Hunting and Fishing News & Blog Articles

Andrew McKean with a brace of sage grouse. (Andrew McKean/)

One of my favorite grouse quotes is attributed to author Frank Woolner: “Guns and dogs don’t kill grouse, legs do.”

True, though sometimes killing a limit of ruffies or sharptails is as easy as lacing your boots. Other times, all you have to show for your effort is a face slapped by greenwood branches, arms raked by thorns, and whirring wings beyond a veiling screen of popple. The stories here are about those kinds of grouse hunts, the ones that don’t feature gentle woods or reliable birds. These stories conform to another quote.

“The first time you hunt blue grouse, it’s out of curiosity,” my buddy said, massaging his blistered feet on the tailgate of my pickup. “The next times, it’s for revenge.”—Andrew McKean

1. Mountain Grouse: Cascade Range’s cinder-cone enigmas

For a season in the 1990s, I hunted a ghost. Ostensibly, I was hunting mountain grouse—spruce and blues—along the pumice ridges of Washington’s Cascade mountains. Washington Game & Fish now classifies blue grouse, fittingly, as sooty grouse, and based on the near futility of my experience, it’s hard to think of them as anything but an apparition. But the shotgun was mainly a prop; I was really hunting the long shadow of D.B. Cooper.

the author has been putting Suzuki’s King Quad 750axi to the test in Alaska this year. (Tyler Freel/)

In Alaska, ATVs are critical tools for many hunters. They’re also important in the daily lives of just about everyone who lives outside the cities. This is rugged country, and most of our adventures (and chores) take us off blacktop roads and into the woods. ATVs play a year-round role for many Alaskans. But a stock machine has plenty of room for improvement, and you can’t safely hit the backcountry without a few upgrades. Regardless of where you live, if you’re an outdoorsman or woman investing in an ATV, you want to maximize its potential for your intended purpose. This will cost a little extra money, but there are several simple after-market modifications you can make to get the most out of your new 4x4. Some of these will be more or less helpful depending on where you live and what you’re using an ATV for, so customize accordingly.

Here are the upgrades I think are most important in relation to the places I hunt. If you spend much time in the woods, these basic builds will make life in the backcountry much easier.

1. Winch

Without a winch, an ATV won't be of much use in the backcountry. (Tyler Freel/)

A hunting ATV needs a winch. You can forget going off-road without one. Now, obviously there are some places that might be exceptions, like small farms. A winch can make a lot of problems go away, the most obvious of which is being stuck in the mud. They are also very handy at helping you safely navigate some otherwise suicidal obstacles, primarily steep climbs and descents. On extremely steep terrain, if you can anchor your winch straight uphill, your machine cannot flip over backwards—the main risk when navigating this kind of country. You can also start at the top and lower your machine backwards over small cut-banks and other declines. You can right a flipped machine if you’ve got a tree to help you out, and move or lift a dead deer, elk, bear, or even moose with the right hardware.

You can buy off-brand winches pretty darn cheap, and this may be the best option if you’re rarely going to use it. But if you’re planning to rely on this critical tool so often, it’s advisable to buy a reputable brand winch like Warn. You’re going to depend on your winch working, so buy the best you can afford—don’t cheap out. Mounting a winch can take a little time, and you’ll usually need a bracket specific to your ATV, but it’s not all that difficult. You will also need a winch if you want to use a snow plow, which is nice to have during our extensive Alaskan winters.

The dual Crosscentric Cam on the VXR 28contributed to yet another sweet-shooting flagship from Mathews. (Jeff Wilson/)

What does a bowhunter really need? Is it a compound with a comfortable draw cycle that you can hold back awhile because the bull you were about to shoot stopped behind an aspen? Or is it the fastest crossbow available, because there’s a good chance the buck you’re after will step out at 60 yards this evening and you’ll be waiting for him in a shooting house?

After budget considerations, buying a new compound or crossbow usually depends on your hunting style and personal preference. But if you compare enough bows using the same objective criteria, you will discover that some are just better than others. And if you compare enough of them over time, you’ll see trends ebb and flow.

Our annual test of new bows is one unencumbered by sponsorship deals or advertising arrangements. Our only goal is to tell it like it is, so you can make the best decision for your bow season. Here’s a look at the 2020 winners, as well as the trends happening right now with bowhunting equipment. To find the full list and reviews of the bows and crossbows we tested, ­go to outdoorlife.com/bowtest20.

