FREE September 2019 | Volume 15 | Issue 9
Last Light of the Last Night in the Land of Enchantment Chad LaChance: Fishful Thinker
Cast-n-Blast Bonus
Gary Lewis: PacWest Outdoors
9 Secrets of Successful Hunters
Elk Hunting EssEntials The gear you need and why Page 14
RELENTLESS RELIABILITY Leupold’s VX-Freedom:essential gear for a more successful hunt. PAGE 8
SPORTSMAN’S NEWS 2322 W. Industry Way Cedar City, UT 84721
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PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER Mike Deming President/Publisher 435-669-4624 mdeming@sportsmansnews.com
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This is an outfitter we have hunted with every year for the past seven years and look forward to every March. We have been able to harvest some extremely large Aoudad on 40,000 acres. One 33” whopper, 31.5”, 31”, 29.5”, and 28” rams. ~ the Sportsmans News Team
New Mexico & Texas Hunts (575) 361•1053 17th Annual
OUTDOOR WRITING CONTEST Grand Prize Package
• Winner will be chosen to join the Sportsman's News Team on a fully guided hunt in Texas with Steve Jones Backcountry Hunts the last week of March 2020. Included is meals, lodging, 1 on 1 guided hunt for 3 days for Trophy Aoudad in west Texas. This is a free range wild sheep hunt. License is included for the winner. Camp will be shared with the Sportsman’s News team and we will film the adventure for an episode of Sportsman’s News Television. • Contest will run from November 1st, 2018 through November 30th, 2019 with two stories selected each month and published on our website. One grand prize winner will be randomly selected from those entries and notified by e-mail. • Every published entry will receive a knife from Outdoor Edge and will be entered into the grand prize drawing. • E-mail stories and photos to info@sportsmansnews.com. • Stories should be between 900 and 1500 words and be sent as a MS Word document or pasted into an e-mail. • Photos should be high resolution JPG’s, TIF’s or PDF’s: if you have any questions regarding photos call (435)865-1680. • Stories without photos will not be considered for publication or contest entry. All stories may be edited for content and size. Published articles and photos become property of Sportsman’s News. All prizes are provided by Sportsman’s News Inc. Must be 18 years of age to win grand prize. All entries must include author name, address and phone number to be considered for publication.
September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
WORDS FROM THE PUBLISHER By Michael Deming
WHAT’S INSIDE
4 Last Light of the Last Night in the Land of Enchantment Big elk with Compass West Outfitters
Relentless Reliability: Leupold VX- Freedom Riflescopes 8 Leupold releases new models of their popular line.
10 Platinum Approved Outfitters
Choose a Sportsman's News Endorsed Guide for your next trip.
14 Elk Hunting Essentials
What you need and why for chasing wapiti.
20 Pacwest Outdoors: Nine Habits of the Record Book Hunter Gary Lewis shares his secrets to harvesting big deer.
22 Pro's Pick:CVA Paramount Long-Range Muzzleloader Muzzleloader kill shots at 300 yards and beyond..
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s I sit down to type this publisher’s message, I’m getting so excited. We literally have days before we will be hitting the woods for fuzzy mule deer bucks with our bows, and screaming bull elk. It’s not that I don’t like to fish, but when the fall comes around, I feel a primitive calling that can only be answered by being on the mountain chasing these majestic beasts. I become one with nature and it gets me so much more in tune with all of my senses. I get to see if all of my preparation was enough. The older I get, the more I feel like I’m less prepared than the year before. It still never squashes the anticipation of the upcoming season. This anticipation for opening day is a lot like that of a kid waiting for Christmas morning. Everything about this is wholesome and good for you as well as good for your soul. I’m afraid that a lot of our next generations don’t have this excitement about our love of the outdoors and the pursuit of adventure. This is especially true when you talk about learning the joy of the adventure and being in the woods. It’s about the journey and success doesn’t just mean that you filled your tag. Most of our youth have been conditioned to want immediate gratification and they are limited on patience. These outdoor experiences are just the medicine to help break those cycles and give them some building blocks that will suit them in all aspects of life. Unplugging from those dreaded electronic devices is a good thing. It’s actually a great thing. Spending nearly four months hunting every Fall, I get a chance to talk to numerous people in the field and at their camps. It always saddens me to see a teenager or younger child sitting on a bluff with a beautiful view and miles of terrain to glass; only to see them staring at the same screen they could have watched at home. Unfortunately, it’s not just the kids either. I see more people trying to share their live feed on one or many of the unsocial media platforms instead of being engaged with the task at hand. I’m not saying don’t take photos and capture the moments of this great experience. I’m just saying that you don’t need to share it right now and if you are sharing, you’re missing something else. Chances are there is a big buck or bull watching you make a fool out of yourself and is now sneaking off to a quieter and safer place. Trophy animals are extremely smart, warry, and elusive in general. If you are looking to get pictures of yourself and him up close and personal, you can’t make very many mistakes; if any at all. You have got to bring your “A Game” and staring at your phone definitely isn’t even a “C Game”. You are going to have to find this animal you want before you can ever even think about hunting him. You need to observe him and hope that he makes a mistake that you can capitalize on. You have to know enough about your trophy to know if he actually did make a mistake. All of this information is gleaned from years of being in the field and watching these animals. When you do this, occasionally the stars will align, the wind will stay in your face, and everything will come together so that you can walk up to a trophy of a lifetime. When that happens, you know that all the sacrifice was worth it, and you truly do have something to share on social media instead of trying to appear important by sharing others success. Best of luck to all of you this fall. I hope to see you in the field enjoying the great outdoors.
