHY HUNTER NIKON 3-9X40 BDC SCOPE

SA AVAGE AXI X S II WEAVER KASPA 3-9X40 SCOPE

SAVAGE AXIS BUSHNE N LL SPORTSMAN 3-9X40 0 SCOP O E

MOUN U TED, BORE-SIGH HTED D AN A D READY TO SHO HOOT. O Geet out of the store and n into thhe wo w odss fast s er with our scoped-rifle packa k ges that are mounted, boree-ssight h edd and reeady d to si s ght. ghh The h se are the most accurate rifl i es paired with thee most trusted edd optics. No swa w pping ou o t,, no en e dl dlesss titnker e ing— g ju j st s the perfect com mbos for reeal hunters r.

GEAR TURKEY CHOKES ↘

MOSSBERG ULTI-FULL

PRIMOS JELLY HEAD MAXIMUM

REDHEAD BLACKOUT

price: included with gun

price: $60

price: $40

▶ In an age of specialized

▶ It’s pretty difficult to make a turkey choke look cool, but the zombie-green O-rings on the Jelly Head Maximum certainly do—if you’re into that sort of thing. The extended tapered and fluted ports of the Primos choke are designed to tighten patterns up to 20 percent and reduce recoil, while the proprietary Black-T coating helps prevent rust and corrosion. The Jelly Head Maximum is available in 12- and 20-gauge in various constrictions, and it outshot the field at 20 yards with a whopping 302 pellets (86 percent) in the 10-inch circle at 20 yards.

▶ Designed by Scott Carlson of Carlson’s Choke Tubes, the BlackOut is constructed of 17-4 heat-treated stainless steel finished in corrosion-resistant black oxide. It features 18 linear ports to help reduce recoil and increase pattern density, and it is rated for all types of loads, including lead, copper-plated lead, and Hevi-Shot. The BlackOut is available in various choke constrictions, from .575 in 20-gauge to .660, .675, and .680 in 12-gauge, and for all popular turkey gun models. It was a solid performer at all tested ranges, and comes at a discount price.

choke tubes with multiple ports and space-age coatings, can there really be room for a plain-Jane, manufacturer-provided choke in a choke tube test? Indeed, there is. The Mossberg UltiFull choke that came with our Mossberg 935 test gun is certainly nothing fancy. It was the only non-ported choke in the field and does not come with a lot of hype, but we felt compelled to include it in our shoot-off. The listed bore constriction is .695—the largest in our test group, but it scored best at 40 yards. mossberg.com

primos.com

basspro.com

RESULTS WITH 1⁵⁄₈ OZ. SPECTRA SHOT WHITE LIGHTNING TEST SPECS THE GUN: Mossberg 935 Combo Turkey/Deer gun; 24-inch barrel THE SIGHT: Burris FastFire 3 THE AMMO: Spectra Shot White Lightning; 3 inch; 1 ⁵⁄₈ oz. No. 6; approx. 352 pellets per shell THE RANGE: 20, 30, and 40 yards THE WEATHER: 50 degrees, no wind

22 february/march 2017 outdoor life

choke

constriction

pellets @20 yd.

pellets @30 yd.

pellets @40 yd.

CARLSON’S

.683

285

81%

227

64%

113

32%

INDIAN CREEK

.695

257

73%

164

47%

110

31%

MOSSBERG

.695

277

79%

211

60%

122

35%

PRIMOS

.690

302

86%

195

55%

93

26%

REDHEAD

.680

281

80%

218

62%

108

31%

turkey chokes supplied by basspro.com

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TROUT ▪ WALLEYES ▪ TACTICS

A sardine-caught sailfish, ready to be leadered.

SCOTT KERRIGAN

SALTWATER

THE SAILFISH COAST

The late-winter end of sailfish season in southeastern Florida had long since passed as billfish tournament veteran Grayson Kyte and I ventured through St. Lucie Inlet in Stuart, Florida, in my 23-foot Bay Ranger—hardly the type of boat that conjures images of extraordinary offshore action. Near the beach, I threw a 12-foot cast net over a school of threadfin herring and filled the livewells. Shortly thereafter, 5 miles offshore, in about 70 feet of water, we hastily rigged and pitched four baits—realizing instantly that we had dropped into a sailfish feeding frenzy. By day’s end, we’d released six sailfish in all— two of which we first spotted lazing on the surface—and put a couple of mahi in the box for dinner. It was an extraordinary day by any angler’s standards. BY TERRY GIBSON

section edited by gerry bethge • [email protected]

outdoor life february/march 2017 25

FISHING SALTWATER

A Florida sailfish tracks a nose-rigged sardine in nearshore waters of the Keys.

↘

SOUTHEASTERN FLORIDA AND THE FLORIDA KEYS PRIME TIME: NOVEMBER THROUGH MARCH Along the southeastern coast of the Florida Peninsula, and in the Keys, sailfish are a celebrated bluewater fish. In the northern end of the region, fish are found from the beach to 15 miles offshore. Anglers mostly troll—with light tackle—to cover water quickly. From Jupiter southward, the fish line up along reefs and rips, and the

art of kite fishing is king. Fishing is best from Fort Pierce to Key West from late November through March on days during and after cold fronts push through. Anglers can catch fish from kayaks and even from piers off Southeast Florida and in the Gulf of Mexico, in Florida’s Panhandle.

NORTHEAST FLORIDA PRIME TIME: APRIL THROUGH OCTOBER North of Cape Canaveral, sailfish aren’t necessarily a target species, but they are caught in the spring and fall by anglers trolling for marlin, tuna, wahoo, and mahi, which are found far offshore along the edge of the continental shelf. St. Augustine offers the closest access to the fishy offshore waters known simply as “the ledge.” Often, in the early fall, during the baitfish migrations, a few local captains who really have local conditions dialed in target sailfish in pretty shallow nearshore water—30 to 40 feet. Warm eddies break off the Gulf Stream in September and early October, putting the bait squarely within the sailfish comfort zone.

SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA PRIME TIME: APRIL THROUGH OCTOBER Here, billfish typically migrate through the blue water toward the end of spring and early fall. When anglers make the 40-plusmile runs, they’re also typically trolling for marlin, as well as tuna, mahi, and wahoo. Sailfish are often

26 february/march 2017 outdoor life

encountered, but captains mostly consider them a bonus.

NORTH CAROLINA AND POINTS NORTH PRIME TIME: MAY THROUGH SEPTEMBER Off the coast of the Carolinas and farther north, sails are again considered to be a bonus species, especially when the goal is a billfish slam. Peak fishing is late spring to early fall. Primary targets include blue and white marlin, so if you want to add three of the billfish species found in the western Atlantic to your bucket list, including a sailfish, the waters off North Carolina are a great bet.

“Sailfish are usually a little shallower than marlin,” says Captain Shep Dreyry, who fishes the waters of the Outer Banks in North Carolina. “We often run into wolf packs of sailfish when we troll a little shallower—say, 70 to 80 fathoms—which we do when we’re going for a slam.” Deep water is a 25- to 40-mile run out of most North Carolina ports. Those often-rough waters call for larger sportfishing vessels, and the primary target species call for heavier trolling tackle than is truly sporty for sailfish. If you’re looking for a blue-water adventure in pursuit of various billfish species, it’s hard to beat the Outer Banks.

B I L L F I S H T I M E TA B L E

CLEAR SAILING Generally, these are the best times to fish for spindlebeaks along the southeast coast.

nc

may–sept.

sc april–oct.

ga

april–oct. fl

nov.– march

CAPTAIN TIM SIMOS

F

ifteen or more years ago, such days were unheard of. No one targeted sails out of such small boats using such rudimentary tactics, and certainly no one consistently caught sailfish off Florida in the summer. Whether El Niño or global warming has influenced the sailfish migration is not clear. What is known is that a new ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) sailfish assessment supports the claims of abundance echoed by veteran captains along the southeastern coast. Fisheries biologists have also learned that sailfish aren’t nearly the longitudinal migrators they were once thought to be—their south-to-north travel patterns seem to fluctuate. Wherever they roam, from Key West to canyons off New Jersey, they seek out a narrow range of food-rich warm water, between about 73 and 82 degrees. Here’s a general guide for when, where, and how you can find them—in their new hotspots.

FISHING TROUT ↘

BROWN UNIVERSITY

he day late-winter brown trout fishing first made sense to me, I was fishing a tough beat of technical water on Michigan’s Manistee River with little expectation of success. With snow piled high on the banks and the river shallow and low, I aimed for one of the few available sanctuaries—an undercut bank. I overcast my target and landed my fly in the snow, and when I pulled it into the water, there came a splashy rise that I took for an optical illusion. No way a wild freestone brown in 32.8-degree water would whack a streamer on touch down. On the next cast I dropped my streamer on slack line right at the head of the cutbank, gave it a single twitch, and wham—the year’s first good hit. Since then I’ve become a devotee of winter brown trout fishing.

THE RIGHT BITE Late-winter water conditions put the angler at a great advantage. Pre-runoff rivers are typically clear and low, which can make locating trout as predictable as during that other clearand-low time of year, late summer. And with less river, your fly on any given cast covers that much more of it: advantage angler. None of this would matter, of course, if fish weren’t on the feed. But March brown trout certainly are: The lengthening days and bump in temperatures that usually come in March send a message of metabolic urgency to the fish after months of relative dormancy. That all said, when it comes to fishing March brown trout, there are two fundamentally

The magic time for late-winter browns is mid to late afternoon, after the sun has warmed pre-runoff rivers.

28 february/march 2017 outdoor life

different approaches: running-and-gunning from a moving drift boat or fishing slowly and thoughtfully on foot. Both have their advantages and pleasures. But the skill set—and mindset—each approach requires is different. Covering a ton of water with a big fly from a drift boat can be either an über-efficient way to fish or a big, cold waste of time. Pounding water from a moving boat is all about playing percentages, and those percentages depend on making consistent and quality presentations throughout the day. Make each cast count by vetting your cast locations. Got a deep, slow, outside bend where you can’t see the bottom? Don’t waste casts there. Instead, direct your efforts to where you can see bottom, if only barely. This ensures that any fish that does see your fly doesn’t have to move too terribly far to whack it. Late-winter streamers generally come in two flavors: flies that jig (Circus Peanuts, Sex Dungeons) and flies that swerve (Double Ds, Flash Monkeys). Having one of each in an understated natural color as well as a flashy attractor pattern is really all you need to show fish a few different looks throughout the day. And the less you have to think about your flies, the more you can think about your cast. All

other things being equal, choose the fly that you feel good about, the idea being that a confidence fly helps you keep your edge, and edge is what allows you to hunt effectively over the course of 10 to 12 miles of river.

WALK WAYS In contrast to the swing-for-the-fences approach of the boat game, the wading angler’s approach is just to make contact. Subtle, precise presentations become paramount, so a 6-weight rod that allows you to deliver softly and strategically wins out over a broomstick. Lines are different, too. Most fishermen prefer presentation lines for the wading streamer game—that is, lines with a rear taper that allow for easier aerial and on-the-water mending. A 9-foot tapered leader with a stout butt section connects you to your fly. When you wade, you’re not jarring a few mean-feeling fish into reacting so much as you are enticing every single trout into eating. Fly-wise, this means it’s time to downsize and de-flash. Opt for more imitative patterns like leeches and sculpins made with natural materials for plenty of passive action. Because fishing on foot really gives you the ability to soak a spot, make it a point to be on the best water during the chow-down hours of the day, which in late winter means 1 to 3 pm. Work the top spots with a variety of presentations—swinging, dredging, and stripping. And don’t give up before that midday window. Be there and you’ll see firsthand just how great the end of the winter season can be.

DAVE KARCZYNSKI (2)

 T

WHY WAIT FOR SPRING? LATE-WINTER TROUT ARE HUNGRY AND ACTIVE RIGHT NOW BY DAVE KARCZYNSKI

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↘

FOR YOUR ’EYES ONLY DITCH THE AUGER AND HITCH UP THE BOAT. OPENWATER WALLEYES ARE AVAILABLE ALL WINTER LONG BY BRIAN RUZZO

Minnesota guide Denver McKinnon with a hefty tailwater walleye.

snow starts to melt in March. Most tailwaters also feature nearby boat access sites. This, along with the combination of open water, concentrated walleyes, and boat access, makes these fisheries hard to ignore. But to take full advantage of tailwater fisheries, you have to pinpoint the fish and employ effective coldwater presentations. Here’s a close look at McKinnon’s tailwater strategies for winter walleyes.

TOP TARGETS ▶ While each tailwater is unique, anglers can expect to find concentrations of fish anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile downstream of the dam. At this time of year the flow is generally low, but boaters should

BRIAN RUZZO

W

e respond to snow, ice, and wind like clockwork. Winterize the boat, break out the ice gear, and fish the hardwater. While icefishermen will claim their share of walleyes, there are still open-water fisheries available at this time of year. You just need to know where to look. Excluding periods of extended below-zero conditions, most rivers—especially the tailwater stretches below locks and dams—will remain open, and that’s where walleyes will congregate for the next couple of months. According to Minnesota guide Denver McKinnon, walleye fishing remains excellent in the tailwater stretches beginning in January and lasting until the

FISHING WALLEYES

PETE SUCHESKI (ILLUSTRATION)

↙

still exercise caution when fishing near dams. Always maintain a safe distance and obey warning signs. When searching tailwaters for specific targets, focus on depth and current breaks. For example, natural holes or the waters just upstream or immediately downstream of a hump are excellent targets. Both of these locations are attractive to winter walleyes because of depth changes. McKinnon also recommends sandbars, which are very similar to humps. Current seams, whether created by natural points or man-made structures, such as wing dams, are equally productive. Finally, McKinnon looks for clam beds. Baitfish are drawn to them, and baitfish attract walleyes.

DRIFTING THREE-WAY RIGS AND TEARDROP JIGS ▶ McKinnon recommends a three-way rig for probing tailwaters for two reasons. First,

this rig allows for a natural, but subtle, presentation, which is critical at this time of year. Coldwater walleyes are lethargic, so they are not going to chase fast, erratic presentations. Second, the three-way rig allows you to easily reach deeper fish. McKinnon points out that during the winter months, most rivers will feature low-flow conditions. Low flow usually means clear water, which will drive the light-sensitive walleyes to deeper water. McKinnon’s three-way rig (see illustration) utilizes a No. 2 Aberdeen hook baited with a fathead minnow and is most effective when fished slowly with a controlled drift. McKinnon faces the bow of his boat downstream and drifts .1 to .2 mph faster than the current. If the current is more than 1.5 mph, this presentation will not work well. The bait will simply move too fast through the strike zone for winter fish.

3-WAY RIG

THE BIG MAC Denver McKinnon’s rig: (1) 8 lb. main line, (2) 36- to 48-in. leader, and (3) 10- to 12-in. dropper.

With his lines trailing from the back of the boat, McKinnon drifts across promising targets. This controlled drift allows him to entice strikes as he methodically presents the baits coming directly downstream to walleyes facing upstream. “The reason I drag slightly faster than the current is to keep the split shot from getting snagged,” explains McKinnon. “The rig will glide just above the bottom. When I first see or feel a fish bite, I take my rod to 45

1 2

3

degrees and then I set the hook. The delay gives the fish time to suck the rest of the bait in.” Often coldwater walleyes just grab the tail and then take the rest of the bait with a second effort. Because of these soft bites, McKinnon also favors medium-light rods with soft tips. These allow the fish to take the bait slowly and prevent the walleyes from feeling too much resistance and spitting the bait—especially heartbreaking in the dead of winter.

FISHING TACTICS ↘

GET TO THE POINT

AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO READING HIDDEN STRIKE ZONES BY MATT VINCENT

T  

he most reliable and potentially productive structure in every reservoir is the point—an irregular ridge that originates far above the waterline and runs down into the depths of a fishery. Not all points are created equal, however. A variety of factors, ranging from configuration to location and depth, make some points far better than others. Additionally, external and ever-changing influences like temperature, wind, and sunlight will also affect strike potential. But there are some ingredients that can tip the scales in your favor. The quickest way to catch more fish on your next trip is to forget the monotony of the bank. Get to the point and stay on it, because a little knowledge will go a long way when you’re targeting fish.

1. EDGES

▶ The most productive targets

inside a fishery are the edges— variations or anomalies in depth, structure, current, or temperature. Where edges converge is where reliable strike zones form. And the more edges that come together, the more consistent a pattern or strike zone can be. Examples of multiple edges on a point can be topographical irregularities in the point itself, like a sharp drop-off above a rubble pile or an isolated laydown at the end of a bed of aquatic vegetation. Look for such combinations.

2. GRAVEL SLIDES

▶ Gravel slides often form adjacent to submerged points. They represent overlooked but extremely productive habitat. Gravel slides typically form along the sides of points due to shoreline runoff or wave action. Below the surface, the gravel contrasts sharply with the static mud bank, in effect becoming a subtle edge and a potential strike zone. While they might start off shallow, some gravel slides continue down on steep points. Clean gravel draws forage such as crayfish, a favored prey item for apex

predators like black bass and other predatory species.

3. ROCK PILES

▶ Boulders and rock piles create potential hotspots on every point. In addition to providing predators with a place to hide, these rocky areas offer countless crevices and nursery areas for forage species, which again will automatically attract nearby predators. Because the above-water terrain often mirrors what lies beneath the surface, experienced anglers carefully analyze the ridgeline above, looking for anything different in its formation like outcrops, rock piles, or trees. Another worthwhile approach is to work a point all the way out to the end, and then work it back shallow. Some anglers will target a single point for hours, knowing it harbors fish, but switch lures on each pass to hopefully figure out where they are.

4. CURRENT

▶ Water movement will pinpoint

the location of actively feeding fish. Like an inland tide, especially inside power-generating impoundments, current activates feeding behavior in many fish species and will position predators to precise locations along a point. Generally, they move to the downcurrent side of the structure or cover, assuming an ambush position. Knowing that predatory fish like black bass, crappies, and striped bass face into the oncoming current, waiting for feeding opportunities, experienced anglers have learned that lure retrieve should mimic bait in the current. Presentations at slight angles to the current also produce reliable strikes atop points.