Best Compound Bows of 2020

Editor’s Choice: Mathews VXR 28

My hunting buddy Josh Dahlke and I lease the deer hunting rights to a 400-acre farm in northwestern Wisconsin. It’s ideal deer habitat of rolling hardwood ridges and agricultural fields, but that doesn’t mean our deer hunting is easy.

Whether you hunt in public land or private ground, mature bucks are good at avoiding hunters (that’s how they’ve grown old, after all). That means we put in plenty of work before we actually start hunting. Our goal is to hang cameras and stands so that when it’s time to hunt, we’re not scrambling—and potentially blowing a big buck off the property. But really, the “work” we’re putting in is a labor of love. Obsessing over treestand locations, scouting new ground, and scrolling through trail camera pictures is just how I want to spend my late-summer days.

If you’re like us, you’re probably doing the same thing right about now. Here are some of the tactics we use for patterning deer and hopefully tagging a nice buck or two when the season starts.

Get the most out of your trail cams

Trail camera pictures are only as useful as you make them. At the most basic level, they tell you if nice bucks are around. But what you’re really trying to figure out is where those nice bucks are heading, where they’re coming from, and where they might be vulnerable. To do that, you’ve got to really read the pictures, not just flip through them. For example, look to see if one of your target bucks is hanging out with a bachelor group of smaller bucks. That way, even if you don’t keep getting photos of the big buck, but capture shots of the smaller bucks, you can still gamble on the big buck’s general whereabouts (some of the wariest bucks are good at avoiding cameras). In one of our shots we spotted a buck with muddy legs. That tells us he probably crossed a nearby swamp before coming out to feed. You can look for more general hints too. For example, are deer hitting certain food sources more often than others? Are certain fields more active at night versus in the morning? We’re logging all of this information into a mapping app called HuntStand so that as the season progresses, we can objectively identify deer patterns and zero in on areas with the most buck activity.

The Best Rifles of 2020

Editor’s Choice: SIG Cross, $1,780

A man in a cap aims a Sig Sauer SIG Cross rifle during a gun test. (Bill Buckley/)

This new gun from SIG is the real deal. It’s not just a bolt-action thrown into a chassis with AR-15 dimensions. The Cross has attained the elusive goal of being a portable mountain rifle (8.5 pounds scoped), with a hefty dose of battlefield DNA thrown into the mix. The stock adjusts every which way for a custom fit, and it folds down so the rifle can be carried in a pack. The three-lug action is snappy and quick. It runs great from the shoulder and is crazy accurate. With few exceptions, this 6.5 Creedmoor was a one-hole gun, shooting nearly all types of ammo in tiny clusters to the same point of impact.

The tight tolerances on the mag well helped it feed flawlessly from the 5-round P-Mag it came with, and were in keeping with the rifle’s feel of rugged reliability.

Great Buy: Tikka T3x Lite Roughtech, $1,100

Largemouth bass cruising Florida’s Rainbow River. (isaac szabo/eric engbretson/)

Spend enough time at any boat ramp from Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas to Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota and you’ll hear a common complaint: “Man, it’s getting harder and harder to catch a bass.”

Your buddies will want to blame fishing pressure. And while real cause-and-effect is tricky to pin down, there is some good science to support those claims that bass may actually be getting tougher to catch.

Letting 'Em Go and Watching 'em Grow

Before we dig into the research, a quick history lesson. Sixty years ago, bass fishing was primarily a Southern thing. Many new reservoirs had growing largemouth populations, plus good habitat that was easy for anglers to identify. Bass fishing was excellent—for a while.

But over time, catch rates began to decline. Angler harvest was partly to blame. So agencies implemented minimum-­length and reduced-bag harvest limits to protect bass numbers. But the real game changer was an evolving catch-and-release ethos. Using bass tournaments as a stage, and with strong media support, the bass-fishing community promoted the idea of catch-and-release fishing during the 1970s. Today, live-release rates are at 85 to 95 percent among bass anglers, and fish are as abundant as ever in most waters. So…why aren’t you catching more of them?

Nothing weathers the shifting trends in the handgun market better than the compact carry pistol—and for good reason. These midsize pistols are ideally sized for filling both duty and concealed-­carry roles. They can handle 90 percent of the tasks of their full-size big brothers, yet can disappear beneath a T-shirt.