26 Quest Centec NXT Youth Bow
A great performing beginner bow that comes fully set up and ready to shoot.
28 Video Product Reviews 32 Trigger Time With Team Doubletap Competition Provides Pressure
36 Outdoor Writing Contest: An Elk To Remember Filling a tag and fulfilling a dream.
Fishful Thinker: Blast-n-Cast Bonus 38
Grabbing extra opportunities to put protien in the cooler.
40 Business Directory 42 Pro Membership Update: Steve Jones Backcountry Hunts Texas Aoudad hunting at its finest.
44 Wild Game Recipe: Venison Shanks
Slow cooked and tender fall-off-the-bone goodness..
46 Outdoor Writing Contest: Doubly Blessed A down-on-his-luck hunter scores twice in one day..
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Gary Lewis Chad LaChance Curtis Robertson Benjamin Mahoney Steve Mayer
September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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Last Light of the Last Night in the Land of Enchantment By Michael Deming
S
uccessful; definitely not a word I’m used to seeing when applying for the New Mexico big game application process. When I heard that these results had been posted, I made beeline to my computer to check the status of my long-awaited draw. For those of you not familiar with the lottery process they call the big game applications, I’ll provide you some insight. Each western state has an application process to get the majority of their big game tags. Residents are awarded the greater number of these tags, but a percentage of these tags are set aside for nonresidents. New Mexico is no different in that standpoint. However, they separate their tags
Ely Vujko with the monster private land ranch bull. These tags are available on a very limited basis.
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September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
even beyond this. If you are a nonresident and you apply with an outfitter, there is a portion of those nonresident tags for just this process. If you don’t apply with an outfitter, there is another portion of these nonresident tags that go into this pool. I usually apply on my own, but this wasn’t going to be the case this year. Compass West Outfitters owned by Chris and Karin Guikema have been on my radar for many years and I had been talking with Chris about doing an evaluation trip to see if his operation was as good as I had heard. However, when you are sold out nearly a year in advance for everything, you don’t much need the help of someone like us nor do you need to be evaluated. Knowing that we wanted to have the best outfitters in the business for our Pro Membership Sweepstakes and that intended on buying at least a hunt or two a year might have helped with Chris planning a hunt with me and my team. Unfortunately, my mad dash to the computer wasn’t rewarded with that “Successful” green banner I was hoping to get. A big fat red “Unsuccessful” is what flashed on my screen. I called Chris and let him know that my luck had continued as usual and we would have to put this off for another year. He informed me that this wasn’t going to be the case. He had set aside a landowner voucher for me to get this hunt done for 2018. Those of you not familiar with this “Landowner Voucher” term; It’s an authorization to purchase a tag which is issued to landowners from the state. This voucher is used by outfitters and hunters who don’t get fortunate enough to draw a tag in the lottery process. Once they have one in hand, it is just like you drew the tag and now you can get a license. So, I went from happy, to unhappy, to happy once again and the October elk hunt was on. October finally rolled around and as luck would have it, we had endured one of the driest seasons on record. This meant that the big mature bulls that we would be targeting could likely be 30-50 inches short of their expected growth potential on a regular moisture year. I had been talking to Chris on a regular basis throughout the archery season and he was consistently confirming our fears about the drought. I kept telling myself that we will make the most of it and find the biggest bull we can.
Pat Guarnaccio with another great ranch bull. Huge fronts and long beams are the norm in a good moisture year.
The author with the New Mexico bull he harvested with Compass West Outfitters. We rolled into camp the second week of October with rifle in hand. We would have 5 days to get it done and literally over seventy-five thousand acres to get it done on. The base camp is your traditional elk heaven with an abundance of wall tents and a huge white cook tent. We were greeted by the staff and directed to our sleeping quarters and settled into the groove with some good elk hunting tales. We had a big dinner and were given instructions on the plan for the week and then settled in for a good night’s sleep. Once the adrenaline wore off and all the new hunters settled down, it was finally quiet. The quiet of the cool evening was interrupted by a scream of a bull a few hundred yards away. It was the beginning of a night of serenading by numerous "camp" bulls. This country hadn’t seen water in months, but our first morning of hunting was dropping in buckets. Thank goodness for some high-quality Sitka Gear I had packed. We parked and walked up the road in the dark and just hoped that the rain would subside enough to get a visual on a big bull. The darkness held on for way longer than expected with the dark skies and we did our best to use the cedar trees for cover. As the darkness finally gave way to light, the rain slowed to a drizzle. A lightning bolt struck by close and felt like it flipped the switch for the elk. The screaming across the valley became immediate. One bull wouldn’t even finish his bugle and another would chime in. We had over twenty bulls bugling in the area, but had yet to lay eyes on any of them. Chris was guiding us personally and he picked out of the drizzle and fog, the first bull of the morning. It was actually a group of several bulls, but no shooters. For a solid hour, the bugling continued and we got eyes on well over a dozen of them. None of them were worthy Guide Jim Steinback and his daughter Erin of this precious tag even for a drought year. with her first muzzleloader elk.