5. WIND

▶ Surface wind generates current

as well, and can be a major factor on points. The proverbial rule of thumb has always been to target windblown points on exposed banks rather than points in protected water, and this makes perfect sense. Wind generates current and water movement, which in turn pushes a

32 february/march 2017 outdoor life

critical link in the food chain, called phytoplankton, toward the windblown shore—not immediately but certainly several hours after a sustained wind. A strike zone can form where wind and current intersect with cover on a submerged point.

6. TEMPERATURE

▶ Without delving into the technical aspects of thermocline and temperature stratification, suffice it to say that water is never uniform inside an impoundment. And because oxygen content is part of the underlying equation from the surface down to the bottom year-round, it’s safe to simply say that aquatic life inside a fishery tends to gravitate toward comfort zones, or primary activity layers determined by temperature, water depth, and seasonal fluctuations. The thermocline is clearly visible with electronic equipment by increasing “gain” on a good depthfinder or simply by looking at baitfish activity. If you find baitfish and predators at 25 feet on one point, you can run a 25-foot pattern on every other point in the vicinity.

7. COVER

▶ By definition, “cover” is anything that provides fish with a place of refuge or point of orientation. In the broadest sense, that can vary from brush piles to laydowns to aquatic vegetation. The most common types of cover found on points are stumps and standing timber that were left in place prior to impoundment. In many Southern fisheries, the dominant form of cover is aquatic vegetation. Strike zones develop where cover and structure intersect; therefore, a viable fishing strategy is to simply focus on the intersection of cover and structure. Above-average strike zones will also develop where different types of cover intersect on the same point. A good example of this would be isolated timber or submerged stumps on a windblown point where current is present. Chances are good you’re going to get bit in a place like that.

illustration by kevin hand

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.46

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THE 6 CREED

Page 36

THERMAL IMAGERS Page 42

FISH BYTES

Page 44

2.8

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3

SUPER SONAR

Page 46

NEXT IN LINE Page 47

BIONIC BINOCULARS Page 48

GAME GAINS

Page 50

As much as sportsmen grumble about technology and change, the fact is we love both. Even the most diehard recurve-wielding bowhunter thinks nothing of scouring Google Maps for new spots and then heading into the woods with Gore-Tex on his back and a rangefinder in his pocket. ¶ Our attraction to technology is linked to our desire for self-improvement. We all strive to become better shots. New, efficient bullets are more accurate than ever, and Hornady’s just-released ballistic engine gives us a level of precision for calculating trajectories that had been unavailable to the general public. ¶ Some of the tech here is truly disruptive as well. The look, feel, and performance of our optics are poised to undergo the most radical change in decades, as nano lenses move from the realm of science fiction into reality. ¶ Whether we admit it or not, most of us are going to enjoy this ride.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BILL BUCKLEY • ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLINT FORD • RETOUCHING BY ERIC HEINTZ outdoor life february/march 2017 35

ordered a Surefire muzzle brake and sound suppressor. Warne built a custom one-piece 20-MOA Picatinny rail for the dovetails on the Sako receiver, and I topped it with a Leupold M5 scope. Once George finished the rifle, I sent it to Jeremy Holmes, a talented artist who adorned it with Mongolian nomads on horseback using eagles to hunt wolves (see rifle #3, opposite page). The 6 Creed’s performance was as dazzling as the rifle’s paint job. Using 105-grain A-Max bullets behind 43.2 grains of H4831SC, it had no difficulty ringing steel at 1,000 yards and beyond. Mission accomplished. We did this work in 2009, and the story appeared in the August 2010 issue of Outdoor Life, after which George and I didn’t give much thought to the little wildcat and moved on to other projects. Little did we realize, however, we had planted a seed that was poised to blossom. It just needed the right environment in which to flourish. That came along a couple of years later, with the rise of Precision Rifle Series (PRS) competition.

HOW OL’S WILDCAT CAME TO DOMINATE LONG-RANGE PRECISION-RIFLE SHOOTING BY JOHN B. SNOW

IT STARTED AS the mere spark of an idea back in 2007. I wanted to write an article about how one goes about developing a wildcat cartridge. As a fan of long-range shooting, and in order to give the story an editorial hook with some sex appeal, I decided a cartridge capable of accurate 1,000-yard shots that had moderate recoil was the way to go. My ambitions for this wildcat extended no further than getting a good feature out of it, and using it to hunt coyotes and deer. The 6.5 Creedmoor had been introduced earlier that year and it seemed like a good candidate for a parent cartridge. I spoke with my friends at Hornady and they agreed to help out. Necking the 6.5 down for 6mm bullets was simple and straightforward, and the round seemed like it would meet my criteria. Thus the 6mm Creedmoor was born. But here’s a bit of trivia you won’t read anywhere else: Its original name was the 6mm HOLE, for Hornady–Outdoor Life Express, a clever moniker I was fond of but that was soon rejected by my pals at Hornady as too cute. It pains me to admit it, but they were right.

THE FIRST 6 CREED

A cartridge is only as good as the rifle that sends it downrange, so I needed to find someone to build a gun that would do it justice. I knew George Gardner, owner of GA Precision, by reputation, but I had never spoken with him before. Friends of mine who own GA rifles boasted about their ruggedness and accuracy. (GA stands for “Gnat’s Ass,” a reference to the tight groups his rifles make.) I called George up and explained the project. After quizzing me about the details, he agreed to pitch in. I sent him a Sako 85 action and a McMillan stock. Hornady helped George procure a reamer and made custom reloading dies for the two of us. I got a barrel from Bartlein, and I

TASTE OF VICTORY

1 A GA Precision in 6 Creedmoor configured for hunting. It is outstanding on deer-sized game and predators.

2 The author’s 6 Creed GA Precision, which he uses in long-range competition.

3 The very first 6 Creedmoor. George Gardner built it for the author’s wildcat feature.

In the PRS, shooters race against the clock to hit steel targets that are worth different point values, depending on their difficulty. Every shooter strives for first-round hits, which are typically worth more points, but the ability to spot misses and make quick corrections with follow-up shots is one skill that separates top competitors from the rest of the pack. Depending on the time allotted, it can be a sprint to engage all the targets in a stage, which can be anywhere from 10 to 1,300 yards downrange, so quick shooting is a must. A good PRS cartridge must shoot flat, not beat up the shooter with recoil, use bullets with high BCs that buck the wind, and not have a muzzle velocity in excess of 3,200 fps so as not to damage the targets. The 6 Creedmoor fit the bill perfectly. “When the PRS started, semi-autos seemed like the way to go,” Gardner says. “You had high round-count stages and quick target transitions. I’d been shooting the .243 for years, but when you load target bullets to full length in the .243, they won’t fit in an AR-10 magazine. “I was scratching my head and thought the 6 Creedmoor might work. I’d left the reamer in a toolbox and the dies were sitting on a shelf in my house, literally gathering dust,” he says. To test his theory, Gardner chambered an AR-10 barrel in 6 Creed, loaded

some rounds, and in a few days was shooting. He liked how it ran and made a second AR-10 barrel for Jeff Bradley, who is on George’s official shooting team. A few weeks later, the two of them used their 6 Creeds in a local Missouri PRS match. Bradley took third place, and other shooters took notice. The following season, in 2013, the other members of George’s team wanted to shoot 6 Creedmoors, but in bolt guns. George built the rifles and the shooters did very well, with five of them finishing in the top 10 in the PRS finale. PRS shooters upgrade gear quickly if they feel it will give them an edge, and based on how well the 6 Creedmoor did, demand started to grow. Both Gardner and other custom rifle makers turned out 6 Creed rifles at a steady rate. I certainly wasn’t going to be left in the dust, so I had George build me a 6 Creedmoor for PRS competition too. From the start, ammo was an issue. Taking 6.5 Creedmoor brass and necking it down isn’t difficult, but it is time consuming, and the handful of boutique companies that made 6 Creedmoor loads couldn’t meet the demand. “At the next SHOT Show, I talked with Hornady and they told me they would make 6 Creedmoor brass, properly sized and headstamped, but that the minimum run was 100,000 pieces,” Gardner says. He took a leap of faith and placed the order. The brass sold out in about a month.

RACE TO THE TOP

This was the first real indication that the round was generating momentum beyond the community of 6 Creed PRS shooters, who numbered perhaps a few dozen. Nobody knew the exact number of 6 Creedmoor rifles that were being used in matches or slung over shoulders during deer season, but reports started to trickle in from hunters and long-range enthusiasts who had converted. Since that initial order, Gardner has sold more than 1 million pieces of 6 Creedmoor brass. Of course, the 6 Creedmoor faced competition from other rounds. The 6XC cartridge that David Tubb initially developed for High Power had been around for a couple of years before the 6 Creed appeared, but it was costly to reload and doesn’t offer quite as much speed. Other 6mm cartridges cropped up too. The 6x47 Lapua, 6mm Dasher, and 6mm Super LR have made their mark, and every now and then someone still

outdoor life february/march 2017 37

steps up to the line with a .243 Win. These are all viable cartridges, but the 6 Creed is the king of the pack, used by more of the top 50 PRS shooters than any other. What about the 6.5mm cartridges like the 6.5 Creedmoor, .260 Rem., and 6.5x47 Lapua that had also been highly touted? They still have their fans and still rack up wins, but the migration to 6mm cartridges is undeniable. The excellent precisionrifleblog.com, run by Cal Zant, is a wealth of information about long-range shooting, and his data show that whereas the split among the top shooters using 6mm vs. 6.5mm cartridges was roughly equal in 2012 and 2013, with 6mms holding a slight edge, in 2014 the gap started to widen in favor of the 6mms. Now that Hornady is offering the 6 Creedmoor as a factory load with its new 108-grain ELD Match bullet this year, you can bet more shooters will take to the round and that it will gain a firmer hold with long-range marksmen. Rifle makers have noticed as well. Montana Rifle Company, Savage, Ruger, and Browning all have factory 6mm Creedmoor guns in the works, most of which are geared toward hunters. These developments—Hornady offering it as a standard load, and several major firearms companies building rifles—mean the 6mm Creedmoor’s long-term success is assured.

THE RIGHT STUFF

I frequently get asked what makes the 6mm Creedmoor better than other cartridges, especially those like the .243 Win., which seem so similar on paper. I

The 6mm Creedmoor’s growth has been driven by demand from shooters in the field and not by marketing efforts from large gun and ammo companies.

usually say, “It wins.” That answer is a bit glib, but there’s truth to it as well. Dissecting the pros and cons of specific cartridges is difficult, but there are a couple of features about the 6mm Creedmoor, which happen to be shared by many of the other cartridges listed above as well, that shed some light on the matter. The 30-degree slope of the shoulder is one advantage. This not only promotes better brass life than the shallower shoulders on the .243 Win. and .308 Win. for example, but we’ve come to learn that cartridges with this shape are very efficient, meaning we can achieve velocities equivalent to other cartridges that are able to hold more powder. The long neck on the 6mm Creedmoor provides a lot of surface area to grip the bullets, providing good, consistent neck tension, aiding accuracy. And we’ve already touched on the fact that we can load long bullets in the case to full length, allowing them to cycle through magazine-fed standardlength actions without difficulty. The velocities attained by the cartridge hit a sweet spot as well. Depending on the powder, bullet weight, and barrel length, the 6 Creedmoor has muzzle velocities from just below 3,000 fps up to 3,150 fps or so. At these speeds, you get excellent downrange performance while having good barrel life as well. And the longer a barrel remains “a shooter,” the more opportunity there is for the person behind the trigger to master the rifle and cartridge before rebarreling. One also cannot ignore the financial

side of the equation either. When the 6.5 Creedmoor was developed, one of its explicit goals was to be easy and economical to reload. Those characteristics were passed down to the 6 Creedmoor. The brass is reasonably priced, and the powder and other components are readily available. Prior to the introduction of the new 6mm bullets (see p. 41), the go-to load for the 6 Creed was 42.2 grains of H4350 driving 105 gr. Berger Hybrids. This is still a formidable load and will continue to be competitive despite the arrival of the newcomers nipping at its heels.

LESS IS MORE

This notion of the modern, moderate cartridge is only going to become more popular as time goes on. Rounds like the 6.5 Creedmoor, the .260 Remington, the .338 Federal, and, of course, the 6 Creed are all good examples of this design philosophy. There are still plenty of shooters obsessed with speed—just take a look at the 6.5-300 Weatherby and the 26 Nosler—but with today’s modern hunting bullets, we are able to take larger game more easily and ethically than ever with the aforementioned softer-shooting rounds. If you put two shooters behind similar hunting rifles, one chambered in .300 Win. Mag. and the other in 6mm Creedmoor, I can guarantee you that the person using the 6 Creed will shoot more often, be more accurate, and, ultimately, be more deadly than the guy trying to master the .300 Win.

Mag.—at any range. I’ve been competing with the 6 Creedmoor for years, but I only started hunting big game with it more seriously two seasons back. During the fall of 2015, between my son and my friends and me, we tagged eight animals with my two GA Precisions, including four antelope, three whitetails, and a mule deer. Our shots ranged from 20 feet—a whitetail buck that walked within arm’s reach of my son—to 468 yards—his first mule deer. The rest of the animals were taken between 380 and 450 yards. All were rock-solid one-shot kills. Credit has to go to the pinpoint accuracy Gardner’s rifles achieve in the 6 Creedmoor. Bullet placement is the most important factor when it comes to making a clean kill, and having a rifle and cartridge that are able to place shot after shot into the mouth of a coffee can at 500 yards makes the task much easier. I’m not alone in my enthusiasm for the 6 Creedmoor on game. Many predator hunters, including one federal trapper whose main job is predator control, consider the 6 Creedmoor the ultimate coyote round. All this success is just a taste of what’s to come for the 6 Creedmoor. This year a lot more hunters and shooters are going to have a chance to experience what all the fuss is about. Based on how the 6 Creed has excelled in competition and in the field to date, I’m guessing they are going to be happy with what they see. Not bad for a cartridge that was just meant to be a one-off for a story in a magazine.

ABOUT THE COVER RIFLE AND RIFLESCOPE MONTANA RIFLE COMPANY is one of the first major gun companies to roll out a production rifle in 6mm Creedmoor. Called the Mountain Snow Rifle, it is based on the M1999 action, a two-lug bolt-action that is an appealing hybrid of a Mauser-action and a Model 70, with a fulllength claw extractor, a three-position safety, and a fixed-blade ejector. I’ve hunted with and shot more MRC rifles over the last decade than I can recall, using them on everything from prairie dogs and antelope to deer and elk. I’ve even shouldered them in big-bore competitions, shooting their dangerous-game model in .416 Rigby. The talented craftsmen at MRC put a lot of handwork into every rifle, individually hand-lapping actions and barrels, and tuning the triggers, among a dozen other things that go into making a firearm that is a cut above standard mass-produced fare. For the new 6 Creedmoor model, the company has gone with a 24-inch stainless barrel with a muzzle brake. The synthetic stock is done in the eye-catching Kryptek Pontus pattern. The stock has a single standard swivel stud on the forend for a bipod, and has flush-mounted QD cups fore and aft for slings and accessories. I asked for cups mounted at 3, 6, and 9 o’clock for maximum flexibility in terms of sling positions. Taking a cue from my experience as a competitive shooter, I now carry an ultra-light (3.6 oz.) rear bag from Wiebad when I hunt that clips into a QD cup on the buttstock. Another advantage to the QD cups is that they allow for 360 degrees of rotation for the sling attachments, meaning you’ll never end up with a loose swivel stud or a stripped swivel stud screw again. The rifle is topped with a 5–25x52 Sig Sauer Whiskey5 riflescope. The 30mm scope, which will be introduced this year, features Sig’s LevelPlex digital anti-cant system, a Hellfire illuminated reticle, and a custom turret system to tune the second-plane reticle to your load’s ballistics. ($1,690; montanarifleco.com; $1,320; sigsauer.com) —J.B.S.

outdoor life february/march 2017 39

which BCs are approximations. What ends up happening is that shooters need to fudge the values for the BCs of their bullets at different distances in order to get them to line up with their real-world results. “Frustrating” is the most family-friendly term I can use to describe this process. Here’s what Hornady says: “The inaccuracies seen when using BC, even G7, are due to the mismatch between the actual drag of the projectile being fired and the drag of the standard projectile being used to model it.” I know what you’re thinking: What if, instead, we could create actual profiles of bullets in flight and use that data as the basis for our ballistic calculations and be rid of BC altogether? Well, cowboy, this is your lucky day. The new Hornady 4DOF ballistic calculator does just that. Using Doppler radar, Hornady was able to physically model the projectiles

MEET THE TECH THAT MAKES BALLISTIC COEFFICIENTS OBSOLETE BY JOHN B. SNOW

BALLISTIC COEFFICIENTS and the ballistic calculators that rely on them to compute bullet trajectories have been a mainstay for shooters for years. But as anyone who’s dealt much with BCs knows, they are messy things. First off, BCs—which, roughly speaking, measure how well a projectile handles air resistance—aren’t constants. The actual value of the BC of a bullet in flight changes depending on how fast the bullet is traveling. Put another way, BC varies with distance from the shooter. So when you see a published BC, you have to wonder at what distance, and under what environmental conditions, it was calculated. Secondly, BCs are grouped based on projectile shape, the most common categories being G1, for typical pointed hunting bullets, and G7, for sleek VLD (very low drag) bullets. So every G1 value you see for a bullet is in relation to the “standard” G1 bullet shape. The same goes for the G7 values. What makes this problematic is that real bullets don’t match up exactly with those standard shapes. This is another way in

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in their 4DOF library. Now, “4DOF” stands for 4 degrees of freedom, which sounds like an alt-rock group but is actually scientific terminology. Standard ballistic programs account for 3 degrees of freedom—the bullet’s elevation, windage, and distance traveled. The fourth DOF is the projectile’s movement (yaw and angle of attack) in relation to its line of flight. Additionally, the 4DOF engine uses a drag coefficient (CD) value, which is specific to the bullet and not the BC, which as we’ve noted is an approximation. As a result, the 4DOF program is the first publicly available ballistic engine that accurately accounts for subtle but important effects on bullet flight like aerodynamic jump, which is the vertical shift a bullet experiences in a crosswind. For serious long-range shooters, this is a godsend.