Three of our five picks are shining examples of the midsize carry pistol, sharing optimal dimensions, 15-round magazine capacities, and excellent ergonomics. The remaining two are ideal if compromises must be made to accommodate capacity limits and restrictive clothing, or if deeper concealment is needed.

In general, the following models offer the highest ratio of concealability and shootability, and are as suitable for your nightstand as they are for concealing within your waistband.

1. SIG Sauer P320 X-Compact RX

SIG Sauer P320 X-Compact RX • $1,000 (Bill Buckley/)

The story behind the X-Compact is an interesting one. One sunny New England day, a pair of SIG Sauer Academy instructors decided to create a new concealed-carry pistol. One securely clutched a field-stripped X-Five grip module, while the other eyeballed his cuts with a hacksaw. When the plastic dust settled, the frame had been cut to accept 15-round P320 compact magazines and the dustcover was chopped flush to fit a subcompact slide assembly. It may not have been pretty, but a formidable carry pistol was conceived.

The 6.5 Creedmoor phenomenon has muddied the waters and confused a lot of hunters. The efficient little cartridge has become so popular, so ubiquitous, that many shooters are ascribing it powers it can’t live up to. Yeah, it’s a great, low-recoil round for precision shooting at ridiculous distances. But it’s not a super cartridge.

In fact, there are many cartridges that outshoot the Creedmoor.

Before you condemn me to the lower levels of Dante’s Inferno, consider external ballistics — the stability, accuracy, drop, deflection, and kinetic energy of the bullet in flight. What the bullet does in flight and when it strikes game are what matters, not the cartridge’s size, shape, or title. A cartridge’s size and shape, however, determine how much velocity they can give a bullet. So size does matter. It’s obviously unfair to pit a 6.5 Creedmoor (41 grains of powder) against a 6.5-300 Weatherby Magnum (78 grains of powder.) But it should be fair to compare many other cartridges to the Creed. Specifically, we should compare other rounds commonly used to hunt similar species (whitetails, mule deer, pronghorns, and coyotes) and cartridges that launch bullets of similar weight at roughly similar velocities with similar recoil.

Let’s define those parameters. The Creedmoor gets its longrange performance reputation from a combination of 140- to 143-grain, high B.C. bullets and fast twist rifling, usually 1:8 or even 1:7.5. Full house loads in 7-pound rifles recoil with about 15.7 ft.-lbs. energy at a recoil velocity of 12 fps. You can choose lighter bullets from 100 grains to 130 grains, too, for higher velocities, flatter trajectories, and even less recoil.

Many other cartridges fit this category, but before introducing them, recognize that muzzle velocities vary significantly from rifle to rifle, load to load. Barrel length, chamber dimensions, etc., can add or subtract 100 fps, even as much as 200 fps from the same ammunition. Handloaders often tread on dangerous ice by pushing excessive pressures to gain speed. So we’ll stick with sensible velocity averages as listed in handloading manuals and/or ammo manufacturers' published claims.

Getting a bass to hit a frog is the easy part. Setting the hook is tricky. (Bassmaster.com/)

Watching a massive bass blow up on a topwater frog bait is one of the most thrilling moments in all of fishing. In a single instant, you get to witness the power, ­aggression, and speed of our most prominent and willing freshwater predator. The ferocious strike always seems like a miracle, and yet it’s totally inevitable on the best bass water around the country in late summer and fall.

To consistently get more strikes on a hollow-body frog bait, you’ve got to understand the frog as a prey species—it skitters across lily pads and grass mats with ­sporadic kicks, and then it pauses in an opening between the vegetation, twitching those legs ever so slightly. This is one of the great advantages of a frog bait—you can fish a small patch of cover, patiently popping the frog without moving it closer to you, antagonizing a fish to a strike even if it’s not actively feeding.

But getting bass to hit a frog is the easy part. This tactic is ­notorious for missed strikes. It may seem like you need to match the fish’s speed and power with your hookset, which is partially true, but patience is the real key to more successful swings. You’ve got to understand bass as predators and know exactly how they eat their prey. Here’s a close look at how big bass feast on frogs.

