Hunting and Fishing News Blog Articles

Owner Stacy Howell pins down a wild hog in front of his hunting rig before releasing it. (Katie Logan/)

My favorite hunting rig was a 1978 Jeep CJ5. I could remove the rear bench seat with a crescent wrench and easily fit two dog boxes to hold four dogs. I'd turn the manual hubs and run it in reverse to engage the four-wheel-drive, and when I did, I could climb any hill, ridge, or mountain with unparalleled maneuverability. That same rig towed my boat for sea duck hunts just as easily as it ran the fishing beaches. Everything was manual from the transmission to the choke and the heat. On hot days, I would remove the doors literally in two seconds and the top in about two minutes.

I'll never forget the time when a fully restored, 1970, hunter green Barracuda pulled up next to me at the stop light. Its 198-cubic-inch, slant-six engine sounded more powerful than it really was, but the driver didn't care. He was staring at my rig.

"Sweet Jeep," he said.

"Wanna race?" I asked.

He laughed when I revved the engine on my inline four-banger, and when the light changed, that Barracuda was out of sight before I had shifted into third gear. Hunting rigs don't need to go fast; they just need to go hard with purpose. We all dream of unique vehicles so here is a sample of some of the best.

Perhaps you’ve seen one of those How to Reload pamphlets with a cover that shows Dad, Mom, Gramps, and the kids standing around a spotless bench, grinning from ear to ear with an enthusiasm usually associated with winning the Mega Millions jackpot. I can tell you one thing for sure—they weren’t reloading for a precision rifle competition. When you sign up for a tactical field match, you can count on a lot of trigger pulling. For most two-day matches, it’s suggested you have 200 rounds, and that doesn’t include what you burn up in practice before the first stage.

The high round counts, the challenging targets, and the real-world shooting positions are what make these competitions fun.

But once the sport gets its hooks into you—whether you shoot the Precision Rifle Series, the National Rifle League, or any of the dozens of independent matches around the country—chances are you’re going to want to reload.

And that’s where the fun ends. Trying to make quality ammo in bulk is a grinding chore. In order to preserve some semblance of a family life and to maintain my sanity, I’ve worked out a system for making precision ammunition in a fraction of the time it used to take me.

Full disclosure: The bits and pieces here are based on input from Wade Stuteville, Jimmie Todd, Chris Gittings, John Whidden, and Gary Kieft, who are all top-tier shooters and reloaders.

TOP STORY

House Republicans Introduce Firearms Interstate Commerce Reform Act

U.S. House Republicans may have lost their numerical advantage in November, but they are not sitting on the sidelines while Congressional Democrats roll out their dog-and-pony gun control agenda with a parade of increasingly extreme gun-control legislation.

On May 1, Republican Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., introduced a bill which supporters say would update antiquated provisions of the Gun Control Act that “reflect a bygone era of criminal record-keeping and remove arbitrary impediments for law-abiding gun buyers and sellers.”

Joining Scalise in filing HR 2246, the Firearms Interstate Commerce Reform Act, were Reps. Ralph Abraham, R-La., Andy Barr, R-Ky., Clay Higgins, R-La., Mike Johnson, R-La., Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz.

The .300 Win. Mag. (right) has a much larger powder capacity than the .308 Win. (left), but each is superior to the other in different ways. (Ron Spomer/)

Comparing the short-action .308 Winchester to the long-action, belted .300 Winchester Magnum will raise howls of “apples and oranges” from some readers. But we’re not tasting fruit here. We’re trying to understand how two different cartridges propel the same diameter bullets of the same weight in order to engage targets or game animals. Both can be used for each scenario, so let’s compare!

Despite their size differences, both the little .308 Winchester and the big .300 Winchester Magnum shoot bullets .308 inches in diameter. This is the all-American bore size—.30 caliber —made famous by the .30-30 Winchester of 1894 followed by the even more famous .30-06 of 1906, the .300 Savage of 1920, and the .300 Weatherby Magnum of—surprise—1944. Yes, the larger, faster, more powerful Weatherby Magnum beat the .300 Winchester to the magnum punch by a solid 19 years. But, the full magnum-length Weatherby was proprietary and expensive while the Winchester was engineered to fit affordable, standard-length-action rifles common in the U.S. Winchester allowed any and all ammo makers to load their new .300 magnum, too. The result was an immediate success as American hunters scrambled to own and hunt with one of these new, powerful, manly rifles. (Hey, it was 1963. John Wayne was in his prime, and neither the Beatles nor the hippies had even shown up yet.)