FOUR DEGREES OF FREEDOM The 4DOF ballistic engine takes into account the attitude of the projectile relative to its line of flight, which is one reason for the software’s superior trajectory calculations.

ANGLE OF ATTACK

WINDAGE

RANGE

ELEVATION

THREE NEW, AND ACCURATE, .243-CALIBER BULLETS THAT WILL DUKE IT OUT IN COMPETITION THIS YEAR BY JOHN B. SNOW

HORNADY 108-GRAIN ELD MATCH BC G1: .536 BC G7: .270 Price: $45 PER 100 Contact: HORNADY.COM

One of the newest additions to Hornady’s ELD (Extremely Low Drag) series, this bullet effectively replaces the older 105-grain A-Max, which has been a mainstay of the Hornady line for decades. Expect to see real-world pricing of about $33 per 100.

WHY IT’S HOT

The big news with this bullet is the tip. Hornady calls the polymer tip a “heat shield” that it says will not melt or deform in flight. During Hornady’s development of the ELD series they discovered erratic flight characteristics with many standard polymer-tipped bullets with high BCs (.500 and up) because the tips would begin to melt. Hornady also says the polymer tips give the projectile a consistent meplat, meaning less variation in BC from shot to shot. As a hunting bullet, the ELD Match is best for varmints and small predators—not big game. You can expect the bullet to fragment violently when it encounters any serious resistance—not what you want should it strike the shoulder of a deer.

BEHIND THE BC

The BC values provided by Hornady were established by Doppler radar and have been corrected to standard atmospheric conditions.

DTAC 115-GRAIN RBT CLOSED NOSE

NOSLER 105-GRAIN RDF

BC G1: .620

BC G1: .571

BC G7: N/A

BC G7: .280

Price: $145 PER 500

Price: $26 PER 100

Contact: DAVIDTUBB.COM

Contact: NOSLER.COM

These bullets from David Tubb were introduced last year and became the instant must-have projectile for long-range 6mm shooters. Sierra Bullets makes them for Tubb, and however many he managed to get his hands on and sell through his website were snapped up in an instant, and they have been in a near permanent state of backorder ever since. Tubb is the only source for the DTACs.

Nosler has just come out with a new line of bullets for the longrange market. While the company has had match offerings in its catalogue before, the RDF series is Nosler’s most serious effort yet to court the growing number of precision shooters. The initials stand for Reduced Drag Factor, in reference to the projectiles’ high BCs. Nosler doesn’t publish MSRPs for bullets. The price listed above is per midwayusa.com.

WHY IT’S HOT

Tubb says the bullets have a similar form to other DTAC bullets, but with one exception. These have a rebated boattail (hence the RBT in the name), which improves barrel life. How so? According to Tubb, “a rebated boattail bullet obturates [conforms] faster and more efficiently to the rifle bore. This results in quicker sealing and less gas blowby.” The RBT design also “slows down barrel throat erosion. This erosion results from the ‘flame-cutting’ effect of burning propellant gases, which is intensified by a conventional boattail design,” Tubb says.

BEHIND THE BC

The bullet’s BC was measured on an Oehler 88 chronograph, and the .620 G1 value is based on its performance at 1,000 yards. Right out of the muzzle, Tubb says, the G1 value is .590. The company hasn’t calculated a G7 value yet. In the 6XC cartridge, which was created by Tubb, the bullet will surpass 3,000 fps.

WHY IT’S HOT

Nosler designed these bullets with a compound ogive and a long boattail in order to optimize their flight characteristics. The company has also gone to pains to make the hollowpoint on the bullet as small as possible in order to further reduce drag and to give the bullets a consistent meplat. Because there is so little variation in the quality of the points, Nosler says, there is no need to trim meplats or otherwise point up the bullets, saving on prep time. As an added bonus, Nosler’s engineers say that the compound ogive on the RDF bullets makes them much less sensitive to seating depth. In theory, this means that handloaders who are cranking out hundreds of rounds to prepare for a match don’t need to worry about accuracy degradation due to slight variations in seating depth.

BEHIND THE BC

Nosler sent bullets out to a number of shooters around the country who independently verified the BCs by shooting them over chronographs at varying distances. Nosler corrected the BCs for standard atmospheric conditions and says the values listed are “conservative.”

being that they are illegal for civilians to own. Or they think they’re too expensive to attain. Neither is the case, though the issue of their expense has some merit. Even just a few years ago, a quality thermal imager would cost more than $10,000, placing it out of reach for all but the well-heeled. It’s a different world today. Companies like FLIR, Leupold, L-3, and Sig Sauer have all rolled out thermal products with price tags comparable to higher-end scopes and binoculars, costing roughly between a few hundred to two thousand dollars. Of course, you can still write a bigger check for a top-end thermal unit, but the prices on those are dropping as well.

THERMAL IMAGERS HAVE BECOME BETTER AND CHEAPER. HERE’S WHY BY JOHN B. SNOW

THE HUMAN EYE is a wondrous instrument, but its observational powers are limited to the narrow band of radiation that, not surprisingly, we call visible light. This represents just a fraction of the bandwidth of electromagnetic energy that exists in our universe. And our inability to peer into this vast space with the unaided eye leaves us, both literally and metaphorically, in the dark. At one end of the visible spectrum is blue and violet. At the other end is orange and red. Once we move beyond red light, we’re in the realm of infrared radiation, which is invisible to our eyes but which we still can detect through the sensation of heat on our skin. It is this energy that thermal imagers pick up and then translate into visible light for us. When you look through a thermal imager, you’re not actually “seeing” the object as you would with a regular optic. Rather, you’re viewing a small screen, like a mini TV, that projects a digital image for your eye based on an interpretation of the thermal energy in the environment. Many people believe that thermal imagers are restricted for military or law enforcement use, the perception

IR WAVES

GERMANIUM LENS

Thermals come at different prices and for different purposes. 1. Leupold LTO Tracker ($874; leupold.com) 2. FLIR Scout III 640 ($3,499; flir.com) 3. Flir Scout TK ($599; flir.com) 4. LWTS Light Weapon Thermal Sight ($13,499; eotechinc.com) 5. Armasight Apollo 640 30Hz ($5,795; armasight.com) 6. Sig Sauer Echo 1 ($3,124; sigsauer.com) 7. Insight MTM-PI ($10,000; insight technology.com)

Basic thermal units are used for observation. This gives sportsmen the ability to retrieve downed game, find a lost bird dog, or just figure out what is crashing around outside the tent at night. Weapon sights are more expensive—$2,000 and up—and can be used for the nighttime hunting of feral pigs, predators, and other non-game animals. In terms of legality, we have a patchwork of laws and regulations, along with some gray areas, that govern how (or if) thermal devices can be used afield. You’ll need to check— and perhaps double check—with the authorities where you live to see what’s allowed. One thing to be aware of is that thermal units do not project any type of artificial light. Many states have regulations that ban the use of any illumination source, including spotlights and IR lights, for hunting. Standard, “green” nightvision often projects light, but thermal is a “passive” technology.

The key to thermal technology is the lens at the front of the unit. It is made from an element called germanium, which is similar to silicon. One property of germanium is that it is transparent in infrared wavelengths. It is also expensive. “The cost of germanium is kind of like [that of] a diamond. As the lens gets bigger, the cost goes up exponentially,” says Angelo Brewer, national sales manager at FLIR. And the size of the lens corresponds to the amount of thermal energy the unit captures. “What the lens does is focus heat the way a regular glass lens focuses visible light,” Brewer adds. This focused thermal energy then hits a sensor called a focal-plane array (FPA). The FPA uses what amounts to a series of resistors that respond to this energy by generating electrical impulses. These impulses are translated into video pixels on the display that your eye sees, giving you a picture of the thermal environment. The greater the resolution of an FPA, the more detail you get. Here’s another catch with thermal imagers, though. Making FPAs is tricky. There’s a fairly high rejection rate. The problem is the manufacturer doesn’t know if a particular FPA is going to work well until it has already been built. This adds to the cost too. But manufacturing efficiencies and the growing use of thermal technology in the automotive, outdoors, and other consumer markets is making thermal imagery cheaper and more accessible. The question isn’t whether hunters are going to start using thermal, but rather what kinds of uses the broader sporting community will deem acceptable.

VIDEO OUTPUT

SIGNAL PROCESSOR

CONCENTRATED INFRARED LIGHT

USES IN THE FIELD

HOW IT WORKS

OCULAR LENS

ELECTRONIC SIGNALS

HOW THERMAL WORKS

outdoor life february/march 2017 43

SPACE-AGE LURES THAT LOOK, SOUND, ACT— AND EVEN SMELL— LIKE LIVE BAIT BY JAMES BRANDT

ANGLERS DON’T SPEAK in terms of how many megabytes they used to catch a fish, but they could. Technology has deeply penetrated the venerable sport of fishing. Luckily, lure manufacturers are operating with an unlimited data plan and are willing to use the collective science developed in aerospace design, the food industry, and Silicon Valley to enhance the traditionally primitive art of tricking a fish into biting an artificial bait. Long gone are the days of whittling wooden crankbaits and carving worm shapes into wax for molding. The lure matrix is now computerized, and each byte used toward the goal of artificial bait production results in more bites for anglers.

1 THE ROBOBAIT

“The technology that goes into Livingston Lures is cutting edge,” says Erick Arnoldson, national sales director for the company. “But our concept is simple. We are using advanced digital circuitry to produce a lure that mimics real forage species not only in the way

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1. Livingston Lures feature internal circuitry that produces the sounds of baitfish. Smartphone programming will allow you to not only change the bait’s sound, but accurately mark where it gets bit. 2. Live Target Lures gained notoriety for ultra-realistic paint schemes, but it’s their analysis of live bait hydrodynamics that helps the lures act realistically.

that it swims and looks, but in the way that it sounds as well.” According to Arnoldson, this is no easy feat. “Most hard-bait manufacturers have about four steps they use to produce a bait. We have about 35.” First, tiny circuit boards are programmed and the sound of distressed baitfish—a soft drumming noise made as gill plate muscles beat against the swim bladder—are downloaded onto microchips. Next, the battery, speaker system, and LEDs (if applicable) are welded into the lure body in a specific fashion in precise locations to ensure the proper balance. “Unlike any traditional lure manufacturer, we have a clean room for assembly. This is a dust-free environment, and it is climate-controlled. . “We have developed software to improve battery life to two years. Water completes the circuit, so when our bait is out of the water, it turns off. With the new software, our baits also detect movement. Now, even when submerged, if there is a long period without movement, the bait goes into a deep sleep,” Arnoldson says. Lures cost about $15. WHAT’S NEXT : “Be on the lookout for our Smart Aquatic Marine Instrument (SAMI) app,” Arnoldson says. “It will allow you to program your Livingston Lure with your smartphone. You will be able to select up to 30 different sounds. And when you catch a fish, the GPS data and environmental conditions will all be stored automatically.”

2 VIRTUAL DESIGN

“The process at Live Target Lures starts in the world of virtual reality, much like cars do in the automotive industry,” explains Vic Cook, who leads the company’s product development team. “A software program allows us to understand the hydrodynamics and swimming characteristics of a lure long before it is produced.” And that is important to Live Target. The goal of this company is to create lures so lifelike, you—and the fish— cannot tell them from real forage species. “Once a bait has passed our virtual reality tests, we send the file to a 3-D printer in one of our three research labs. The particular printer we use can utilize a wide variety of materials. So, we can print a soft-plastic swimbait and it will be supple, or we can print a

hard-plastic crankbait with the exact hardness required for the final product. This allows us to modify quickly and perfect every aspect of a lure before going into production,” Cook says. “Our paint schemes are incredibly intricate as well. We use a computer program to build the paint model, and then it separates into a bunch of singlecolor layers. These become multiple templates that are then given to our team for hand painting.” WHAT’S NEXT: “It’s hard to imagine how

material developed for space travel might help a guy catch fish,” says Cook, “but when you mess technology with fishing imagination, crazy things can happen—and that’s what we’re working on. These proprietary highly advanced plastics and metals the fishing industry has never before seen will be implemented in our manufacturing.”

3 FUTURISTIC PLASTIC

A plastic worm is a plastic worm, right? Well, it was until the aerospace industry developed super-polymers. The result is ElaZtech, a superplastic that has made Z-Man a staple for anglers. “Our parent company is deep into the cutting edge of polymer science. Once we became aware of some of these superplastics, it took a couple of years, a ton of research, and countless modifications to plastic recipes to create a blend that would work for fishing applications. ElaZtech was eventually perfected and introduced to the fishing world in 2006,” says Daniel Nussbaum, president of Z-Man. “It is unlike any other plastic bait you’ve used. We market it as being 10 times tougher than standard plastic, but that’s a very conservative estimate. We’ve caught 250 fish on one bait. You can stretch this material to 5 times its original size before it will break. It’s like this material is from another planet— and it’s 100 percent nontoxic. “We actually had to borrow some technology from the food industry to compound, create, and color our material. All of our equipment is specialized because nobody else handles or creates with this type of plastic,” says Nussbaum. FUTURE ADVANCEMENTS: “As materials continue to evolve, we’ll hopefully create a bait that’s 20 times stronger than standard plastic.”

AN ASSORTMENT OF Z-MAN’S ELAZTECH CREATURE BAITS.

NEXT-GEN FISH FINDERS: ENHANCED CHIRP AND BEYOND

B Y C A P T. J O H N R A G U S O

THE FISH FINDER is arguably an angler’s most important piece of marine electronics when it comes to ensuring rod-bending action. The dizzying technology has certainly come a long way since Daryl Lowrance’s original portable “little green box” Fish Lo-K-Tor 12V flasher of the early 1960s. But it’s what’s ahead that both excites and intrigues.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Although CHIRP (compressed highintensity radar pulse) sounders have been all the rage the past few seasons, according to Dean Kurutz, Furuno’s vice president of sales, marketing, and product planning, CHIRP was actually something old that became something new, and will soon come packed with enhanced fish-finding features for recreational anglers. Originally developed by the U.S. Navy back in the 1950s, in their effort to have sonar penetrate deeper into the water column to better map the ocean floor (and locate enemy submarines), CHIRP generated cleaner and more detailed screen images than any of its antiquated forerunners. CHIRP sounders have been in use in commercial fishing boats for decades, but the recent technological explosion in microprocessors and color screen displays is what has helped manufacturers downsize CHIRP sounders both in footprint and price. Eric Kunz, Furuno’s light marine product manager, says the company’s future products will enhance CHIRP’s capabilities by introducing a number of fresh technologies to recreational anglers, including habitat mapping, which is currently found on some of the more expensive—$50,000 to $100,000—commercial sounders. Get ready for WASSP, which stands for wide

area sub-surface profiling. “WASSP allows you to see things as they’re happening in real time, versus the traditional limited historical perspective told by classic 2D echo sounders,” says Kunz. “Once we know the consistency of the ocean floor, along with some other key variables such as seasonality and sea surface temperatures, you can predict with more accuracy what fish will be in certain areas. It’s a form of personal bathymetric generation, which can then be enhanced further via social networks. “One of the keys to making a relatively expensive system like WASSP work is to employ a tube that extends through the bottom of the boat, incorporating a very expensive transducer array that can be steered in multiple directions to provide a real-time view in a 360-degree circle to ascertain the whereabouts of structure and fish. Once you find them, you can track them and stay on them longer to improve your catch ratios. Within the next two to three years, we expect to bring much of this commercial technology into the realm of the recreational angler who has minimal room on the dash to mount the fishfinder display and isn’t thrilled about cutting a hole in his boat’s hull for a large

transducer array. We also need to collect and manage this large amount of information with the appropriate software and internal hardware, process it quickly, and display it accurately to recreational fishermen so they can understand it and act on it in real time with a user-friendly, intuitive operating system.”

3D SONAR Garmin’s Panoptix “allseeing sonar” (illustration above) provides anglers with a 3D view around the boat in real time. Its RealVu Historical feature is capable of showing a detailed look at the entire water column. ($1,000 to $5,000 for transducers; $1,500 to $4,500 for processors; garmin.com)

Garmin’s Panoptix system is evolving similarly. Generating real-time sonar images is going to be one of the primary focuses of their future recreational echo sounder development, according to product line manager Greg Groener. In his eyes, classic 2D sonar is “history,” both literally and figuratively. Panoptix live sonar incorporates multi-beam, phased-array transducer technology, transmitting more than 30 times per second over 100 different crystal elements to send electronic pulses in a 360-degree arc around your boat. Two transducers can do it all, including forward views and down/side views. Here’s how it works: An angler steers a Panoptix Forward transducer mounted to a trolling motor and sweeps the area looking for any fish

lurking in the shadows. If targets are present, he casts his lure toward the area and sees if the fish respond. If they are unresponsive, he can then change lures until he finds something they like. Coastal striper fishermen working a rock pile or inlet area, or offshore anglers working around surface structure like weed lines, oil rigs, or lobster pots can employ similar methods to maximize their rod-bend moments out on the water. According to Groener, as processing power and the software programs required to gather and sift through massive quantities of data evolve, this will allow anglers with smaller and more affordable machines to enjoy this highend level of fish-finding capability, making the displays and transducers easier to fit on a smaller lake and coastal fishing craft.