Here is a look at how largemouth bass strike a topwater frog bait. (Mike Sudal/)

1. The Ambush

Bass are ambush predators and predatory generalists. He’s not hunting for frogs exclusively but waiting for any vulnerable prey to swim by. He detects the vibrations of your frog through his lateral line usually before he ever sees it. The bass may strike in a flash without warning or, if he is especially big, he may flick lily pads with his tail on the way to your bait, a subtle sign of an imminent strike.

The author, and his hunting partner, with their hard-earned Dall sheep. (Tyler Freel/)

“This isn’t going to be good,” I thought to myself, as the wind I had been fighting against for hours suddenly fell still. After maybe 2 or 3 seconds of silence, I was smashed by a gust that instantly flattened my tent “Well, I guess I’m leaving now,” I muttered as I crawled under the rain fly and began quickly stuffing gear into my backpack with a necessary, but forced sense of calm, despite feeling panic and frustration. I had no choice, my hunt was over.

The first day or two of any sheep hunt is almost always a shock to the body, and as I laid down in my tent that first night, some light muscle spasms in both legs served as a foreboding reminder of the difficulties that were ahead. I had decided to hunt sheep alone with a recurve bow, and with over a decade of sheep hunting experience I knew the odds were almost insurmountably against me. Still, I felt confident that night. I had passed by a group of rams early in the afternoon, determining one to be legal by full-curl, and another to be likely legal by age.

They were tucked away in what I considered a safe place, an out-of-the-way bowl that no one was going to stumble into, despite it being a fairly high-pressure area. Up until the point of carrying a recurve with me into the mountains, just finding a legal ram to hunt was usually one of the biggest challenges. Given time, weather, and patience, any ram is killable. Having a day and a half until the season opened, and not wanting to risk driving the sheep from their hidey hole, I moved on to check other areas.

I don’t think there is much debating that bowhunting Dall sheep is truly one of the most challenging hunts you can undertake. Of course, the physical aspects of backpacking and hunting in the mountains these rams call home are daunting, as is the constant struggle to stay positive and motivated in the search for a ram. The combination of their habits, haunts, and incredible eyesight make them tough to get close to, but add in a recurve or long bow, and the level of difficulty gets heightened. Anyone who succeeds in this venture deserves respect, and I hoped to be among those by the end of this trip.

Closing to Within 100 Yards Twice

A close look at the three-position safety and the color-case hardening on the metalwork on this Dakota Model 76. ( Bill Buckley/)

What we think of as a custom gun today is vastly different than it was a generation or two ago. Though we live in a golden age of rifle accuracy and performance, unequaled in the history of firearms, the old-school skills that defined the custom gunmaker’s craft have become scarce.

There are many reasons for this. Take synthetic stocks, for example. Just 25 years ago, the idea of putting a synthetic stock on a fine rifle would have gone over like a food fight at a black-tie dinner. Plastic stocks, with few exceptions, belonged on cheap guns, and that was that.

But as the strength, durability, materials, and aesthetics of those stocks improved, they came to reign supreme on guns at all price points. And so, the demand for fine, traditional stockmaking—with the sanding, filing, hand-checkering, hand-rubbed oil finish, and everything else it entails—has practically evaporated.

The quality of CNC machines, which can churn out dozens of actions and other parts daily while maintaining tolerances within a fraction of a thousandth of an inch, has also changed the equation. The need to blueprint and tune an action for peak performance and to file metal parts for a perfect fit are no longer required.

The sweeping lines of the Schnabel-shaped stock. ( Bill Buckley/)

The majority of today’s custom gunmakers source the various components (the barrel, stock, action, trigger, and so forth), screw them together, bed the action, and, voilà, produce a gun that shoots better than anything your grandfather ever dreamed of. As nice as these guns are, however—and I own and have built many of them myself—they don’t have the same soul as a true custom arm fashioned by hand.

Bassmaster Elite angler Patrick Walters with a largemouth landed on the Tokyo Rig. (wired2fish/)

It’s not that bass pro Mike Iaconelli had an issue with being outfished; he just wanted to know why his Japanese host was smoking him, like 4 to 1, during a 2017 trip to Tokyo’s famed Lake Biwa. Frustrated and curious, Iaconelli confiscated his host’s rig and found something he’d never seen—a leadered punch shot. This became the inspiration for his collaboration with VMC hooks, and three years later, they introduced the aptly named Tokyo Rig.