The author felled this Colorado bull elk with three 300 Win. Mag., 180-gr. Nosler Accubonds. The first shot on the shoulder would have done the trick, but sage advice with elk is to keep shooting until your bull is down and stays down. (Ron Spomer/)

The .30-06 Springfield is central to this comparison because it not only falls between the .308 and .300 Win. Mag. in power, but is essentially the parent of the .308 Win. While some historians insist Winchester engineers worked from the .300 Savage to make the .308, a careful measurement of rim, head, and body diameters shows a clear connection to the .30-06. Arthur Savage probably used the .30-06 when developing his .300 anyway.

Because of the common dimensions of the .308 Win. and .30-06, many refer to the .308 as the .30-06 Short or, more derisively, the “.30-Not-Six.” Such teasing raises a legitimate question: Why would Winchester build a new hunting cartridge that was weaker than the already widely used and respected .30-06? Doesn’t cartridge development push toward higher performance?

Don’t let the .308 Winchester’s small size fool you. The controlled expansion of a 165- to 180-grain bullet is more than potent enough for moose. (Ron Spomer/)

Well, yes. But performance is not always about velocity and power. The .308’s performance advantage is efficiency. Because its overall length is a half inch shorter than the .30-06, it can be run through shorter, lighter, faster-cycling actions. Additionally, more cartridges can be carried by an individual, a truck, or a plane. You see, Winchester created the .308 in an effort to have it adopted as the new U.S. military cartridge. They succeeded, but only in 1954, two years after they’d released it as a civilian hunting round. NATO also adopted the .308 Winchester, calling it the 7.62x51mm NATO. It was chambered in the new M14 U.S. Service Rifle in 1957 and saw duty in Korea and Vietnam, with soldiers undoubtedly appreciating its lighter recoil.

TOP STORY

NRA Annual Meeting: Amid Palace Intrigue, The President Vows To Be Second Amendment 'Champion'

The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) 76-member board convenes Monday in Indianapolis, a day after the 148th four-day NRA Annual Meeting concluded Sunday amid palace intrigue within the organization’s leadership, yet still resonating from Friday’s fiery guns-rights speech by President Donald Trump.

NRA officials announced Saturday that Oliver North had stepped down as the organization’s president with a resignation letter that said there is “a clear crisis” in NRA leadership.

A rift inside NRA leadership over allegations of financial misconduct pit NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre against North in a very public feud.

We’re crouched below the plywood walls of the pontoon blind and can see three scoters gliding into shooting range. Someone whispers, “Take ‘em,” and we drop two with a quick volley. High-fives make their rounds, and the game is on.

For the first few flights, we remain silent, still, and hidden as shooters on the ends call the shots, but it doesn't take long before we become as emboldened as the ducks, which begin dive bombing our spread. Sea ducks are about as tough as the arctic winters they evolved to endure, and you, and the guy next to you, often have to give them every shot in the gun to put them down.

The pontoon boat blind complete with plywood walls and brush. (Cosmo Genova/)

“With these ducks, you have to really make sure they're dead, or they will dive underwater and pop back up out of range,” says Sierra Langbell, one of the hunters in the crew.

Our boat blind was packed with a handful of photographers and media folk for the last leg of Beretta’s torture tour for their new A400 Xtreme Plus shotgun. The plan was to hunt sea ducks on Tilghman Island, Maryland and to explore the rich waterfowling culture of the Chesapeake Bay.

The hunters put these Beretta A400 Xtreme Plus shotguns to the test. (Cosmo Genova/)

The shooting formed a cacophony, with the guns barking together—at times sounding as if we had only fired a single shot. At one point, I looked over to see Aaron Hitchins of the production company, Rockhouse Motion, yelling like William Wallace at the head of a charge, “Take it to the plug!” while frantically stuffing more shells down the tube as music bumped from his phone.