FISH-FINDING’S CENTRAL COMMAND

As mobile technology constantly evolves with bigger, faster, and more affordable boards and chip sets, some of this is bound to work its way down into the enhancing capabilities of present-day echo sounders and multifunction displays (MFD). Qualcomm, TI, and Intel are some of the key players, and the development of low-energy, high-processing power is the key to making it all work. Furuno, for example, can now present the data in ways never before imagined by recreational boaters. The challenge is to manage this wealth of data with operating systems that require minimal learning curves. MFD will be the heart of the system, and will also be a master controller, capable of performing most onboard boat functions, including switching your other systems—lights, bilge pumps, washdown pump, anchor windlass, engine—on and off. The central processing display unit will also be controlled from your smartphone or tablet, but with a fringe benefit. Manufacturers will be able to monitor your onboard systems via the Cloud and let you know ahead of time what parts need changing before they go bad. In the brave new world of fish finders, big brother will be watching.

ADVANCES IN FISHING LINE THAT WILL CHANGE THE WAY WE FISH BY TODD KUHN

MODERN-DAY FISHING LINE

may seem like a marvel of material science, but the category actually remains in its infancy developmentally. There are many mind-boggling advances on the horizon.

BRAIDED LINE

As the head of research and development for Spider Wire and Power Pro, Konrad Krauland pioneered the superline revolution. According to Krauland, “Today’s braided lines, which are fundamentally made of polyethylene (PE), have yet to reach their maximum strength.” Power Pro’s new Maxcuatro line, made with Spectra HT, for example, is currently the strongest braid on the market. Yet its strength is still only at 50 percent of theoretical maximum. “Further advancements in the manufacturing of PE will allow us to create a clear, woven superline that will also be transparent to fish,” says

Krauland. Great promise lies in a new material being researched by the U.S. Army for use in bulletresistant clothing. By genetically modifying silkworms with spider DNA, they have produced a superfiber that may have applications in the fishing world. “This ‘Dragon Silk’ will allow us to weave an even stronger and even thinner braided line,” Krauland says.

MONOFILAMENT

The age of the biodegradable monofilament fishing line has dawned, according to Cally Norris, senior product manager for Berkley. “Manufacturers have developed biodegradable monofilament line in the past,” says Norris. “But because they degraded and lost strength, there was little consumer acceptance. We will soon see line that starts to biodegrade by itself, but eliminates compromised on-thewater performance.”

FLUOROCARBON

“The future of fluorocarbon fishing lines rests in technique and speciesspecific lines,” says Gerry Benedicto, general manager at Kureha, Seaguar Division. “You’ll see line designed specifically for flipping, jigging, jerkbait, and crankbait fishing—a fast-sinking, nearly invisible line with the abrasion resistance of braid and the advantages of fluoro.”

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OCULAR LENS FIELD LENSES

HOW NANO LENSES WORK TYPICAL ALL GLASS TRIPLET OBJECTIVE LENS ASSEMBLY

SINGLET GRIN OBJECTIVE LENS

USING ENGINEERED PLASTICS INSTEAD OF GLASS, A NEW GENERATION OF SPORTING OPTICS WILL BE LIGHTER, CLEARER, AND STRONGER BY ANDREW McKEAN

IN THE PAST decades, we’ve seen compact roof prisms replace the bulky porro prisms in our binoculars. Every year, our riflescopes have grown heavier, fatter, and more capable of placing bullets with precision at long distances. And specialized extra-lowdispersion glass has made sporting optics in every category brighter and clearer than their predecessors. But starting next year, those evolved optics will seem as primitive as rotary telephones appear to anyone under the age of 40. The most disruptive technology in optics in our lifetime—the use of specially engineered polymers that will replace glass lenses—will make our binoculars, spotting scopes, and riflescopes much lighter and more powerful than ever. The polymers go by the ungraceful name of gradient refractive index (GRIN) optics, but most people conversant with the technology used to create them call these “nano-layered” lenses. Layers of specialized polymer film, only a few molecules thick, are stacked, shaped, and then baked together to perform various optical jobs. One of the most significant traits of these synthetic compounds is that they can refract light at multiple indexes, allowing each synthetic lens to do the job of several glass lenses. Over the past few years, an arms race of sorts has been playing out behind the scenes, with nearly two dozen companies aiming to produce the first commercially viable nano optical lenses made from synthetic materials. The term refers to the thickness of a single layer of a multi-layer lens

system. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, a dimension expressed in atoms instead of the customary optical unit of measure, the millimeter. Out of that scrum of competitors, a single company, Peak Nanosystems (peaknano.com), appears to have emerged as the industry leader. We sat down with Chad Lewis, the president of the company, to discuss how the lenses are made, how they are different from glass, and how they are being incorporated in sporting optics.

fewer lenses do the work of multiplelens glass systems. OL: How durable are plastic lenses? Can they handle recoil in a riflescope or resist scratches on a binocular? CL: We developed our first-generation lenses for use in military applications— they are currently replacing glass in the eyepiece of the PVS-14 night-vision unit. And because they were designed for the extreme environments required by the military, designing durability into consumer models is, frankly, a layup. Most nano-layered lenses will be in the guts of an optical system, but they could easily serve as external lenses. You just add scratch-resistant coatings to the outside surface.

OL: How are nano lenses

manufactured? CL: Let’s start with an understanding

of how optical glass is made. You start with a big chunk of grinding glass. The power and function of the lens—its optical prescription—is determined by the composition of the glass and the angle of the grind. Is it convex or concave? How much magnification do you grind into it? We start with the raw material, a polymer, and then extrude it, slice it, and stack it in as many layers as needed to achieve the optical prescription required. If you imagine each layer as being much thinner than Saran Wrap, then picture thousands of layers of Saran Wrap, each with its own optical function. That’s the idea of nano lenses; they are stacks of engineered film. Most of our lenses have between 500,000 and 3.5 million layers that together have a unique prescription. They are baked together and then polished to achieve a compound prescription. OL: So are multi-layer polymer lenses

basically replacements for glass lenses? CL: No. I’d say they are more than replacements; they are improvements. Because we can engineer multiple prescriptions into each lens, we can replace multiple glass lenses with a single compound polymer lens. Take a riflescope, for instance. A typical riflescope has six lenses in the barrel and another six lenses in the eyepiece. Each has a single role to play in directing and focusing light entering the optic. We can go from six to two or three lenses in each lens system because each of our lenses performs multiple functions. So optics made with nano lenses can be lighter and shorter than traditional optics made with glass. Depending on the optic, nano-layered lenses can reduce lens weight and thickness by 20 to 70 percent, and by combining optical functions in each element, we can have

OL: Speaking of coatings, are antireflective and other optical coatings baked into the lens material? CL: No, they are applied on the lens surfaces, just as they currently are with glass lenses. The shaping and polishing of the GRIN lenses is achieved in much the same way as glass.

1 The eyepiece of a PVS-14 nightvision unit, made with traditional glass lenses. Weight: 4.4 oz.

2 The eyepiece of a PVS-14 nightvision unit, made with polymer nano lenses. Weight: 2.9 oz.

3 A selection of atoms-thick polymer lenses. These nano lenses will replace glass in many optics.

OL: In off-the-record discussions, product manufacturers from a number of optics companies told me they’re working hard to bring this technology to market, and it seems like there’s a horse race to be first. Which types of products especially lend themselves to nano lenses? CL: I think you’ll see at least a couple of manufacturers come to market with a higher-end line of nano optics in the next two years. Any product north of $500 is the sweet spot for this technology. Precision riflescopes, for instance, are particularly suited for this. We have already observed that consumers are willing to pay a premium for high-performing riflescopes, and nanoengineered lenses will allow product managers to design more powerful scopes with better optical resolution and wider fields of view that weigh less than current models on the market. Heavy, bulky glass spotting scopes are also a category of optics that might benefit from nano lenses. We are in the prototype stage with a number of manufacturers, and I think you’ll see the first consumer models at the 2018 SHOT Show. Shortly after that, I expect you’ll see this technology in every binocular and scope that retails for $1,000 or above. Within a couple of years, I think you’ll see nano lenses in sporting optics at every price point.

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MINIATURIZED GPS COLLARS, SOPHISTICATED DNA MAPPING, AND CROWDSOURCED DATA ARE CHANGING THE WAY WE MANAGE OUR WILDLIFE B Y D AV I D K R A M E R

THE HABITS AND habitat of wildlife that help them hide from hunters also make them hard to study. That’s why for much of its history, the science of wildlife management has been based largely on what could be characterized as highly educated guesses. How many deer are in a hunting unit? Let’s count a portion of the herd and make an estimate about the rest. How far do geese migrate? Let’s band a few of them and, based on data from returned bands, extrapolate about the rest of the flock. But advancements in technology are enabling wildlife biologists to replace estimates and predictions with certainty. Sophisticated and relatively inexpensive GPS tracking units allow biologists to track animals with much more precision and frequency than they could with radio collars. The earliest models of these GPS collars were heavy and cumbersome, limiting their use to large mammals. But as batteries become smaller and more powerful, collars have been reduced in size and weight. Tracking technology that was previously limited to

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elk- and deer-sized animals can be put on pint-sized critters. The newest GPS collars are as light as 30 grams (that’s about the weight of a U.S. silver dollar), allowing them to be worn by rat- and rabbit-sized animals. While tracking can provide a wealth of information about an animal’s movements and habitat preferences, a picture helps fill in details that GPSbased maps lack. Researchers have begun attaching digital still and video cameras to animals to get a better idea of their specific behaviors. For instance, biologists have strapped camera-equipped collars to black bears to investigate where and why they venture in residential neighborhoods. Other camera collars are showing researchers the specific plants whitetails target when browsing in a forest.

time-consuming than current sampling methods, which include netting, trapping, and electro-fishing.

CROWD-SOURCED INSIGHTS

GENETIC SLEUTHING

Other leading-edge work in the wildlifemanagement field is harder to see but just as revealing. Advanced laboratory techniques have made it possible to sequence DNA from microscopic particles of wildlife tissue, helping wildlife officers gain forensic evidence to bust poachers. This DNA analysis is helping game wardens identify the geographic origin of a dead animal, the date of the kill, and even the cause of mortality. These new methods can help wildlife protectors trace the origin of a horn from an endangered rhino, for instance, or to determine when and where a trophy whitetail was killed. Advances in DNA sequencing are not limited to terrestrial animals. Researchers with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife have begun using water samples from the state’s streams and lakes to synthesize what is known as Environmental DNA (eDNA). This eDNA enables researchers to identify all water-dwelling species in the sampled body of water by picking up unique biological signatures found within samples of water from the area. The use of eDNA to evaluate species distribution is cheaper and less

Environmental DNA analysis allows researchers to determine the specific water body where fish and aquatic animals spend most of their lives. Wireless data transfer and software that times out satellite acquisition allow toy-sized GPS trackers to run for a year or even longer.

Finally, one of the most useful advances in technology over the past decade is you. Well, you and your phone. Many wildlife managers are employing “citizen science” to survey wildlife populations at large scales and with minimal cost to the agency. An example is the iSeeMammals black bear project at Cornell University. The program encourages people to use a mobile app (bears.gorgesapps.us/about) to record black bear sightings anywhere in the state of New York. Feedback from the app will be used to estimate the spatial distribution of the black bear population within the state, which will help wildlife managers understand population dynamics. While data from the observations isn’t all that different from the traditional sample-andestimate methodology used to survey wildlife populations, it is much less expensive for state agencies to conduct, and it serves the wider purpose of creating public awareness of and advocacy for the resource. State agencies have also begun developing apps to streamline the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, and to encourage post-season harvest reporting, which is disappointingly low in many states using traditional methods. Some states are developing apps that sportsmen can use to track their daily hunting activities and animals spotted, similar to the iSeeMammals project. The key difference between the two is that by collecting hunter effort and sightings together, agencies will be able to accurately estimate regional population abundance of focal species. The cumulative impact of hyperprecise location data provided by GPS collars, environmental DNA provided by tissue sampling, and the metadata provided via smartphones will allow fish and wildlife managers to make faster and better decisions about harvest limits and season structures.

HOW E DNA WORKS

AQUATIC INSECTS A SAMPLE OF WATER CAN REVEAL THE ORIGIN OF A WIDE VARIETY OF FISH AND AQUATIC WILDLIFE.

FRESHWATER FISH

WATERFOWL

AQUATIC MAMMALS ANADROMOUS FISH

HOW SMALL CAN GPS TRACKERS GO?

MICRO GPS UNITS STRONGER BATTERIES AND SCHEDULED TRANSMISSIONS ENABLE EVEN TINY SATELLITE TRACKERS TO RUN FOR YEARS.

THE SATELLITE-TRACKING industry is in a race to miniaturize the units that can be attached to animals in the wild. Telemetry Solutions (telemetrysolutions.com) has a 20-gram collar that is being used by bat researchers. Satellite tracking isn’t limited to the wild. A number of GPS-based monitors are being designed for the consumer market. The smallest unit from Retrievor (retrievor.com) is the size of a U.S. quarter and can be tracked through a phone app. LightBug’s (thelightbug.com) solar-powered GPS tracker is about the size of a single AA battery and is designed to be attached to luggage, pets, or teenagers.

James Dickson— wild-turkey conservation visionary.

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O

L 2017

The

GOBFATHER THE WILD TURKEY’S FUTURE MAY JUST LIE WITH A MAN WHO HAS WITNESSED ITS PAST BY JIM CASADA P H O T O G R A P H S B Y DAY M O N G A R D N E R

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OUTDOOR LIFE C O N S E R VA T I O N

“I was born a hunter,” Dickson says. A scholarship at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, following a boyhood spent hunting small game, provided a life-changing epiphany. One of his duties was to keep Sewanee’s Forestry Library open during evenings, and there he discovered Roger Latham’s Complete Book of the Wild Turkey. He read and reread it, all the while thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great to just hear a gobble or, better still, see a wild turkey?” Dickson, now 73, went on to be not just a wildlife biologist with a high level of expertise, but someone who savors every sunrise of spring turkey season. He is also a man well worth heeding when it comes to thoughts on the sport’s status today along with what the future holds for America’s big-game bird. Dickson abetted their meteoric rise and has remarkable insight into the current day’s challenges.

E A R LY G O B B L I N G

A LT H O U G H T H E Q U O T E “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been” was not written about the wild turkey, it could have been. And there is, perhaps, no one more qualified to know what lies ahead for America’s grandest gamebird than the person who has devoted his life to ensuring its future. Both as a hunter and as a wildlife biologist, Dr. James Dickson was well in the forefront of turkey research during the golden era of restoration—the 1970s to the 1990s. But even before that, he had lost a small piece of his soul to the American bird.

More than 60 years have passed since a 1948 agreement between the United States Forest Service and the South Carolina Wildlife Resources Department launched trapping and relocation of wild turkeys in the Carolina Low Country. And over the ensuing decades, the program has successfully helped restore the birds nationally. The emergence of the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) in the early 1970s facilitated and expedited the process through provision of transport boxes and the creation of a Technical Committee, which provided input on other relocation sites. The end result of these interacting forces was, early in the 21st century, the completion of one of the greatest of all wildlife restoration success stories, putting turkey populations at an all-time high. Along with Tom Rodgers, the NWTF’s visionary founder, and Dr. Lovett Williams, a Florida-based biologist whose endeavors bridged the yawning divide between science and the ordinary hunter, Dickson was on the front line of these efforts. Now retired, he spent more than two decades as a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service before becoming Louisiana Tech University’s Merritt Professor of Forestry. He was always intimately involved in all things turkey. That included multiple terms on NWTF’s Clockwise from right: Dickson in his home office; some of his many beards and spurs; the seminal book on wild turkeys, which he edited.

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“THREATS TO HUNTING WILL INCREASE AS MORE LAND IS LOST FOR HUNTING.” outdoor life february/march 2017 55

OUTDOOR LIFE C O N S E R VA T I O N

board and writing dozens of research papers on wild turkeys. Dickson was a primary contributor to the landmark book Wildlife of Southern Forests, and edited one of the most impressive turkey studies ever, The Wild Turkey: Biology & Management, published in 1998. We know what has happened, but lingering questions remain about why restoration worked so well and where we are headed. Dickson’s primary concern is about declining turkey numbers, notably in the Southeast, over the last decade or so. Overall, wild-turkey population estimates are between 6 million and 6.2 million birds—down from a record high of 6.7 million. The decline in Alabama has been estimated at 20 percent since 2010. In Georgia, birds are down 25 percent since the 1990s. In South Carolina, the 2015 harvest was down 40 percent since the 2002 record season. Turning around the population drop, according to Dickson, lies in research.

CAUSE AND EFFECT

“Wildlife populations probably wax and wane much more than we realize,” he says, stressing that turkey population viability focuses on

“WILDIFE POPULATIONS PROBABLY WAX AND WANE MUCH MORE THAN WE REALIZE.” 56 february/march 2017 outdoor life

productivity factors such as hen breeding and nesting success, and poult survival. It could well be that population declines are merely part of a natural cycle rather than a result of predation, disease, or other factors. “Often new populations fare well initially but lose some viability over a certain period of time,” he says. While there’s no question in Dickson’s mind that habitat loss depresses turkey population numbers, he notes that in places like New England, turkeys have shown remarkable adaptability, even thriving in the suburbs. Another part of the habitat conundrum Dickson describes as an “inverse relationship between land management efficiency and wildlife habitat.” Among the negatives he lists in this regard are farmers eking out everything possible from their fields, vast expansion in field size, ruthlessly efficient harvesting techniques, and widespread herbicide use. Add commercial forests grown on short rotations, prolonged drought in some regions, reduction in habitat diversity, and what

COURTESY OF DR. JAMES DICKSON (3)

Clockwise from top left: An approaching gobbler; Dickson with former NWTF CEO Rob Keck; a mounted trophy; buddies in an Alabama camp.

he interestingly calls a “loss of fire,” and the result is forces, both natural and man-induced, creating vast areas with little cover for feeding and nesting. While some critics point to these dynamics as indication of the ineffectiveness of the NWTF, Dickson draws the opposite conclusion, saying the conservation group is more vital than ever. Becky Humphries, the NWTF’s chief conservation operations officer, says, “We need to continue to promote and protect turkey populations and habitat,” says Humphries, “and through the Technical Committee all of us can join hands for optimum habitat management.” The NWTF has just completed a strategic vision document that heralds the wild turkey’s comeback even as it calls for refocusing of the vision going forward. That will involve ongoing coordination of research efforts between state and federal agencies, recognizing and evaluating the effects of habitat changes, and improving hunter access, all the while maintaining respect for the sport’s heritage.