VMC’s proprietary model consists of a welded ring that links a rolling swivel line tie, a technique-specific hook (wide gap, flipping, or worm), and a 2 1⁄2-inch leader connected with another rolling swivel. Slip a weight onto the leader, turn the tip 90 degrees to prevent slippage, and you’re ready to fish.

The Tokyo Rig is different from earlier punch shot forms that linked the suspending weight directly to the connector ring. Also known as the Jika Rig or Jig Rig, this predecessor lacked the Tokyo Rig’s distinguishing leader.

Here's how to set up the Tokyo Rig. (wired2fish/)

“When I first saw this rig, I thought, This is going to be a great tool for punching, flipping, and fishing deep grass,” ­Iaconelli says. “Back then, I never saw the potential for it in a lot of other places, but it really has become a versatile technique.”

Case in point: During a 2018 Bassmaster Elite event on the ­St. ­Lawrence River, Iaconelli was looking for something between a ­finesse-y drop-shot and a powerfishing wobblehead jig presentation for targeting deep smallmouth bass in swift current. Rigging a ­Berkley Powerbait Jester creature bait on a Tokyo Rig with a 3⁄4-ounce VMC tungsten weight enabled him to fool big smallies by mimicking the gobies and crayfish scurrying over the rocky bottom.

Blue-wing success on the last day of early teal season on Illinois public land. (Joe Genzel/)

There’s not much difference between a knowledgeable teal hunter and opportunistic one. You actually have to be a bit of both when hunting blue-wings during the early September season. Once you find the teal and pound on them, they are going to seek refuge like any other duck. But if you do find them again, you’re almost assured a good hunt. They aren’t wary birds, and love spinning-wing decoys more than a country boy loves Hank Williams. Consistently locating teal is the key.

Over the years, both of us have found different ways to target blue-wings (you can shoot green-wings and cinnamon teal during September as well). But we live in two very different states in terms of teal habitat. Weimer has plenty of it in Missouri, while I have limited access here in Illinois. He can typically shoot teal all season and has a better season framework than me (his starts later, and times the migration better). So our strategies are different. Weimer is looking for multiple good hunts per season, and I am looking for one or two. Both of our strategies work when the teal are in, so if you’re looking to bag more blues this September, try these unconventional tactics. —J.G.

1. No Floating Decoys

Pack spinners only and you can stay more mobile, and move to the ducks much faster. (Joe Genzel/)

The teal were more than a mile from the truck, and we had to stomp through knee-deep mud to get there. But if we could get to the birds, it would be a slam dunk. So I told my buddy to leave the floaters in the truck bed because it was 85 degrees and we were both going to be sweating enough as it was. We arrived at the hunting spot in just enough time to flip two spinners on and lay down in some nearby brush. The blue-wings came in perfect and we almost shot a two-man limit, ending it one bird shy because the teal were coming in such big groups we didn’t want to risk shooting over the limit (you can kill multiple birds with one shot since teal ball up so tight together when they finish at the spinners).

I’ve used that tactic many times over, particularly on mud flats where the bottom is soft and the water is in short supply. I typically employ four to five spinners—at least one of which will be an on-the-water spinner—with no floating decoys, but will bring mallards and/or goose silhouettes at times because they are so packable. Teal don’t seem to key in on floaters like other puddlers and divers do during big duck season, at least not on the smaller waters I hunt. All of the marshes I’m in are public and everyone else is hunting over the same blob of decoys and one or two spinners. My spread has more motion in it than most, plus it looks different. And anyone who has hunted ducks or geese for very long knows that being as unconventional as you can with decoys often sparks birds’ curiosity.

Carlton bugles to a high-country bull in the mountains above Craig, Colorado. (Andrew McKean/)

In another lifetime, Wayne Carlton might have been a carnival barker. He has that way of hooking you, yodeling or catcalling to catch your attention in a crowd and then keeping it with a slightly ribald joke or curious turn of phrase.

You might recognize Carlton, 76, from his career as a pitchman for Hunter Specialties, his Southern accent purring from beneath a cowboy hat as he describes how his latest call will turn trophy bulls inside out and bring turkeys running from the next township. He’s back in business with his Native by ­Carlton brand, and he still has plenty to say.

Outdoor Life: You have talked about setting the stage for a conversation with elk. What do you mean by that?

