Hunting

If you want to see a pheasant hunter lose his shit (yes, it’ll be a dude), watch how someone deals with a dog that suddenly decides to go into bootlicker mode. This is one of the most embarrassing and frustrating things a pheasant dog can do. With some dogs, that’s their natural mode of travel. Low...

The signature Thanksgiving tradition dish is elk slow-roasted in coffee and whiskey. It will be served with a side dish of hunting stories. Some of the stories will be old and polished like a riverstone. Others are like new flakes off a block of obsidian. Either way, the tales are as nourishing as...

I recently took my two daughters on a mule deer hunt during Montana’s two-day youth season in mid-October. One of the most important things that needs to happen when guiding two kids on a hunt is deciding who gets the first shot. My girls, Aina, age 13, and Mabel, age 10, made a tally of all the...

Picking a dog is a personal decision. It’s also something that can be done with zero research, based solely on a whim or something that might have been true forty years ago. The truth is, if you look at enough bloodlines, you can probably find a dog that suits you no matter what breed interests you...

Christmas is right around that corner, and hunters young and old will be hoping to spy a long, narrow box tucked under the tree. I saw such a box a few years ago. It turned out to be floor mats for my minivan, but I’m not a man without means, so I went ahead and bought myself my own Christmas...

Humans have been sharing hunting stories since they first hurled a spear or sent a herd of buffalo careening down a cliff. After all, the earliest-known figurative artwork depicts a hunt. That was 44,000 years ago. Now, instead of scrawling artistic renderings onto a cave wall, we upload photos to...

When Hornady describes the 300 PRC as an “intelligently crafted 21st century magnum cartridge,” it’s hard not to read that as a dig at .300 Win. Mag. fans. As perhaps the most popular .30-caliber magnum of all time, the Win. Mag. is the PRC’s direct competition. But it’s not a 21st-century creation...

As a young hunter, I took a generalist approach to small game hunting. If I was lucky, I might come home with some combination of squirrels, rabbits, and maybe even a ruffed grouse. More often than grouse, though, I’d get a shot at a woodcock. At times, it seemed like there was a woodcock or two in...

Like your computer or phone, all firearms have what gun nerds call an “operating system.” But instead of running Microsoft Word or Roller Coaster Tycoon, a gun’s operating system performs the eight functions needed to fire a bullet: feeding, chambering, locking, firing, unlocking, extracting...

Today, hunters may be more over-scoped than ever—especially in the US. The long-range craze has made us all reach for scopes with big objective lenses and power levels exceeding 18X. Manufacturers have answered, making big, heavy hunting scopes with adjustable turrets and first-focal-plane reticles...

The .30-30 Winchester is perhaps the most famous lever-action cartridge of all time, but that hasn’t stopped cartridge designers from trying to improve upon its legendary deer-killing performance. Ken Waters was one such designer. A gun writer whose 50-year career included four books and hundreds of...

There is simply nothing like the grouse woods in the fall. The fire of color, the explosion from thick cover, and the taste—ah, the taste—ruffed grouse rivals that of all game birds. But bringing the king of game birds to the table is no easy task. Ruffed grouse have spent thousands of years...