THE ROAD AHEAD

The goal of the NWTF’s 10-year initiative, “Save the Habitat. Save the Hunt,” is ambitious, according to CEO George Thornton. “The objective is to conserve or enhance 4 million acres of critical habitat, create 1.5 million hunters, and open hunting access to 500,000 additional acres,” he says, pointing to the alarming figure of 5,300 acres of wildlife habitat being lost in the U.S. every day. Good science is also critical. “Threats to hunting will increase as more land is lost for hunting and as antis prove effective in capturing public support,” says Dickson. But hunters must bear the burden by focusing more on the resource and less on the hunt. “Some hunters are losing contact with the land and wildlife they hunt,” he says. “Technology and gimmicks abound while our relationship with nature has waned.” There needs to be greater interest and emphasis on science and the work of biologists, who loomed so large in the wild turkey’s comeback in the first place. “I expect most turkey hunters today would not even know who Henry Mosby and James Lewis were,” says Dickson.

TURKEY TRUTHS

Additional challenges such as limited state budgets, federal agencies that concentrate on endangered species, and to some degree a sense that turkeys are no longer in need of active management have impacted wild-turkey populations, says Dickson. “Without ample game to pursue,” says Thornton, “hunters lose interest. But our future has never been brighter. It’s great to be a turkey hunter.”

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JUNGLE LORE

photographs by simon barr/tweed media

T H E M O S T FA M O U S BIG-GAME RIFLE I N H I S T O RY — JIM CORBETT’S RIGBY—RETURNS TO THE JUNGLE A F U L L C E N T U RY A F T E R I T TA M E D INDIA’S M A N - E AT I N G C AT S by andrew m c kean

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017

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JUNGLE LORE REDUX

IN THE FLESH A Bengal tigress inside Corbett National Park. Right: The author and a 1953 issue of Outdoor Life at Kanda,where Corbett killed a man-eating tiger.

from getting out of vehicles, barred from bringing food into the interior of the park, and warned against making the sounds of game animals and birds. Buildings for the few concessions inside the park are ringed with electrified wire to keep the cats from coming close to humans. No one roams outside the fences at night. Corbett hunted the most dangerous cats of all— the cunning, fearless, often wounded (by porcupines, cattle hooves, or non-lethal gunshots from farmers

and herders) predators that turned from hunting deer and goats to stalking humans. These predatory cats earned names associated with the places they terrorized: the Maneating Leopard of Rudraprayag, the Champawat Man-Eater, The Thak Man-Eater. The 33 cats Corbett killed over a span of 31 years were responsible for more than 1,200 human deaths. Corbett hunted alone, usually at night and often within swiping range of a lacerating claw, relying on his wits, icy nerves, and a deep understanding of wildlife behavior to pattern the predators. He also relied on a rifle, nearly always trusting his life to his favorite, a Rigby bolt-action chambered in the surprisingly light—at least for man-eaters—.275 Rigby. LOST AND FOUND Corbett, born and raised in the jungles of northern India, moved to Kenya just as the English colonial occupation of India was ending. He died in 1955, but not before sending his cherished Rigby to his editor at Oxford University Press in England. The rifle that had been presented to Corbett in 1907 for having killed the dreaded Man-eater of Champawat, was put in a closet at the university and forgotten. A little more than a decade ago, it was rediscovered. But the university had a problem—Oxford was in possession of an unregistered firearm. Faced with the possibility that this piece of history might be confiscated by British authorities, university officials quietly tried to return the rifle to Rigby. Trouble was, the once mighty gunmaker had fallen on hard times and was in receivership. Corbett’s rifle might have remained in oblivion had Marc Newton not come along. He was instrumental in the renaissance of Rigby, returning the company’s shop to London’s Vauxhall district and reviving its reputation as a maker of high-end firearms. The famous cat-killing rifle was presented to Newton a couple of years ago, and he began planning a trip that would return, for a spell, the gun to Corbett’s homeland. I was asked to accompany the rifle last year on its four-stop, 900-mile tour of India. A lengthy excerpt from one of Corbett’s final books, Jungle Lore, was previewed in the October 1953 issue of Outdoor Life. Because Newton intended to take the rifle to the very places where it did its grim work, he thought it fitting that I come along and read from the piece, which is considered to be Corbett’s autobiography. This is why I found myself huddled in an open-topped Toyota in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, watching a tiger pick her way along the dry riverbed, wondering how a man could deliberately seek out these powerful, lithe predators, especially those with a demonstrated taste for the flesh of man. LIVING HISTORY What I learned in India is that Jim Corbett was no ordinary man. Hunting has been banned nationwide here since

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: GETTY IMAGES (TIGER)

The tigress pads out of the sandalwood forest and into a dry stream bed with the cool purpose of an assassin. She glides in and out of the evening’s shadows, probably on her way to hunt sambar deer up the valley. I am relieved she doesn’t seem to care about me or my fellow tourists, crowded in an open-topped safari Jeep, watching her from across the wash. We are completely hushed, holding our breath for the long minute it takes her to stalk out of sight. She is the first tiger I have ever seen in the wild, but my euphoria at the sight is subdued by the knowledge of her lethal capability. As the sun sets, I glance around for the big apex predators I cannot see, the ambushing leopards that prowl the thick brush and shadows of this national park in northern India. The park is named for hunter and naturalist Jim Corbett, who lived near here a century ago and hunted this very jungle for man-eating cats. He wrote about his adventures in a series of best-selling books. In the years following World War II, those tales transformed the modest railroad clerk of colonial India into a worldwide celebrity, and they established his reputation as one of the most famous hunters of all time. As a kid, I read Corbett’s books at night by flashlight, under the covers of my bed, imagining the growls of Bengal tigers and yellow-eyed leopards leaping out of the goatgrass. Corbett National Park is one of the last few places on earth where wild tigers roam freely. The big cats are averse to humans, but still, visitors are forbidden

HOMECOMING Corbett’s rifle at the place where he put it to good use.

JUNGLE LORE REDUX

SIGHTSEEING The Rigby party toured the interior of Corbett Park from seats, called howdahs, atop Indian elephants. the early 1970s. There is little private gun ownership in the country. So it was especially surprising to find such a large degree of affection for Jim Corbett, a celebrated hunter and confirmed gun owner. Sixty years after his death, Corbett is still revered here. When I told Happy, the man I hired outside the New Delhi airport, that I wanted him to drive me seven hours to Corbett Park to meet the rest of the Rigby party, he was ecstatic, and not only by the prospect of a full day’s wage. “Ah, Corbett-baba. Very good man,” Happy said, beaming. I learned later that the honorific “baba” is used to convey deep respect for a revered elder. I also heard Corbett described as “sadhu,” which means a holy man. “J. Corbett = Mother Theresa with a rifle,” I wrote in my field notes. It was gratifying to see Corbett’s life and work being celebrated, but I was uneasy about how his rifle would be received by people who had never seen a gun that wasn’t held by a soldier or a police officer. But at every stop on the Rigby tour, the gun was treated as a celebrity, almost as an extension of Corbett himself. At public rallies, people clamored to get a look at the gun. At news conferences, reporters wanted to know where the rifle had been for so long, and if it would remain in India. (No, Newton explained—the gun would return with him to anchor a Corbett exhibit in London.) Schoolchildren gawked at the hundred-year-old bolt-action, and jostled to take selfies with the rifle. At one public event in the town of Ramnagar, headquarters for Corbett National Park, a stiff older gentleman, formally dressed in the uniform of the local military detachment, approached Newton after his public remarks. The man carried an ancient hammerfired single-shot shotgun. It was, he told us, the regimental gun that he had used to kill more than a dozen man-eating leopards over the past 50 years in the area around the park. If we had any doubts about the gentleman’s veracity, he pulled up the leg of his trousers.

The man’s shins and calves were scarred with the evidence of dreadful wounds—dealt by a leopard, he said, that wasn’t deterred by a blast from the 12-gauge. The man described reloading as the cat pulled him into the brush, pushing the muzzle of the shotgun against the leopard’s head to end the awful mauling. As we toured the periphery of the park, we heard stories of recent marauding tigers and leopards. The big cats had surprised students walking home after dark or farmers tending livestock near the forest, and had dragged them away, leaving only a tatter of clothing hanging in a thornbush, or an unanswered cell phone ringing in a field. Corbett’s work, it seems, still isn’t done in India, where man-eaters kill on average about 30 people each year. TERROR IN THE NIGHT As a kid, reading his books, I was impressed by the humility of Corbett. Here was a man who had faced down certain death multiple times but had always come away with victory, represented not only by the preservation of his own life, but by the liberation of entire villages. Corbett refused to take payment for his work, and he largely shunned recognition, returning after each successful hunt to his village, where he wrote with increasing passion about the need to protect the wild places where tigers and leopards could live apart from humans. The creation of Corbett National Park in 1936 was largely a result of his advocacy. But by walking in the footsteps of Corbett, I gained a deeper appreciation for the magnitude and humanity of his work. When a man-eater took up residence around a village, a veil of terror fell, and most outdoor activity stopped, sometimes for years. With humans too frightened to harvest it, ripening wheat was eaten by deer. Neglected livestock wandered away, children stopped attending school, cooking fires went cold with no wood to fuel them. Rural villages terrorized by a man-eater didn’t get mail, or visitors, or

“When a man-eater took up residence around a village, a veil of terror fell, sometimes for years. Ripening wheat was eaten by deer. Neglected livestock wandered. Cooking fires went cold.”

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THE RETURN OF RIGBY 1

2 3

4

BRITAIN’S OLDEST RIFLE MAKER IS BACK, AND ONCE AGAIN TURNING OUT BIG-BORE GUNS BUILT ON MAUSER ACTIONS

WAYNE VAN ZWOLL (5)

³ The first John Rigby, born in

1758, was building guns by 1775 in Dublin, but he may have acquired a business begun in 1735, the year Rigby now claims as its first. Together with sons William and John Jason, Rigby produced dueling pistols, sporting rifles, and shotguns. John died in 1818, John Jason in 1845. William Rigby lived until 1858, when son John assumed control of the business. Eight years later, he opened a shop in London, selling the Dublin facility in 1892. By 1900, when John Rigby & Co. was incorporated, John had distinguished himself as a gunmaker and marksman. In 1887, he was named superintendent of the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield Lock, where he worked on the .303 SMLE rifle that would serve British forces until 1957. Compelled by law to retire at age 65, he returned to the shop, where in 1898 he developed the .450 Nitro Express cartridge. In 1911, five years before his death, he followed with the rimless .416 Rigby, bringing double-gun stopping power to bolt-actions. John Rigby

also became a distributor for Mauser actions from Germany. This relationship somehow survived the Great War. Rigby owed much of its success to the exploits of celebrated men prowling game fields in Africa and India during the height of the ivory trade and the birth of commercial safaris. Elephant hunter W.D.M. Bell used a Rigby Mauser in .275 (7x57). So did Jim Corbett, to kill man-eating tigers. The 1909 Roosevelt safari included a Rigby big-bore. A turbulent century later, in 2013, Rigby reestablished itself in London, with a Big Game series of rifles built on Magnum Mauser actions. Single-squarebridge versions (a flat-topped bridge but round front ring) are designed for iron-sight shooting, with the original flag safety. The “lightweight” 24-inch barrel in .416 Rigby weighs 10 pounds. A stepped 22-inch barrel in .416 or .450 Rigby adds 8 ounces. Double-square-bridge rifles are machined to accept scopes. In .375 H&H and .416 Rigby, they come only with the slim barrel and a three-position wing safety. All Big Game rifles wear checkered Turkish walnut stocks. The banded front sight pairs up with a fixed V and two folding leaves (inscribed for 65, 150, and 250 yards) on a quarter

rib. Cosmetic touches distinguish PH and Deluxe rifles. Then there’s the Vintage single-square-bridge .416 with 24-inch barrel. A retractable cocking-piece aperture complements folding V sights on the quarter rib. Once common on fine rifles, the cocking-piece peep has fallen out of style. Pity. It’s elegant and practical. Close to your eye for quick aim, it flies ahead with the striker. The long sight radius enhances accuracy. I spent range time recently with Rigby’s new Vintage. No tigers prowl my neighborhood, so I settled for paper bull’s-eyes at 100 yards. Secured by Mauser’s massive claw, the cigar-size hulls of the .416 slid home with a silky clackety-tunk. Iciclecrisp, the trigger-break loosed 400-grain bullets at 2,400 fps. They drilled 2-inch deltas— pleasing indeed, given aging eyes and iron sights on a frisky rifle. If you can’t soon visit 13-19 Pensbury Place, London, Rigby: A Grand Tradition should be on your reading list (Rigby Press, 2012, Dallas, TX). You’ll learn why Corbett and his contemporaries dug deep to buy Britain’s best. —Wayne van Zwoll

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017

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5

1. Rigby’s Big Game Vintage rifle has a single-square-bridge Mauser action and comes chambered only in .416 Rigby. 2. Traditional Magnum Mauser: straight bolt handle, flag safety, square bridge, nonrotating extractor. 3. Rigby’s cocking-piece aperture sight provides a long sight radius for accurate shooting. 4. Since its first .416 sold in 1912, Rigby’s bolt rifles have featured Mauser’s extractorcontrolled feed. 5. Two leaves, filed for 150- and 250-yard shooting, tip up for aiming with the cocking-piece peep sight.

REUNITED Silkworm farmer Trilok Singh Negi handles the Corbett rifle. Negi’s father was given a muzzleloader by Jim Corbett to safeguard his village from man-eating cats.

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JUNGLE LORE REDUX any outside assistance. But Corbett’s reputation after his first couple of successes in eliminating man-eaters was such that beleaguered villagers wrote petitions to the provincial government requesting his help, sending the letters by couriers brave enough to risk the killer-cat gauntlet. In the early days of what would now joylessly be called a career as an animalcontrol officer, Corbett took time away from his day job—he supervised the transfer of freight from railcars to barges used to cross the wide, roilsome Ganges River— to chase cats. But after some years, he quit the railroad in order to focus on liberating villages and writing about his experiences. Corbett’s first book, Man-Eaters of Kumaon, was published in 1944. THE RUDRAPRAYAG LEOPARD After visiting Corbett sites around Ramnagar—we spent one day riding elephants through the jungle, where my mates and I spotted sambar and chital deer, hog deer, wild elephants, fish-eating crocodiles, and all manner of exotic birds—we followed the Hindu pilgrim route 200 miles north toward the shimmering peaks of the Himalayas. Our destination was Rudraprayag, gateway town to the sacred shrines in the snowfields along the Nepalese border. Rudraprayag, in the mountainous district of Garhwal, is perched on the steep hillsides that fall— sometimes literally, as the area is prone to earthquakes and mudslides—into the swift Ganges River. It was here, in 1926, that Corbett killed the Leopard of Rudraprayag, possibly the most infamous and homicidal of the Indian man-eaters. The leopard claimed at least 125 human victims, and likely others whose deaths were never reported or confirmed. The leopard acquired his taste for human flesh in 1918, probably by feeding on corpses of villagers and pilgrims who died in the influenza pandemic of that year. So many people died in Rudraprayag in such short order that their bodies were thrown into the Ganges rather than being properly cremated. The leopard abandoned natural prey and, over the next eight years, terrorized the district, breaking down barricaded doors, pulling farmers through the thatch roofs of their cottages, and dragging pilgrims from their open-air sleeping platforms. During those eight years, the busy pilgrim trail between the shrines of Kedarnath and Badrinath thinned to a trickle. No one moved at night, and camps were fortified with spears and timbered walls. Still, the killings continued. Soldiers and trappers were called in to dispatch the serial killer, and the reward for his head grew so large that bounty hunters from across the subcontinent flocked to Rudraprayag to kill the cat. Finally, early in 1926, Corbett was called in. He would hunt the leopard, he told officials, only if the bounty was removed and all other hunters were asked to stand down. He didn’t want his efforts to be compromised, and he didn’t want to be mistaken for the FEBRUARY/MARCH 2017

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man-eater and shot by another hunter. For 10 weeks, Corbett patterned the leopard. Finally, in May 1926, Corbett built a machan, or elevated blind, in a mango tree on the edge of town, tied a bleating goat to the base of the tree, and waited in ambush with his Rigby. Corbett killed the leopard and liberated not only the town, but also the pilgrim route across northern India. CORBETT’S LEGACY Our destination in Rudraprayag was a monument to Corbett built at the base of the mango tree, which is ancient and scarred but still stands on the shoulder of a highway that has become the modern pilgrims’ trail. The local magistrate organized a rollicking festival to celebrate the gun’s return. A giant fabric tent was erected over the memorial. Schools were shut so students could attend. Shops closed for the day. The entire town crowded under the tent. Everyone wanted a glimpse of the Rigby rifle that had ended the eightyear reign of terror in this very place. Dignitaries from across the region lined up to give speeches that were drowned out periodically by the roar of pilgrim caravans—colorful diesel trucks overloaded with people, luggage, spare tires, and fuel cans for the rough journey to the mountain shrines. From my seat at the front, I glanced up at the giant mango tree and spied a rusty wire that had become ingrown in the tree’s trunk. An elderly gentleman noticed my gaze and approached me after the festival. That is the remnant of Corbett’s machan, he told me, and added that he had grown up just outside Rudraprayag. His father’s family had been terrorized by the leopard, and an uncle was one of the man-eater’s victims. “Without Corbett-sadhu, I think my father would not have been born,” he said. “Without my father, I would not be here. Without Corbett, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.” As he waited to get his photo taken with Corbett’s Rigby, I wandered down to the Ganges. Everywhere the brush grew close to the river trail, I thought I heard sounds. My pace quickened, and I wished I were carrying Corbett’s Rigby in my clammy hands.

