Hunting and Fishing News & Blog Articles

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Prairie dogs are a real problem for many cattle ranchers across the west and specifically Eastern Montana. When these desert rodents overpopulate, they will overgraze an area and literally eat cattle out of house and home and potentially spread disease such as the bubonic plague. Shooting them is a good defense and Mike and John are ready for the challenge! These two marksmen are custom gun nuts that love reloading and gunsmithing so you know they take their equipment seriously. Their custom .223s are dialed in, mounted on top of Swagger Bipods and ready to send the prairie dogs to an eternal dirt nap! 55 and 60 grain Hornady V-max seem to give the best results for exploding prairie dogs as they grenade on impact and don’t ricochet.

This isn’t your average, every day varmint shoot as some out-of-the-box tactics are used including the drop of a prairie dog nuke using tannerite. That’s right, tannerite was used to create the ultimate prairie dog explosion! These guys know how to have fun and that translates into a very entertaining episode. Beyond the Grid – Prairie Dog Extravaganza presented by Swagger Bipods. Enjoy!

WIN A BIPOD FROM SWAGGER!

Eastmans’ Publishing, Inc. is a multimedia corporation whose roots are grounded in the ethics of fair chase hunting. We strive to help our audiences become more skilled and ethical hunters, while expanding their knowledge, appreciation, and awareness of the outdoors and wildlife through entertainment media.

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The era of the E-bike is here. Companies are coming out with viable, mountain bikes with electric motors and gearing that is sufficient for mountain trails. Yep, thats right, sufficient for mountains. With the combination of gearing and power, electric bikes are a feasible option for front and backcountry use (not wilderness). Not only do e-bikes provide transportation into non-motorized areas, they do it silently.

The FatKat, by Quietkat has a 750-watt electric drive motor which is geared into the pedal drive. E-bikes are generally built from an alloy frame, equipped with front and rear disk brakes in which the front can manually be locked into the fixed position for pavement use. Max speed on flat pavement with the electric motor is about 19 mph. The luggage rack on the back is nice to have for extra gear. Being a backcountry hunter, I’ve personally hunted with a mountain bike quite a bit and was skeptical how this bike would do going up hills. However, the motor and gearing seemed pretty dialed and traversing up a 25-degree slope for a hundred yards proved easily doable without burning out the legs in low gear. Quite frankly, it didn’t even strain my legs. So that was pretty cool.

However, you can’t just go and take the bike up extreme terrain or through deep creek crossings. As Brian Barney said in his EBJ 102 article “Pandora’s Gearbox”, “if you can’t ride your standard bike up it, don’t try and ride an e-bike up it.” Unless of course, you want to burn out your motor. The take away here is, don’t have unrealistic expectations. We’ve experienced 10-mile rides without using the whole battery. I pedal where it’s easy and use the assist when needed. If you do run out of battery be prepared to ride your e-bike out. This can be daunting. The bike alone weighs 79 pounds so you don’t want to have to pedal it up hill for very long. Do not let your electronic control panel mounted on your handlebars get rained on or wet. We’ve experienced the digital interface quit working when the electronics got too wet. Also, do not submerge the motor or more importantly, the battery.

For me in general, the most practical use for e-bikes are for some sort of developed, or once developed, gated road where you can maximize the use of battery without much strain.  A lot times old logging roads were built to follow contours with little grade for semi truck use, which means there aren’t many severe grades; absolutely perfect for an e-bike.

You get out of hunting what you put into it.  The harder you work, the more you ender, the better you will get. The better you get the more consistent results you will have.  When you get a chance at a big buck or big bull you have prepared for the moment the entire season or maybe multiple seasons. “Success is when preparation meets opportunity”.  You could not describe bowhunting any better.  If you want consistent success on public lands you have to work at it, you have to be driven!

Mental toughness