I wasn't sure what to do with a pile of sea ducks I brought home from a hunting trip to Maryland, but I figured I couldn't go wrong with cheese and bacon. Sliced thin, the breasts can be stuffed, rolled, and wrapped into tidy little bacon bombs that are an awesome game night treat that can be fancied up for date night too. These bacon bombs stand on their own paired with your favorite dipping sauce, or as the headpiece of a more composed meal. Here, we used spinach and an herbed Chevre cheese, but this simple and versatile preparation can be done with other game meats and stuffings as well: caramelized onions and cheddar cheese, mushrooms and Swiss, the possibilities are endless. Ideally, you want the breasts cooked to a nice medium rare, but it's not the end of the world if you go a little over.

Ingredients

Sea duck breasts

Cheese

Spinach

After an epic sea duck hunt on the Chesapeake Bay this winter, I ended up with a surplus of meat to work through. Conventional wisdom has not been kind to the modest sea duck, and I found exceedingly little literature on how to make them table-worthy. After spending some time in the kitchen, I can confidently say that the naysayers are sadly mistaken and missing out on some truly good eats. While a rare, pan seared breast is a great treat in and of itself, I wanted to make something that was tasty and accessible. Beef Bourguignon, or beef Burgundy, is a French classic, and the venison-like breast meat of the sea ducks complimented the Bourguignon nicely. This hearty wine-based stew is the perfect meal for when the mercury drops, and the same recipe works well for a variety of dark game meats.

Ingredients

6-8 sea duck breasts, cubed

3-4 strips of bacon, cubed

1-2 carrots, rough cut

The Snake River near Twin Falls Idaho. (ItsWolfeh, via Wikimedia Commons/)

Growing up in Idaho, every service station and sporting goods store had a bulletin board featuring photos of local anglers grinning over enormous steelhead and salmon caught in Idaho's mighty rivers. All my life, those fish have spiraled toward extinction, and recent runs have been dismal. However, two Idaho leaders are breathing new life into efforts to save both those fish and the world-class sport fishery they represent.

At a recent conference in Boise, Republican Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho raised the idea of removing four federal dams on the Snake River, saying bold actions may be needed to reverse the decades-long decline of steelhead and salmon in the Columbia River Basin.

"We need to stop thinking about what currently exists and ask ourselves, 'What do we want the Northwest to look like in 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 years?'" Simpson tells a crowd at the Andrus Center this week.

The statement is striking because it is the first time that high-level Idaho leaders have said what fish biologists and advocates have been saying for years: Perhaps the last chance to stave off extinction of these treasured fish runs is to let the lower Snake River run free.

“When it comes to salmon and steelhead…I support breaching the status quo,” says Idaho Gov. Brad Little, also a Republican, hinting at his potential support of this idea.

The Independence uses a Hogue grip, which can be swapped with any A2-compatible grip. (Bill Buckley/)

When the Remington XP-100 was introduced in 1963, the reaction to the single-shot bolt-action handgun was not tepid. Most people considered the ungainly mutt—with its dogleg bolt handle, vented rib, and shark-fin front sight—an affront to civilized sensibilities. Traditionalists wanted nothing to do with it.

But in the spirit of the adage “handsome is as handsome does,” some handgunners fell under the XP-100’s spell when they realized how accurately it shot and from how far they were able to hit small game, varmints, and steel silhouette targets. Over the years, sentiments toward the odd handgun softened, and it developed a devoted cult of followers. The XP-100 can rightly be credited with significantly advancing the sport of handgun hunting.

Yet that was a generation ago. Remington stopped production on the XP-100 in 1998. How would the shooting public react to such a handgun today?

Well, we’re about to find out because Nosler has just launched the Model 48 Independence, a production version of the M48 NCH (Nosler Custom Handgun) it rolled out last year.

Like the XP-100, the Independence is a bolt-action handgun with the grip situated amidships, close to the balance point. This makes for better handling, because the firearm can be maneuvered more deftly than those with designs where the grip is positioned behind the bolt handle.