NEWSMAKERS Rigby director Marc Newton answers questions from India’s press about the Corbett rifle. A colorful bus transports visitors from New Delhi to Corbett National Park.

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the scourge that will end deer hunting as we know it, or a manageable nuisance? Fifty years into the epidemic, we still know precious little about the fatal, neurological disease

by TONY HANSEN

Photographs by ST UA RT F I S H E R

G R AY M AT TE R:

This brain came from a CWD-free whitetail.

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CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE

IVE DECADES HAVE PASSED SINCE CHRONIC wasting disease reared its ugly, mysterious head. For the first forty years, the disease seemed to be little more than an oddity, a strange affliction that affected a handful of mule deer, elk, and whitetails out West. It was an annoyance, not an epidemic. Then, in 2002, it was discovered in wild whitetails in Wisconsin, and things got real. Suddenly, CWD acquired a new level of focus and potential devastation that has taken on an outsize role among those who value whitetails. But should it? A little more than a decade later, let’s consider what we know: Chronic wasting disease was first noted in 1967 by researchers studying a captive mule deer herd in Colorado. By the end of that decade, chronic wasting disease (as it came to be known) was discovered in captive mule deer, blacktail deer, and elk herds in Colorado and Wyoming. In 1981, the first case of CWD in the wild was documented in an elk in Colorado. By 2000, it had been discovered in captive herds in Nebraska and Oklahoma as well as in wild populations in Saskatchewan. It has also spread east of the Mississippi, and the recent discovery of CWD in wild reindeer in Norway means it’s now found on two continents. We also know that, so far, it has not proven to be transmissible to humans. Now, let’s get into what we don’t know. This will require far fewer words. And a whole lot of courage. We don’t know where it came from, exactly. We don’t know how to stop it. We don’t know how to cure it. And we don’t know what it truly means for the future of deer hunting in America.

A POLITICAL DISEASE? The theories behind the origins of CWD are varied and controversial. And they are just that—theories. “The truth is, we don’t know where it came from,” says Dr. James Kroll, a Texas-based researcher who was hired by the state of Wisconsin to review its deer management program in the wake of CWD. “It may have been a mutated version of scrapie that crossed species. It may have occurred spontaneously. It could have been here all along, and when we started look-

THE SPREAD OF CWD - CWD in captive deer - CWD in wild deer

68 february/march 2017 outdoor life

1967  Colorado: Deer begin dying at Foothills Wildlife Research Facility near Fort Collins.

ing for it, we started finding it. We don’t know—and that’s a key point to understand. There are a lot of theories, a lot of finger-pointing, but none of it is documented fact based in science.” This much we do know: The disease was first discovered and documented by researchers from Colorado State University and Colorado’s Division of Wildlife at a captive cervid research facility near Fort Collins, where studies were done on deer as well as sheep. A neurological disease, CWD is in the same family as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (which affects humans) and scrapie (which affects sheep). The fact that deer and sheep were both present and experimented upon in the Colorado facility and that CWD is a transmissible prion disease sharing somewhat similar characteristics to scrapie has led to obvious questions: Was CWD somehow “created” by researchers in that Colorado lab? Or is CWD the result of a mutated version of scrapie that passed between deer and sheep in the facility? Where it truly originated, to be frank, is likely irrelevant because CWD is an acronym that’s now very much a part of the deer hunter’s vocabulary. It was the Wisconsin discovery in 2002 that put it there. Wisconsin’s response was as swift as it was unsettling. The state created an eradication zone of roughly 287 square miles with a simple, single goal: Kill every deer within the zone in an effort to contain the disease. And it was, by all accounts, a spectacular failure. “That was the first of many knee-jerk reactions that wasn’t based in science, that wasn’t really approached in a manner that made sound management sense,” says Kroll. “The impact it had on Wisconsin’s deer and its deer hunters was enormous. And it didn’t have to happen.” Following the discovery of CWD in Wisconsin, it was feared that the disease would lead to a decline in deer numbers and a drop in the number of deer hunters chasing whitetails in Wisconsin. Both proved to be true. By 2009, the number of gun hunters had dipped to just under 623,000, compared to nearly 645,000 in 2005. By 2009, 39 deer were killed

per 100 licensed hunters, compared to 56 deer per 100 hunters in 2005. But, according to Kroll, it wasn’t CWD that caused the declines. Rather, they were the result of an unnecessarily aggressive response to CWD. Currently, Wisconsin has the nation’s highest number of confirmed CWD cases in wild deer (more than 3,000 since 2002). Following Kroll’s work there, the state seems to have all but abandoned its aggressive efforts to eliminate the disease and, according to

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CWD IS NOW PRESENT IN 23 STATES, TWO PROVINCES, AND ON TWO CONTINENTS.

data from the Wisconsin DNR, CWD infection rates are climbing. Or are they? In the spring of 2016, the Wisconsin DNR released data showing that the overall infection rate of CWD had climbed to 9.4 percent, the highest since monitoring began. It’s a figure that Kroll believes to be incorrect. “I’ve looked at that data and it does not show a statewide prevalence rate of 9 percent. It does show how misguided people are with their facts about CWD,” he says. Kroll released a report outlining how the 9.4 percent prevalence rate being cited is both misleading and wrong, explaining it is the result of dividing the number of positive results by the number of deer tested. The bulk of the deer tested were from the CWD zone, thus skewing the data and generating a statewide prevalence rate much higher than is likely real.

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2001 

2001 

2002

Colorado: First wild elk with CWD found in Larimer County.

Wyoming: A wild elk in southeastern Wyoming tests positive for CWD.

Montana: State’s first documented case of CWD found at game farm in Philipsburg.

Colorado: 11 game farms are put under CWD quarantine, but not before 450 elk had been shipped to facilities in 15 states.

Kansas: First case of CWD stems from elk purchased from quarantined Colorado game farms.

Wisconsin: CWD confirmed in three hunter-taken deer from 2001 season.

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CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE

“Does anyone really think if we tested 100 deer across the state, we’d find 9 to have CWD? That’s just not the case, yet that’s what’s being reported and it’s simply not correct,” he says.

THE THREAT IS REAL While some researchers, like Kroll, believe CWD is not the catastrophe it’s been portrayed as being, others think it truly does have the potential to greatly impact the future of deer and deer hunting, and they have urged for stronger regulations against the relocation of cervids as well as tighter regulation of game farms. “All you have to do is look at the history. Look at the path the disease has taken and it seems pretty clear that captive cervids have likely played a big role in the spread of this disease,” says Russ Mason, wildlife division chief for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “We don’t know exactly where it came from, aside from the fact that it was first documented in a captive facility. And we know that when you have deer and elk being moved across state lines, you’re asking for trouble. Once it’s found in captive deer, it seems to show up soon after in wild populations.” Mason made that statement in an interview in 2014—before Michigan had any confirmed cases of CWD in wild whitetails. Up until that time, the state’s only CWD-positive deer dated from 2008, from a captive facility in Kent County. In 2015, a wild deer tested positive for CWD. Kroll disagrees with Mason’s statement. “There is so much misinformation regarding CWD that it’s disturbing. Dangerous. CWD did not come from a game farm. It came out of a research facility run by a state game agency. That distinction needs to be made and it never is,” says Kroll. “The does that produced the fawns used in the facility were returned to the wild. Is that where the disease started? That wasn’t a deer breeder. It was a state research facility. Yet the blame always falls on the privately owned breeding facilities. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” says Kroll, who, it should be noted, has worked for game breeders in the past. “We have CWD in West

Texas. There’s not a breeding facility in that part of the state. So where did it come from?” Mason, however, isn’t buying it. “Look at a map. You’ll see a pretty interesting pattern that shows areas with outbreaks of CWD in the wild and outbreaks in captive facilities,” he says. “If we want to stop the spread of CWD, then we need to think about how we move deer and elk like cattle.” That’s a position shared by Dr. Grant Woods, a respected biologist based in Missouri. “According to disease scientists, the best method to limit CWD’s spread is to stop transporting the causative agents,” he says. “This means we hunters need to debone meat from deer and elk harvested in areas where CWD has been found, and only transport the meat, pelt, and antlers. Do not transport the brain and major parts of the nervous system, which is where most prions occur.” “We also need to stop transporting live deer and elk because there is no practical test that can accurately confirm if they have CWD. Deer or elk with CWD shed the causative agent in their saliva, feces, urine, etc., and transporting them could spread CWD to areas with herds that are currently CWD-free.” When CWD reached high-density deer states like Illinois and Michigan, it was feared the disease would spread more quickly there than in low-density areas. So far, it hasn’t. Through June 2016, Illinois has tested nearly 100,000 whitetails for CWD, with 670 testing positive. The disease had been confirmed in 16 of 102 counties. Overall, the prevalence rate in all confirmed areas has remained stable or increased slightly at just more than one percent over seven years. To date, Michigan has tested more than 7,300 deer and confirmed eight CWD-positive results. Of those, three came from the immediate area in which the disease was first discovered in the state and involved whitetails that were related.

SOBERING DATA What will the long-term impacts of CWD be? In September 2016, the scientific journal PLOS ONE published research from a study led by recent Uni-

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2011

Illinois: Wild whitetail shot near Wisconsin border tests positive for CWD, the state’s first case of the disease.

Kansas: CWD is confirmed in the state when a wild whitetail tests positive in Cheyenne County.

Michigan: The state’s first documented case of CWD occurs on a Kent County game farm.

North Dakota: Wild mule deer tests positive for CWD.

Minnesota: First case of CWD in wild deer in the state is confirmed.

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C H EC K P OINT: Mandatory check stations are now standard procedure in areas where CWD has been discovered. In

TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY LLC/ALAMY

Michigan, hunters within the state’s core CWD area must submit every deer they kill for testing. versity of Wyoming Ph.D. graduate David Edmunds and under the direction of associate professor Todd Cornish. They found that during the study period (2003–2010), whitetail populations in areas of Wyoming (where the disease has been present for decades) with high prevalence rates of CWD declined annually by 10 percent. If such declines continue, localized extinction will occur in less than 50 years. “The decline was caused directly by CWD lowering annual survival of female deer, which have the biggest impact on population growth rates,” Edmunds said in a release from the university. “This was because CWD-positive deer died both directly from the disease and were more likely to be killed by hunters than CWD-negative deer.” Prevalence rates in the Wyoming study area were as high as 30 to 50 percent. Midwest hunters should take note. In Wisconsin, some townships have reported prevalence rates higher than 20 percent. If the Wyoming research is any indication, those regions could see localized extinction of whitetail populations in areas of the greatest prevalence.

There is some glimmer of positive news, however: In 2015, a team of researchers at New York University had a measure of success with a vaccine to prevent CWD in deer and elk, according to a paper published in the medical journal Vaccine. So where does that leave us? Right back where we started some 50 years ago. Chronic wasting disease is here. We don’t know where it came from. We don’t know how to eliminate it. And we don’t really know what the long-term impact will be. “CWD is a very deceptive disease. Most deer hunters have witnessed an outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), which often results in a rapid and obvious die-off. However, many deer that have been infected with EHD don’t die, and populations are known to rebound rapidly after an outbreak,” Woods says. “CWD is much different. It’s 100 percent fatal. Even worse, once the causative agent is in the soil, there’s currently no way to remove it. Unless something changes, CWD will likely be a major factor—if not the major factor—in deer populations and deer herd management for decades to come.”

2012

2012

2012

2014

2015

2015

Texas: First case of CWD discovered in wild deer in West Texas.

Pennsylvania: Captive whitetail is confirmed to be CWD-positive.

Missouri: CWD confirmed in wild whitetails.

Iowa: First CWD case discovered in a wild whitetail.

Michigan: Wild whitetail in Ingham County tests positive for CWD.

Arkansas: First case of CWD found when wild elk tests positive.

outdoor life february/march 2017 71

EW N er s L g AL ig on

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Co N “My friends all hate their nt o ra ct s cell phones… I love mine!” FR EE Car Charg er Here’s why.

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WILD TURKEYS

SWAMP GOBBLERS The only place on earth you’ll find Osceola turkeys is in the Florida Peninsula, where the blackfeathered toms are gobbling and strutting right now. BY ANDREW McKEAN

TIP

DAVID McCLEAF

It may be frosty where you live, but in Florida, the mosquitoes are probably out and biting. Bring a Thermacell or serious bug dope.

section edited by andrew mckean • [email protected]

outdoor life february/march 2017 73

HUNTING WILD TURKEYS ↘

While the rest of the country is frosty and cold, turkey hunters in Florida are chasing strutters among the palmettos and Spanish moss. If a Sunshine State gobbler is on your bucket list, here’s how to go about checking it off. he pinnacle experience for thousands of turkey hunters is the completion of a Grand Slam, killing at least one each of the four subspecies of wild turkeys in the United States. Based on considerations of distribution and abundance—if not behavior—the hardest of the bunch to kill is the Osceola, found only in the peninsular portion of Florida. With its striking black plumage and long legs, the Osceola is a creature of swamps and dense pine stands. It’s probably the inaccessible, gator-infested habitat of Florida south of Lake Kissimmee that allowed the subspecies to resist human settlement and widespread land clearing in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The blackwater swamps and live oak motts and hammocks south of Orlando remain the best places in the state to find Osceola gobblers, which generally are more comfortable in dense cover than are their cousins to the north, the Eastern subspecies. But Florida turkeys are as adaptable as wild turkeys elsewhere, and you are as likely to find Osceola gobblers strutting the edges of wideopen cattle pastures and picking bugs out of the grass in orange groves as you are to find them in cypress bogs. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission defines Osceola turkeys as those distributed south of a line that stretches roughly from Jacksonville to Gainesville. North of that line, including the entire Panhandle, the state defines turkeys as belonging to the Eastern subspecies. South of the line, they are Osceolas, though there is some hybridization of the subspecies along that boundary. Osceola gobblers are slightly smaller than Eastern turkeys, but they can seem taller because their legs are longer, probably an

T

74 february/march 2017 outdoor life

adaptation for walking through the swamps of their native habitat. The breast feathers of Osceola birds are both darker and more iridescent than those of their Eastern cousins, and the wings of Osceola gobblers are dominated by black barring.

EARLY SEASONS Besides the chance to bag an Osceola gobbler, hunters are attracted to Florida by its early season. Osceola hunting generally runs the month of March, a full month or even two before turkey seasons open elsewhere in the

TALLAHASSEE

East. The spring weather can be predictably Floridian, with mild mornings and balmy afternoons that seem to coax gobbles from strutters the way juice spurts from a warm orange. Or maybe it just seems that way to a turkey hunter who has traveled to sunny Florida from the frozen North. These Florida birds, though, are not layups. I hunted the Sunshine State for three seasons before I shot my first Osceola. That bird— which completed not only my Grand Slam but also my World Slam (made up of the Eastern, Merriam’s, and Rio Grande gobblers of the U.S., and also the ocellated and Gould’s turkeys of Mexico)—hung up out of range for a full hour before he finally approached my jake decoy. Previous Osceola hunts had ended the way so many of my other turkey hunts elsewhere had ended—with hens that led gobblers away from my calls, with blown stalks on unresponsive toms, or with incoming strutters that simply vanished into the screen of brush. And, just like spring conditions anywhere, Florida’s weather can turn. The day after I killed my first Osceola on a fine March afternoon, I joined my hunting partner, Linda Powell from Mossberg Firearms, in a ground blind that barely kept out sluicing sheets of rain. Despite the deluge, a soggy gobbler fed out of a line of trees and Linda killed him. The next day we went to Disney World.

JACKSONVILLE

GAINESVILLE

Ocala National Forest

ORLANDO TAMPA

florida turkey range Eastern subspecies Osceola subspecies

Lake Okeechobee

Everglades National Park

MIAMI

IF YOU GO

FLORIDA TURKEY HUNTING SEASON DATES South Florida (south of State Highway 70) opens earliest, with a youth weekend February 25–26. The regular season runs March 4 to April 9. North of Highway 70, the youth season runs March 11–12, and the regular season March 18 to April 23. BAG LIMIT Two bearded gobblers (Holmes County’s limit is one). LICENSE COSTS Turkey licenses cost $10 for residents, $125 for nonresidents. Turkey hunters must also hold a hunting license, which costs $17 for residents, and $151.50 for nonresidents. Alternatively, nonresidents can opt for a 10-day license that costs $46.50. PUBLIC LAND Florida has a surprising amount of public land, including 1.1 million acres of state wildlife management areas. Most of these properties are managed for high-quality turkey hunting because the number of hunters is limited through a lottery system. Application deadlines for recreational-use licenses that give turkey hunters special access to these lands are generally in early January. Check out the properties and dates at myfwc.com/license/limited-entryhunts/application-periods/. The state offers limited numbers of what it calls Special Opportunity Turkey Hunts. These are public-land hunts that are managed for high success rates (by limiting participants), and drawing one of these coveted licenses can unlock some of the best hunting in the state. Scenes of a Florida turkey season (clockwise from top left): A sinkhole near Lake Okeechobee nearly swallows a pickup, and the distressed hunters attract a flock of buzzards; a guide’s license plate; a trip to nearby Disney World yields a pouch for a slate call; the author’s Osceola completed his World Slam.

ANDREW McKEAN (4)

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE OPTIONS Florida has more than 5 million acres of public land, most of it administered either by the U.S. Forest Service or the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Hunting on most state wildlife management areas is limited by coveted special permits that are distributed in a lottery.

Florida’s best private land is leased to outfitters, and at least for your first Osceola trip, it’s not a bad idea to book a guided hunt. You’ll pay for the access, but harvest rates on private land are higher than they are on public land, and most outfitters offer lodging and additional opportunities for hogs or even private-land alligator hunting.