Wayne Carlton: When you blow a call, you’d better have some idea of what you expect the answer to be. You can’t stumble through the woods blowing a call and expect to create a conversation. One of the first bulls I ever called in was on Red Mountain Pass in Colorado. I walked in the dark to the crest, about 12,000 feet above sea level, and I waited for the wind to turn from blowing downhill to blowing uphill before I blew a call. I knew that any bull below me couldn’t smell me, and that they couldn’t resist answering an elk uphill of them. It worked. I had a bull start raking trees, and I was able to spot him and home in on him.

OL: So how do you advance the conversation?

IMAGE: 1-Freel-Sheep.JPGCAP: A good set of waterproof rain gear costs less than $200. (Tyler Freel/)

Hunting in the mountains can teach us hard lessons, and serve as the ultimate proving ground for hunting gear. I’m not referring to a short afternoon jaunt, but the sometime weeks-long expedition-style hunts that sheep and mountain goat hunters often subject themselves to. They are unforgiving hunts in unforgiving country, and your gear—clothing, in particular—is critical to both your survival and your success. Although good gear is often expensive, this doesn’t mean that it’s always the best.

In my 17 years of hunting sheep here in Alaska, I’ve learned almost all gear falls into one of three categories:

1. Dependable.

2. You can get away with it most of the time.

3. It doesn’t belong on the mountain.

None of us were born with all the skills and knowledge needed to be a master fire builder. We had to learn them. There are many times in the wild that you need to be able to make a fire quickly, and you don’t want to be unprepared, especially when your survival depends on it. Practicing this skill is an essential part of good woodsmanship. If you are just getting started, here are the mistakes to avoid.

1. Picking Materials Off the Wet Ground

Picking up wet sticks is one of worst things you can do when gathering fire materials. (Tim MacWelch/)

Here in the damp Eastern Woodlands, I often jolt my survival students with a timed fire-making exercise when they all start looking too comfortable and confident in class. Out of the blue, I’ll tell them that they have 10 minutes to make a small fire and I’ll start the countdown on my phone. This test has two purposes. The first is to assess the fire-making skills of the class, and the second is so that each person has a benchmark to assess their progress. After a lengthy struggle to create a sustainable fire (or 10 minutes of failure), most people are eager for the tips I share. If I had to identify the main reason that most people fail the test, it is that they collected their sticks and tinder off the damp ground. Many people are conditioned by signage and training to gather loose dead fuel that’s fallen down, but in an emergency (or any other time you’d like to have fire-making success), you’ll have better luck breaking off the dead branches, twigs, crunchy leaves, and brown pine needles from standing woody plants, shrubs and trees. This is typically the driest fuel in any environment.

2. Don’t Use Rotten Wood

Decomposing wood is a weak fuel for starting a fire. (Tim MacWelch/)

The two main groups of organisms that break down woody plant materials are bacteria and fungus. These are often at work before the leaf or branch dies, and they may even be the cause of death. As plant materials succumb to these organisms, they turn back into the dirt from whence they came and the circle of life continues. Here’s the problem with woody plant decomposition from the perspective of a fire builder: We’re losing fuel value as the material breaks down. Every step closer to dirt that the materials take, they are another step away from being firewood. There are some exceptions, as a select few materials are improved by rotting. Inner tree bark becomes more fibrous after a few months of decomposition, for example. Logs can also become punk wood, which can be used as a smoldering fuel. Unfortunately, most materials are just getting worse as they break down. For this reason, build your fire starters and your firewood pile with wood that isn’t rotten yet. Sticks should splinter when they break, not break off in blunt-ended chunks. You’ll also want to avoid branches with fungal growth, like shelf fungi, mushrooms, witch’s butter, wood ears, etc.

Shooting the buck of a lifetime isn’t as easy as shooting accurately at the range. (Ron Spomer/)

The competition world is crowded with incredible rifle shots. There are some guys and gals who seem to hit anything at any distance. Some of these hyper-long-range shooters man their artillery so effectively they can consistently drop little 230-grain bullets on 8-inch steel discs 1,500 yards away. But none of that means much when it’s time for you and me to shoot a deer this fall.

Important shooting—the kind that puts holes in your tag, antlers in your hands, and venison in your freezer—is field shooting. That sudden, heart-stopping, high adrenaline, no-time-to-prepare, quick-he’s-getting-away game shooting. The kind of shooting that leaves you shaking afterward. Here’s how to become more accurate on your next hunt.