GUIDED HUNTS Because the distribution of the Osceola turkey is limited to Florida’s peninsula, outfitters can charge a premium for guided hunts. Rates for fully outfitted hunts range between $2,000 and $3,000; add hogs or gators for a fee. I hunted with Ted Jaycox of Tall Tine Outfitters (talltine.com), who leases some 30,000 acres of prime Osceola land in central Florida. outdoor life february/march 2017 75

Successful Wyoming elk hunters return to camp behind a guide.

DON’T

Over-talk inches of antler: Leading with questions about trophy expectations shows where your priorities lie, says Andy Savage of Heaven’s Gate Outfitters in Idaho. Even if your goal is to tag a record-book critter, your biggest-orbust attitude will be offputting. Brag about your abilities: Savage says that the hunter who immediately says he can outwalk anyone in the outfit or make a shot out to 1,000 yards 76 february/march 2017 outdoor life

 

probably won’t make a very good camp companion. Or, as Lance Kronberger of Freelance Outdoor Adventures in Alaska says, “I do not brag to the carpenter who is building my house about how good I am with a hammer.” Have unreasonable expectations: Everyone wants to take a good animal on a guided hunt, but sometimes that just doesn’t happen. Part of that has to do with understanding your game. Grizzly bears, for instance, exist in

densities far lower than do elk or deer, so you can’t expect to see as many bears on a hunt as you would those other species. Savage winces when a hunter asks him about success rates and whether he will guarantee a kill. Hunting free-ranging game is a challenge, and the real reward is the experience, he says.

DO

Understand what you’re getting into: Both Savage and Kronberger say that the best clients will ask questions that help them better prepare for the hunt. One of Andy’s favorites is, “Can a guy my age and with my physical ability do this hunt?” Ask questions about physical expectations, how far you’ll need to be able to shoot, and the type of accommodations offered, and be honest about your own limitations.

Ask about the operation: A savvy client looks for references (10 to 20, says Savage, not 3 or 4), asks what percentage of hunters are repeat clients, and wants to know how long the guides have worked for the outfitter. All this will help you better understand the quality—and longevity—of the outfitter’s operation. Have a positive attitude: “Hunters only have a couple of important jobs on the hunt,” says Kronberger. “Show up in the best shape possible, shoot straight, and have a positive attitude.” On most hunts, you can’t be sure of a kill, but you do have a hand in cultivating a positive and rewarding experience.

DENVER BRYAN/IMAGES ON THE WILDSIDE; J DAPPER FROM THE NOUN PROJECT (ILLUSTRATIONS)

BOOK SMARTS

A guided hunt is a team effort. The client helps finance the operation, and the guide or outfitter provides logistical support and an intimate knowledge of the ASKING AN OUTFITTER THE game, the area, and any regulations. RIGHT QUESTIONS UP FRONT Under the best circumstances, a guided CAN KEEP YOUR DREAM HUNT hunt works out well for both parties. ON TRACK BY BRAD FITZPATRICK Sometimes the hunt becomes a yearly event. And in the best cases, that oncein-a-lifetime hunt produces a once-in-a-lifetime animal, and the partnership turns into lasting friendship. But not all hunts work out that way. Sometimes it’s the fault of an outfitter or guide who overpromises and underperforms. Just as often, though, it’s the client who ruins the day, with unrealistic expectations of the guide, the game, and his own abilities, or simple naïveté about the true nature of the hunt. Walking along the aisles at hunting trade shows and staring at the photos and mounts is enough to make anyone a bit impulsive. But slow down—there’s a lot at stake here. Do a little homework and ask the right questions before you invest in your first—or next—guided hunt. Here’s how.

!

HUNTING

PRO TIP Ask outfitters about getting on their roster of cancellation hunts. It’s a way to bag a premium hunt for a fraction of the list cost.

DESTINATIONS

↙

WHAT IT COSTS AVERAGE PRICES FOR SELECTED BUCKET-LIST HUNTS

$$$$ Alaska Moose Prices for Alaska-Yukon moose vary from $16,000 to $24,000, depending on the remoteness and trophy reputation of the area. You can often add a caribou or grizzly hunt for a few thousand more.

$$$$ Dall Sheep Sheep hunts are pricy, starting at around $16,000 and going up to $25,000. And don’t expect luxury at that price; the high peaks are unforgiving, and inconsistent weather is always a challenge.

Alaska bear guide Lance Kronberger and a client with a coastal brown.

in to remote areas, usually on horseback, and hunting out of a base camp or spike camps. Expect to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000, depending upon the area.

as little as $3,000. Wilderness hunts in areas that traditionally produce really big bucks and lots of opportunities may top $20,000.

$$ Midwest Whitetails Free-range whitetail hunts go anywhere from $2,500 to $6,500. The average is close to $4,000.

$$

$ Pronghorn Antelope

Canada Black Bear

$$$ Wilderness Elk These hunts involve packing

Hunting black bears in Canada over bait offers a high success rate, and in some provinces you can take two bears. Costs range from $1,500 to $6,500. That’s in American dollars.

$$$ Western Mule Deer Ranch hunts, in which you stay in a lodge and hunt private land, cost

Pronghorn hunts are typically one of the most cost-effective guided trips, with fully guided hunts starting at $1,750. Hunts with the best trophy potential and exclusive access might go as high as $5,000.

COURTESY OF LANCE KRONBERGER

HIDDEN COSTS You will be scrimping and saving for your dream hunt, and no one wants his budget to explode with unforeseen costs. Here are some expenses to consider before committing to a hunt. Transportation/Lodging: Will you be on the hook for charter flights to get you to—and from—your hunting area? Will you be charged by the pound for any gear and meat you fly in and out? How about accommodations? Is a lodge part of the deal, or do you need to find your own hotel and meals?

Licenses, Taxes, and Trophy Fees: Not all outfitters itemize their license fees. Get clarity on what’s included in the hunt fee. Be sure to ask about whether there are additional trophy fees should you shoot a bonus animal or one over a certain Boone and Crockett score.

guides, cooks, horse wranglers, and anyone else who contributed to the experience.

Gratuities: Tipping of your guide and camp staff is at your own discretion, but many of these employees will expect it. Count on a minimum of 10 percent of the hunt cost in tips—15 to 20 percent is the norm. Tips go to

Taxidermy: Are you going to have your trophy mounted and, if so, who will do the work? Thankfully, the bill for taxidermy work usually comes due several months after the hunt has ended.

Meat Care: Will you be taking your meat home? Will you be having it shipped? Who will process your game? All of these extras quickly add up.

outdoor life february/march 2017 77

HUNTING COYOTES ↘

A Montana coyote checks his backtrail before crossing a ridge.

A SIMPLE SCORING SYSTEM HELPS YOU QUICKLY ASSESS PRIME COYOTE SETS BY TOBY WALRATH

H

abitat will make or break your coyote hunt. But knowing what coyotes need to make a living is only part of the equation. Identifying land features that optimize your ability to remain hidden make up the rest. I use a quick scoring method to rate the sign and landscape, so I know in a flash whether a place is worth hunting or not.

TRACKS AND SIGN: 0-3 POINTS ▶ No matter how good a location appears, if you’re not seeing coyote tracks around, you are wasting your time. Good locations have a set of fresh tracks—that earns a single point. When you find a spot that is criss-crossed with coyote tracks, give it 2 points, then figure out the best way to approach the location using cover to reach an elevated vantage point. Other sign, like a recent deer kill, will add a point to this category. 78 february/march 2017 outdoor life

ELEVATION: 0-2 POINTS

▶ Award full points (2) for those places that have enough cover to conceal you, but also the right mix of brush and terrain that allow a coyote to approach your location undetected. A full-points stand location overlooks a valley bottom that’s between 300 and 500 yards wide. The bottom has enough brush to make a coyote feel that he’s concealed, but enough openings to allow you to detect his approach and get a clear shot at him.

▶ A spot that elevates your hide above the surrounding terrain gets a full 2 points in this category. These locations enable you to see farther and allow your scent to remain above an approaching dog. If you suspect there are coyotes working an area (because the area scored high in sign points), then sneak in from above and glass before you do any calling. If you use an electronic call, set it up below you in order to draw coyotes in at a lower elevation, where you’ll better be able to see them coming.

APPROACH: 0-3 POINTS ▶ Getting into the calling location undetected is a hunter’s biggest challenge and the most overlooked aspect of coyote hunting. Full points (3) go to locations that provide the terrain necessary to hide your vehicle and get you and your gear in position without being seen or heard before you start calling. If you can see the calling area when you park the pickup truck, the spot gets zero points. A shiny window, a rattling engine, or a clanging gun case can’t be avoided 100 percent of the time. But by picking out good approaches with heavy timber or hills, you will be hidden from view and most sounds will be muffled or deflected. Some of the best locations are just off main roads where ambient traffic noise dilutes any sounds you might make. Use any land features to remain hidden from the time you leave your vehicle until you are in position to hunt. Add an extra point for approaches with a stiff wind in your face.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER ▶ Whether you plan to sit it out, glass-andstalk, or call, try to get as many of these arrangements working in your favor as possible. Approach and sign—with a maximum of 3 points apiece on my scale—are the two biggest factors. But a location should accrue at least 8 total points in order to make it worth your time. I like to evaluate every situation in the order presented here. Find tracks and scat first, and determine if there is enough cover for concealment. Next, figure out if you can approach the location undetected and pick a route. Once you’ve got those elements, you just need to choose a good vantage point, and you should use any elevation the area provides. Look critically at what the terrain offers you and do the math to make accurate assessments quickly. Eight points is good, but 10 points is coyote-hunting perfection.

DONALD M. JONES

THE COYOTE SCALE

COVER: 0-2 POINTS

For more safety tips visit SmokeyBear.com

HUNTING SHED ANTLERS ↘

SECRETS OF THE SHED MASTERS

TO FIND TROPHY WHITETAIL, ELK, AND MULE DEER ANTLERS, START WITH OPTICS AND THEN EMPLOY A GROUND STRATEGY BY TOM CARPENTER

t was a few weeks before spring turkey season, and my son and I were scouting a known roost area. Eyes glued to the ground for feathers and droppings, I was pleased to spy a perfect 5-point whitetail antler in the rotting snow. No sooner had I suggested Noah keep an eye out for the companion antler than the boy bent over and triumphantly picked up what was obviously a match—with a bonus point. An 11-point! There’s nothing wrong with a little luck. But when you’re out chasing sheds on purpose, it pays to rely on more than just good fortune. Tom Miller, Don Schaufler, and Scott Wait have been hunting sheds for a combined 75 years. Their insights will help you collect more whitetail, elk, and mule deer sheds—and maybe some true trophies.

I

WHITETAILS Tom Miller is vice president of the North American Shed Hunters Club (shedantlers.org). He lives and does much of his shed hunting in whitetail-rich Wisconsin, but he travels all over after antlers. Where to Look Miller uses optics to scout winter whitetails from a distance, but he only goes in for sheds when winter is over and the bucks have dispersed. You’ll find this commonality among serious shed hunters: don’t stress winterweakened deer. “Find where the deer are feeding,” he advises. “Then, when you’re actually hunting antlers, head back in along trails to bedding areas.” Look for sheds all the way from the food to known bedding areas. “I find 70 percent of my whitetail sheds on southern exposures where bedded winter deer can soak up some sun,” says Miller. “Ridgetop pine thickets and brushy lowlands that are sheltered from winter winds are great.”

How to Search “It’s simple but true: You have to really work to keep looking at the ground,” says Miller. “It’s so different than hunting the actual animal, where you should be looking up. “In an area where you think there should be sheds, hike the same ground multiple times from different directions,” he adds. Sometimes a new perspective will reveal jutting tines or the sweep of a main beam that you didn’t or couldn’t see from another angle.

ELK Don Schaufler owns and operates Antlers Unlimited (antlersunlimited.com) and Antler Designs (antlerdesigns.com) in Ennis, Mont. He started hunting sheds more than 40 years ago. Where to Look “Big bull elk winter in bachelor groups,” says Schaufler. “A shed hunt starts with glassing those small herds over time. Work from a

CREDIT

A Montana hunter carries out a publicland elk shed.

80 february/march 2017 outdoor life

DID YOU KNOW The largest whitetail sheds ever found, in Nebraska in 1958, would probably score 218, easily exceeding the world-record 213-incher.

Go for a matched set. “If you find one antler, especially a big one, there should be another nearby,” explains Schaufler. “Bulls just hate the imbalance when one antler is off. They’ll shake their head to get rid of the other, for relief. I once found a perfect matched set lying in the shape of a cross.”

FROM LEFT: GEORGIA MILLER; DONALD M. JONES

MULE DEER A freshly dropped mule deer shed on a south-facing slope.

distance, and get to know where they are hanging out. As the snow line recedes up the mountain, they’ll go with it.” If a bull group you’ve been watching dwindles in size, that’s a good thing: You now know where the antlers are. “As bulls drop their antlers, they leave the gang. Bulls compete for pecking order all year

long, and an antlerless bull knows he’s vulnerable.”

Scott Wait is a senior biologist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. He’s also a long-time mule deer chaser and shed hunter.

How to Search Many areas restrict access until elk are off their winter range. Once you’re allowed onto the land, get to where you watched a bull group shrink, and start looking. “Elk shed hunting itself starts with glass, too,” says Schaufler. “Good elk antlers are big, and you can spot them from a distance. Save yourself steps.”

Where to Look “Mule deer winter in bush-andshrub habitats,” says Wait. “This means piñon, juniper, mountain mahogany, bitterbrush, and sagebrush. Look for gentle slopes that face south or west. “Most years, big mule deer are going to drop their antlers during the last couple weeks of January. Smaller bucks may hold

?

theirs longer, into March,” he adds. “But you should wait to go shed hunting. Winter gives mule deer enough stress the way it is.” How to Search Like Schaufler, Wait endorses a glass-first approach. “Why put on the miles?” he says. “Wait until winter is over, then get to sunny exposures in shrub habitat and glass from high spots. Look for tines sticking up, the glint of sunlight off an antler, a V fork, or the graceful curve of a main beam, all of which are out of place in the landscape” dominated by spiny and angular vegetation. Mule deer country is big. To avoid re-walking an area, do a walk-stop-and-circle search instead: Stop every 50 yards or so and do a 360-degree look around, to take advantage of new viewpoints. When you find an antler, imagine four quadrants around it, and search each area for a companion antler, which will often be within 50 to 75 yards.

SHOOTING SHOTGUNS ▪ GUN TEST

MOUNTAIN HUNTER

GOING LIGHT Melvin Forbes has been making ultra-light rifles for decades, and his NULA bolt-actions still set the standard for the entire category. BY JOHN B. SNOW

section edited by john b. snow • [email protected] • photographs by bill buckley

outdoor life february/march 2017 83

SHOOTING MOUNTAIN HUNTER ↘

have done all right for a hillbilly from West Virginia,” Melvin Forbes told me recently over the phone. Uh-huh. I wasn’t buying it for a minute. I knew that Melvin’s “aw-shucks” persona contains one of the most brilliant minds of modern firearms design, and I wasn’t about to let him sweet-talk his way out of divulging his secrets. If it sounds like I’m being a little harsh on Melvin, I guess I’m taking some liberties because he is sort of like family at Outdoor Life. And you can say things about your family that strangers can’t. That shared history starts with the first meeting between my predecessor as shooting editor, Jim Carmichel, and Melvin at the 1985 SHOT Show, which was Melvin’s maiden voyage to the gun industry show. To hear Melvin tell it, Carmichel wandered up to his booth about 15 minutes after the show opened and eyed his guns. Jim liked what he saw, and asked Melvin to be in touch and send him a rifle to evaluate.

I 

This was Melvin’s first big break. Carmichel would be the first gun writer to try one of his rifles. Right after getting home, he missed a call from Jim. He was in his workshop early the next morning, wondering how soon he dared dial Mr. Carmichel’s number. At 7 a.m. his phone rang.

“When were you going to get around to calling me back?” Carmichel barked. It was the start of a beautiful friendship that has lasted for more than three decades. The two men would go on to spend many hours togther hunting, shooting, and discussing firearms. Carmi-

84 february/march 2017 outdoor life

chel recognized the innovation and craftsmanship in Melvin’s work and wrote about his guns on numerous occasions. For my part, I’ve shot Melvin’s guns before, but I never had one to call my own. At last year’s NRA show, I decided to remedy that and ordered a NULA rifle from

The author tested the rifle with 139-grain Scenars from Black Hills.

Melvin. (NULA, for New Ultra Light Arms, is the name of his company.) Going with a .260 Rem. was the natural choice, given Carmichel’s role in the development of that cartridge. That mild, accurate, and effective round balances perfectly with Melvin’s diminutive rifles. Holding the rifle in my hands for the first time when it was delivered a few months later was like getting a new puppy. It’s rare that a gun can prompt that kind of reaction, but there’s a magic to Melvin’s rifles that can only be appreciated through handling and shooting them. And I’m not alone in that regard. Everyone who I let handle the NULA had a similar response. What is it that makes them so special?

Start With a Line

This leaf camo pattern, with ferns from Forbes’ backyard used as stencils, is one of the signature looks of NULA rifles.

The diminutive dimensions of the bolt body and handle are evident when pictured next to a couple of .260 Remington cartridges.

The Swarovski Z5 3.5–18x44, with its ballistic turret, offers more performance for its weight than any hunting scope on the market.

This carbon-fiber bipod from Neopod weighs just 3.6 ounces. The legs adjust for multlple lengths, and the unit is surprisingly strong.