1. Select the Proper Tools

It’s important to consider the type of game and the distances you will be shooting at in preparation for a hunt. (Ron Spomer/)

This may be superfluous advice, given the time and focus most shooters devote to their rifles, scopes, and ammo these days. But it’s probably not. Let’s hand it to ourselves: The average shooter today knows more about rifles, bullets, ballistics, scopes, and the Coriolis Effect than any previous generation of hunters. But knowing how to work a rangefinder, wind meter, scope turret, and attached bipod isn’t necessarily setting up our tools or ourselves to shoot effectively when hunting. That takes an unblinking assessment of where, when, and how we hunt—not just how we target shoot.

Case in point: prone bipod shooting. Everyone trains and practices prone with a bipod clamped to his or her fore-end stock. Wonderful. Rock solid. But if you’ve spent any time hunting, you know going prone is often a recipe for “I can’t see the deer!” Grass, brush, rocks, or merely the roll of the land makes prone shooting wishful thinking. Go prone at the sighting of a buck and that may be the last time you see him.

The author’s dog, Grim, returning a woodcock to hand. (A.J. DeRosa/)

Silence can be a rather jarring experience. And sounds, with their strong associations, can hurtle us through time and space. I associate silence with wild places, camps of my youth—good memories, to put it simply. As my truck door slammed closed with an unnaturally loud sound, the opening day of grouse and woodcock season was upon us in New Hampshire. Three and a half hours of driving north, starting in complete darkness, had brought me to one of my favorite covers. I stood there for a second, listening to nothing other than the faint sound of the river in the distance. For any hunter, opening day—no matter what your game—is the hard-reset day of our year. The realities of life from the previous months are beat back with a new burst of energy and positivity.

A slight whimper snapped me back into the present and the task at hand. I opened the door to grab my side-by-side, dog collars, and bird vest. The whimper turned to scratching. Grim, my Wirehaired Pointing Griffon, was as excited as I was for this day (maybe more so) and after numerous weeks of pre-season training on resident woodcock close to home, the smell of gun oil confirmed his suspicion that something more exciting was unfolding on this day.

That initial silence was quickly swallowed by my conversation with the dog and his ever-growing excitement. I strapped Grim’s GPS collar around his neck; the bell hanging from it began a soft jingling, muted slightly by the duct tape strapped around the clacker inside. The sound of that bell made me think of the man up in Maine who had given it to me as a gift while I was traveling with the Ruffed Grouse Society. This time, the latch of the tailgate shutting once again snapped me back to the present.

Grim hopped around like a toddler on a sugar high. Moments like these have earned him a nickname: the bucking bronco. His joy literally uncontainable, the sounds shifted to paws bouncing from dirt to water to leaves and then there was the bell, ringing in a language only bird hunters can interpret. The silence from when the engine cut out was quickly forgotten. My mind had shifted to the moments of pause we always hope to find in bird cover: the even more profound silence of a dog on point.

I have a confession to make. Although I have a special place in my heart for hunting ruffed grouse, it is the American woodcock that has captivated me and earned my true love. Some may think it’s an obscure species to hunt, because unless you are a ruffed grouse hunter, not many people happen upon woodcock casually. Woodcock rarely wander unsuspecting onto logging roads nor do they offer the iconic, drumming display of their neighbor, the ruffed grouse. They are a hidden species. If you asked my dog how he felt about the American woodcock, his ears would perk up in eager agreement that this bird should be in his life every day. In fact, a couple of dancing males provided him with endless backyard entertainment this past spring. He could often be found standing on point for long periods wondering why I had not loaded a shotgun and backed him up. In reality, I was tortured the whole time; in true novice fashion, I sat there wondering just how much these backyard encounters were ruining my pointing dog. At least the fence stood between them.

Legendary tarpon guide Steve Huff shows off a 186-pound tarpon caught off Homosassa, Florida, in 1977. (Steve Huff/)

This story is adapted and excerpted from Lords of the Fly: Madness, Obsession, and the Hunt for the World-Record Tarpon, by Monte Burke. Fishing records is not a new topic for Burke. He’s also the author of Sowbelly: The Obsessive Quest for the World Record Largemouth Bass—easily one of the best and most entertaining works of lunker literature.

In Lords of the Fly, Burke takes a deep-dive look into the world of tarpon fishing and the town famous for it. In the 40-plus years since Tom Evans, a New York City stockbroker, first caught a world-record fish in Homosassa, Fla., in 1977, he has returned to the area and landed six more record tarpons in the surrounding waters. His success made this small town the hub of saltwater flyfishing in the 1970s and ’80s, and attracted professional anglers, such as Stu Apte, Lefty Kreh, and Billy Pate, as well as fishing enthusiasts including writers Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane and landscape painter Russell Chatham. Burke wonderfully captures their stories as well as those of their unsung guides, detailing the alliances and rivalries. Lords of the Fly comes out on Sept. 1, 2020, but is available for preorder now . Till then, enjoy this sneak peek. —The Editors

Tom Evans was one of the few regulars at Homosassa who was not from South Florida, and he was the sole Yankee (at the time, he lived in New York City). He was not a famous angler, as Apte, Williams, Pflueger, Lopez, and Pate were. He was also one of the few who had an actual nine-to-five job. He felt he was viewed as a latter-day carpetbagger, a bit like an outcast, even though he was allied with the Keys-based guide, Steve Huff. And yet, early on, he and Huff—the former collegiate nose tackle paired with the wiry guide—were the team to beat in Homosassa.

They were on the water, idling out of the Homosassa River, every morning at 5:30. Even when other guides and anglers were up earlier, they’d often wait for Huff to leave and follow him out, because he knew how to navigate the tricky river and its mouth. Evans and Huff were nearly always the last boat in, as well, tying up close to eight at night. “It seemed like we never saw the dock in the light of day,” says Evans.

Every day was an endurance test for both angler and guide. “It was an athletic event. We’d kill ourselves, torture ourselves,” says Evans. “Steve never wanted to go back in until we were dead. That made him happy.” They were both on their feet for around eleven hours a day. Huff learned the flat slowly and painstakingly, one plunk of the push pole at a time, pushing into the fifteen- to twenty-mile-per-hour winds that always seemed to arise in the afternoon off the Gulf. He would never start the engine if fish were around, even if he and Evans were leaving for the day. Instead, he’d pole out of the area, which sometimes added another forty-five minutes to the trip home. “The tarpon were lying around, doing their thing. This was their house. It was disrespectful to blow them out,” Huff says.

The author’s son and younger brother on the opening day of dove season. (Joe Genzel/)

It’s September 1, and my head is on a swivel, frantically looking in every direction for doves. Finally, I see the flitter of wings. Doves either fly like fighter jets shot out of a cannon or float along through the air, riding the wind. This one is high, but straight up, just cruising. My ass is already sore from sitting on a plastic five-gallon bucket, so I stand quickly to shoot, but fumble the safety. I haven’t clicked one over since spring turkey season, and when I finally push the button, the weight of months spent separated from friends and family fades away. The familiar feeling of a wooden stock to my meaty cheek is comforting. I slap the trigger and a gigantic puff of white feathers plumes from the bird’s chest. The best months of the year are here again, and it’s about damn time.

Like the rest of you, my life looks very different than it did before COVID-19 hit. For weeks in March and April, I only left my house when necessary, sheltering in place with my wife and 6-year-old son. I live in an urban area, but have access to hiking trails and my parent’s farm, so I relied on those places when I needed a break from these challenging times.

I am fortunate to have outdoor spaces to roam. Because many folks in big towns and cities were virtually trapped in their apartments for months, or lived in fear of stepping outside as social unrest led to violence and looting on the streets of major cities across the U.S. It has been stressful and unsettling for us all; more so for people of color and the tens of millions of Americans who are jobless due to the pandemic. We are facing unprecedented challenges in a time when the future of our country remains uncertain.

That’s why I feel so lucky to be a hunter right now, too. It’s been proven that going outside is good for us. And I plan on doing a lot of it this fall, just like many of you. We can finally get the hell away from the negativity this pandemic has brought with it, and go hunt.

But just getting into the woods isn’t enough for every hunter—myself included—to be happy. This pandemic has made me hyper-cognizant of the importance of my own mental health. A little background: When my son was born almost seven years ago, I hadn’t thought much about how my actions and my frame of mind affect other people and my own wellbeing. I wasn’t prepared for the added responsibilities of parenthood, and my wife encouraged me to seek therapy. I didn’t want to, but eventually I saw that the frustrations and anger caused by the stresses of work and life itself were impacting my family in a bad way. I had to make a change.