Melvin’s design philosophy is simple: Control the center line. Picture taking a straight line and building a gun around it. When the gun is complete, that line will go perfectly down the middle of the barrel. It would also go down the middle of the bolt body and, in turn, through the middle of the round receiver. If you were to take measurements at any spot along the barrel, every point on its exterior would be equidistant from that center line. The same goes for measurements on the interior of the barrel and for measurements taken from the bolt and receiver as well. To make this happen, Melvin keeps the tolerances tight on all his components to prevent small inconsistences from stacking and degrading performance. “The barrel is looking exactly where the action is looking,” Melvin explains. “Having everything lined up lets you control the vibration sequence. Put it in a good stock and it is going to shoot.” For such a light rifle, it is remarkably accurate. With factory ammo, it has no issue printing 3-round sub-MOA groups. With 5 shots, the groups average about 1.25 inches. I found there isn’t much shift in point of impact from one load to another—a testament to how that “center line” philosophy controls vibration. The NULA action is Melvin’s own design, and the names of the different models—the 20, 24, and 28—refer to their weight in ounces. My short-action .260 is a Model 20, and with scope and bipod it weighs just over 6 ½ pounds. I topped it with a Swarovski Z5 3.5–18x44, which is built on a 1-inch tube and has a ballistic turret that lets me dial quickly for longer ranges. The bipod is a carbon-fiber marvel from Norway called a Neopod that weighs just 3.6 ounces. The rifle’s two-stage Timney trigger is light and crisp. Melvin says he created his action over the course of a single weekend, machining and assembling the parts. “I knew what I wanted and I could see it in my head,” he says.

Perfecting the stock was another matter. “It took four years to design the stock. It was a big learning curve,” he says. Refining its geometry so that it doesn’t beat up the shooter was one large challenge. The angle of the grip and the slope of the comb both help prevent the rifle from slapping the shooter in the face. Even without a muzzle brake, the rifle is manageable and pleasant to shoot. Then there was the matter of how to produce the carbon-fiber stocks in volume while maintaining their strength and quality. He figured it out, though, and the end result is impressive. His stocks weigh just 17 ounces—and 6 of those are from the recoil pad. The texture of the finish provides excellent grip, and the raised cheekpiece on the comb creates a good anchor for the shooter’s face.

In the Mountains I started hunting with the rifle as soon as I got it scoped and zeroed, and its first journey was to Colorado for mule deer. Compared to a standard hunting rig, it is a delight to haul around. It carries comfortably in one hand, and when it was slung over my shoulder, I nearly forgot that it was there. It’s a perfect rifle for any time you’re scrambling up and down mountains. Early in the morning on the last day of Colorado’s fourth rifle season, a heavy-horned buck and I surprised each other in the timber. He turned tail and put some trees between us. I ran after him, and by the time I spotted him again, he was 100 yards away and about to disappear into the trees. I brought the rifle to my shoulder and dropped him in his tracks with a neck shot. That experience confirmed my impressions from the shooting range—the NULA is a fast, instinctive pointer and is as accurate under dynamic hunting conditions as it is off the bench. While there are many other mountain rifles on the market, even after 30 years, Melvin’s guns still lead the pack. I guess he was right. That’s not bad at all for a hillbilly from West Virginia.

outdoor life february/march 2017 85

SHOOTING SHOTGUNS ↘

3 1

2

Starting with a $269 Remington 870, the author added $728 in modifications to create his dream gun. This total reflects the actual street prices for the components, versus the MSRPs listed in the story.

DIY TURKEY GUN TURN YOUR REMINGTON 870 INTO A CUSTOMIZED GOBBLER STOPPER BY ALEX ROBINSON

S 

ure, you can kill turkeys all day with any old shotgun that will hold a decent pattern at 30 yards. But where’s the fun in that? New loads and chokes specialized for turkey hunting have improved gobbler gun performance by leaps and bounds. So as a winter project, I wanted to take a bare-bones scattergun and turn it into a turkey-killing machine. To start, I went to my local gun store and bought a used Remington 870. Here’s what I did to modify it.

THE GUN

I chose the 870 Express because it’s widely available, super reliable, and, most important, it’s very easy to modify. I’m no gunsmith, so I wanted to work on a shotgun that had simple features and a limited amount of moving parts, plus one that was easy to disassemble and reassemble. The 870 is exactly that.

1. STOCK

BLACKHAWK KNOXX SPECOPS GEN III The first thing I did was swap out the standard stock for a Knoxx SpecOps Gen III stock by Blackhawk. The Knoxx SpecOps looks cool, and the pistol grip provides better maneuverability, making it easier to keep the gun on target for extended periods of time. It also has six adjustable length-of-pull positions, from 12.5 to 15.2 inches. But the main benefit of the new stock is that it eats up felt recoil. Its has two main features—a spring system built into the frame and a thick, cellular butt pad—that are designed to work together to absorb the force of the shotgun as it recoils back into the shooter. Blackhawk claims it reduces felt recoil by 80 percent. After blowing through a couple of boxes of turkey loads, both my shoulder and cheek felt just fine. ($160; blackhawk.com)

THE INSTALL: Installing a new stock on an 870 is very simple. First remove the two Phillips head screws that hold the butt pad in place. Take off the butt pad and you’ll find a hole through the center of the stock with a screw at the bottom that fastens it to the receiver. With an extra-long-shank screwdriver, undo this screw and the stock will come off. The Knoxx SpecOps comes with the required Allen wrenches—all you have to do is tighten one bolt where you removed the old screw to fasten the base of the stock to the receiver. Then slide the rest of the stock onto the base, tighten one more bolt, and you’re off to the races.

2. TRIGGER

TIMNEY 870 TRIGGER FIX Most 870s have a trigger pull weight of somewhere between 4 and 6 pounds. This is not bad at all for shotgunning. But there was so much creep in my 870’s trigger that I knew I could do better. So, I picked up Timney Triggers’ 870 Fix Kit, which comes with three different color-coded sear springs and a sear. The kit isn’t an actual trigger group—it’s just a package to improve the existing trigger, which is exactly what I was looking for. Each spring offers a different pull weight: red/heavy/4 lb., white/ medium/3 lb., and blue/light/2 lb. I opted for the medium white spring and now have a very crisp

4 5

3-pound trigger. ($98; timneytriggers.com) THE INSTALL: Installing the new spring and sear was the most complicated job in this project. You’ve got to remove the trigger group, which is easy enough. But then you must also remove the carrier pivot tube, the carrier assembly, and the carrier dog follower from the trigger group. Then, of course, you must put it all back together properly with the new spring and sear. Timney includes a pretty good set of directions on how to do this, but my advice is to watch about an hour’s worth of YouTube tutorials before you even take the trigger group out. Then, keep the best video running as you get started.

3. SIGHT

TRIJICON MRO I love red-dot (or reflex) sights on a turkey gun. Any veteran turkey hunter can tell you that most misses occur because the shooter pulls his head off the gun just as he’s pulling the trigger. A sight forces you to look through the sight picture, instead of pulling up early and looking over the bead. It also allows you to shoot accurately from awkward positions, where you might not have a perfect gun mount and cheek weld, like when a gobbler sneaks in from your right and you’ve got to twist your body and cant the gun to get on him. With this in mind, I went with Trijicon’s

photographs by krissie mason

reflex MRO (Miniature Rifle Optic), which was designed specifically for fast target acquisition from “non-standard shooting positions.” Trijicon promises five years of battery life if you leave the sight on continuously. If you happen to remember to turn it off, the lithium battery might last the duration of your turkeyhunting career. It’s made of aluminum, so it’s light (4.1 ounces) and compact. It has eight brightness settings (two are night-vision settings), and is waterproof down to 30 meters. Is this overkill for a turkey-hunting sight? Hell yes. ($579; trijicon.com) THE INSTALL: I had a local gunsmith drill and tap the 870’s receiver for a Picatinny rail. I got the gun back a week later, and it cost me $40.

4. FINISH

MOSSY OAK GUN SKIN I put a wrap over the gun to hide the dents and scratches made by the previous owner and to help weatherproof it. Mossy Oak’s Gun Skin is cast vinyl, waterproof, and guaranteed not to fade for at least seven years. But most important, it looks cool. I just had to go with the original Mossy Oak Bottomlands pattern. So long, laminated hardwood. ($30; mossy oakgraphics.com) THE INSTALL: Wrapping the gun isn’t that bad, but it takes time and patience. You’ll need an X-Acto knife and a blow-dryer. The kit comes

with individual pieces for the barrel, forend, receiver, and stock. Stick a wrap on its designated gun part, being careful to avoid wrinkles and bubbles. Trim away excess material with your knife. Then, use the blow-dryer to heat the wrap and pull it tight. As you heat the vinyl, it becomes more flexible and works into groves and around bends. Press out any wrinkles or air pockets (there will be some) with your fingers while applying heat.

5. PERFORMANCE

The final touch was adding a Primos Jelly Head .660 choke ($71; primos.com). I shot a variety of loads at 10 to 60 yards and I got the best patterns out of Winchester’s Longbeard XR (3-inch, No. 6s). At 40 yards, my best target was 153 pellets in a 10-inch circle. At 50 yards, I got 97 pellets in the ring, and at 60 yards I recorded 88 as my best pattern. With this sort of performance, I can ethically kill gobblers out to 50 yards, which is as far as I’d ever want to shoot at a turkey anyway. The gun fits me nicely and its looks will turn some heads at turkey camp. Shooting through the reflex sight is flat-out fun. The stock reduces felt recoil, so shooting before the season and getting dialed in won’t be so much of a pain. It’s still a used 870 Express—the modifications haven’t added elegance—but that’s even more reason to like it. Gobblers beware.

outdoor life february/march 2017 87

SHOOTING GUN TEST ↘

KIMBER M84 HUNTER

A SLENDER MAUSER-STYLE BOLT GUN AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE BY JOHN B. SNOW

E 

very major rifle company makes a bolt-action that seeks to dedisengaging it from the trigger’s sear, while also preventing the trigger liver high performance to shooters who are either on a budget or from moving. afflicted with Yankee-like stinginess. The Kimber M84 Hunter is As with all three-position safeties, the middle setting allows the acone of the more recent additions to this trend. tion to be opened and a shell to be unloaded with the rifle still on safe. The Hunter isn’t vying to be the cheapest rifle on the rack at your local But the M84’s safety does more than that. Remove the bolt from the superstore. That’s probably a wise move, as the company has worked hard action with the safety in the middle position—which is done by deto cultivate a certain cachet among its customers and those who aspire to pressing the small release tab on the left side of the receiver—and the own a firearm engraved with the Kimber logo’s script lettering. firing pin/bolt shroud assembly can be unscrewed from the bolt body. The rifle retails around $799, which keeps it out of the bargain-basement This allows for quick and easy servicing in the field. category while remaining attainable to a large percentage of the shooting The trigger on my sample came from the factory set to 3 pounds 9 populace. ounces, but it is user-adjustable if you feel up to removing the action The most costly component of the Hunter is the M84 acfrom the stock. It had no perceptible takeup and broke tion. This is the sleek Mauser-style two-lug action that has cleanly. STATS become synonymous with Kimber’s rifles and is the reason The ejector is a spring-loaded blade that rides up Caliber: 6.5 Creedmoor for much of their popularity. through a slot in the bolt face and kicks brass free with Capacity: 3+1 a force dependent on how hard the shooter works the Classic Design bolt. Weight: 5 lb. 7 oz. As any proper Mauser action should, the M84 has a fullTrigger Pull: 3 lb. 9 oz. length claw extractor that grabs hold of the rim of the Magazine Issues Accuracy: 1.687 in. cartridge brass as it is stripped from the magazine and The rifle is fed by a detachable box magazine that has doesn’t let go until the shell is pulled free from the chamber. Smallest Group: .829 in. a flat bottom and sits flush within the stock. A release The extractor is designed so that it will slip over the rim of tab is located at the forward end of the magazine and Barrel Length: 22 in. a cartridge being single-fed into the action as well, allowing doesn’t protrude from the stock, meaning there’s little Overall Length: 41³⁄₈ in. for easy feeding at the bench or after the rifle’s magazine chance the magazine could be inadvertently knocked Price: $899 has run dry. loose by catching on a stray branch or an improvised The action features a well-designed three-position rest in the field. The stock has a generously sized notch Contact: kimberamerica.com safety that physically moves the firing pin toward the rear, where the release tab sits to accommodate a gloved

PERFORMANCE Handling

Reliability

8

8

Accuracy

DESIGN

Meets Purpose

Versatility

8

7

7

88 february/march 2017 outdoor life

Craftsmanship 8

Ergonomics

Durability

Aesthetics

8

8

8

VALUE

TOTAL

8

78

photographs by bill buckley

The matte stainless finish keeps shine down and offers good protection from the elements.

finger, making it easy to remove the magazine. I had three magazines at my disposal for this test: one that came with the rifle and two extras supplied by Kimber. The one that came in the rifle didn’t work very well. It was difficult to load to capacity (3 rounds) in 6.5 Creedmoor, which is what my rifle was chambered in. This caused the rifle bolt to drag on the top cartridge and made cycling the gun a chore. The second magazine worked a bit better, but it was still a bit sticky. The third magazine worked just fine. I doubt this is a systemic issue with the Hunter, but as always, caveat emptor is a good principal to follow. During the shooting drills that are part of Outdoor Life’s testing protocol, which include running the rifle rapidly with a full magazine from various practical field positions, I used only the third magazine.

Loads Tested The accuracy was typical for a lightweight rifle of this type. I shot four different factory loads through the Hunter—two from Nosler (140-grain BTHP Match and 140-grain Ballistic Tip), and two from Hornady (120-grain A-Max and 120-grain GMX). My 5-shot groups averaged 1.687 inches, with the best group being a .829-inch cluster with the GMX, which is an outstanding hunting bullet I’ve used in the past in 6.5 CM on game up to, and including, giant eland in Africa. The rifle did show some flashes of brilliance at the bench, however. Several times I ended up with three shots touching, but then the rifle would throw the next couple of bullets wide.

NOTABLE FEATURES

One of the thoughtful ergonomic touches on the rifle is this red dot that appears when the rifle’s safety is flicked into the forward firing position. It is placed so that it is easy for the shooter to see in his peripheral vision.

Light and Nimble Unscoped, the rifle weighs 5 pounds 7 ounces, which makes it very handy to carry in the field, especially when paired with a light scope, like the Leupold VX3i 4.5–14x40mm I mounted on it. The rifle is stocked with Classic American dimensions, meaning a flat comb and straight forend that tapers in parallel with the barrel. Both the forend and grip have pebbled texturing on either side that works well, but it would be better if it were a bit more aggressive. The matte silver finish on the metal contrasts nicely with the tan stock. Overall, it is a good-looking gun that is handy, reasonably accurate, and, other than the issue with the magazine, performed well.

The forend has an internal honeycomb pattern of cells that impart stiffness to the stock. The stock also has two aluminum pillars to support the guard screws to improve the stock-to-action fit and improve accuracy. outdoor life february/march 2017 89

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THE SCRODE-HOLE MYSTERY BY JOE ARTERBURN

ccasionally, I grieve for the sheath knife I lost belly-crawling through snow while I was sneaking up on ducks. It had a thick stag handle, a brass finger guard, and a stout clip-point blade that came out of the Christmas wrapping shiny and sharp. I carried it everywhere, even while duck hunting.

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That’s where I lost it, commandocrawling through 4 inches of fresh snow to avoid being seen by greenheads down on the lake. At one point, I looked down and noticed the leather sheath was empty, the snap-closed strap dangling uselessly open. I’ll find it, I thought, resuming my crawl. I didn’t find it. Its whereabouts remained a mystery, even after I kicked through the snow as I retraced my entire route. The ducks in my bag were insufficient solace. I felt a familiar pang upon losing a Havalon knife in antelope camp two years ago. This mystery began as antelope started stacking up, and skinning and meat processing were going full steam. I handed my knife to someone needing a sharp edge. No run-of-the-mill Havalon, this one. I had purchased it on Kodiak Island while on a deer hunt. Its ivory plastic handle etched with a grizzly bear scene was a reminder of the hunt and Kodiak bears, which are never far from your thoughts there. Antelope camp ended, but my Kodiak

Havalon was nowhere to be seen. I asked my companions. “Last time I saw it…” was the standard response. I figured it would show up when I unpacked. It didn’t. I looked and relooked in every tote, every box, every bag. Think. Think. Think. Deduce. Deduce. Deduce. It had been used on the trim table where we had the grinder and vacuum sealer. Wait a minute. During cleanup, we scrubbed the disassembled grinder in soapy water in the dish tub. Knives and everything else went through there too. If my Havalon was in the tub filled with soapy water, maybe no one fished around the bottom before dumping the icky water in the scrode hole. The scrode hole. Not scrod, scrode. Long “o.” You know, the hole you dig away from camp for dishwater, food scraps, and such. The scrode. Don’t bother looking in a dictionary. It has not made the popular lexicon. Yet. The word’s origin, I believe, came from wilderness canoe

trips in the Boundary Waters. We always dug a scrode hole well back from the water’s edge, as required, into which we dumped biodegradable soapsuds and the miscellany we called “scrode.” If my Havalon was in the dish tub, it would be buried 2 feet under the Wyoming prairie. Woe is me. Or am I woe? A year later, antelope camp was in the same spot on Jim Schiermiester’s ranch. I explained my theory to Newt Borowski, digger of the original scrode hole. A lot changes in a year on the Wyoming prairie, but we found a faint depression, about 18 or 20 inches around, in what we agreed would be about the right place. Newt digs substantial scrode holes; deep, symmetrical, with straight walls, the better to hold dishwater and assure when we are gone it is deep enough to foil sharp-nosed varmints. We dug quickly, reasoning the knife would be at the bottom, if there at all. Then slower, carefully. Newt started to take a turn, then looked at the pile of excavated dirt, reached down, and plucked out the just-protruding Havalon. Rusty, dirt- and scrode-covered, and needing a new blade—which is easy to replace on a Havalon—it cleaned right up. That night I told my campmates: “You know last year when I called you all lowdown, snake-in-the-grass, knife-thievin’ crooks? Well, sorry about that.” The scrode hole taketh, but also, curiously, returneth.

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98 february/march 2017 outdoor life

illustration by joel kimmel