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Chris decided that it was best to go back to camp and dry out and then hit another portion of the ranch that was ideal for glassing in the early afternoon and evening. After lunch and a short nap, we headed back out to the field. The rains had made the ground extremely quiet to walk on and Chris had just the spot for us to spend the afternoon still hunting and glassing an opposite ridge. We had just crested the hill and were looking for a good place to glass, when Chris stopped us. We had just walked in on a bull in his bed. We were less than 30 yards from what looked like a pretty heavy piece of bone. He was on the opposite side of a Cholla cactus which covered most of his antlers. The wind was good, but the bull knew that something was up and swiveled his head around to see what was in his bedroom. We determined that he was a six by six, but couldn’t determine how big he was before he finally decided to get out of Vince Cebular, with his the country. It was definitely an exciting unbelievable officially scored close encounter. We set up on a good lookout where we 426 bull. could see miles and miles of terrain. As the sun gradually got closer to the horizon, more and more elk kept coming out. A big mature five by five was cross canyon from us and it was all I could do to not send a round from my Browning X-Bolt .26 Nosler his direction. I kept telling myself that this is only the first day; be paitient and it will happen. We stayed on our perch until nearly dark and the grand total was 55 bulls for the day. Not a bad day considering the conditions mother nature had thrown on us. For the next 3 days, we covered ground, glassed terrain, and covered more ground looking for a huge bull. We knew that with the drought, we were truly looking for a needle in a haystack. Chris said that we were looking at a fraction of the bulls he sees on a regular year and we had already exceeded 150 in our four days of hunting. So, I couldn’t imagine what it is like on a good year. We were looking for a huge bull that likely lived somewhere else for the year and was coming down to his traditional rutting grounds to get cows. With the pasture in such poor shape, the cows were very limited and we would need a break to find a trophy bull. I was committed to all 5 days of season to make it happen and not just shoot any ol' bull. On the last evening of the hunt, Chris said that we needed to check out one area that we hadn’t gotten a good look at yet. We took the Polaris to the far end of the ranch and the minute he put up his glass, he said there’s a bull. Since everyone else in camp had tagged out, we had another guide by the name of Mike who was along to be another set of eyes as well as pack mule if we got lucky. We watched this bull for nearly an hour and even though he was a mature bull with a dozen cows, we just couldn’t put him in the age class to be worthy of harvest. With less than an hour of legal shooting light left and no target bull in our sights, I started to feel like I just might eat my first ever New Mexico bull elk tag. We were glassing every open hillside that we knew we could get to in the legal light we had left, but nothing. We stopped the Polaris and walked up a small hill to look into a very small basin. I heard Mike call my name and he motioned for me to get my spotter up. He could see what looked like a good bulls 4th point in the brush about 650 yards away. I set up the spotter and sure enough, It was the sword point of a good bull. He had just gotten out of his bed and was feeding in the mahoganies. We were getting glimpses of pieces of antlers, but never the whole thing where we could judge his size. With less than thirty minutes of legal shooting light, we finally got a descent look at his rack and body. He was definitely a mature bull with good main beams and all of his points in tact. In true Sportsman’s News fashion of the last light of the last night, I squeezed the trigger on my .26 Nosler and ended what was a long-awaited New Mexico bull. After decades of elk hunting, this was my first ever New Mexico bull. This was my 45th branch antlered bull and a major milestone for me. He wasn’t the 350 plus bull I was hoping to harvest when Chris and I planned this hunt, but considering the conditions, we did pretty darn good. It will definitely go down in my elk hunting career as one of the best hunts I’ve ever been on. It consisted of great camp, great professionalism, great food, and lots of elk. Chris and his team are some of the best I’ve ever had the pleasure of hunting with and I’m even happier that he has committed to selling us a couple of hunts a year for our Pro Membership Sweepstakes to give away. Book your own elk hunt with Compass West Outfitters or become a Pro Member at www. promembershipsweepstakes.com for a chance to win one.
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September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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Relentless Reliability: Leupold Expands Award-Winning VX-Freedom Riflescope Line
nnovation is at the very core of the American spirit. It’s what inspired Marcus Leupold – son of one of the company’s founders, Fred – to decide to build a riflescope of his own over 70 years ago. That spirit still thrives today at Leupold, and is embodied tenfold in the company’s award-winning VX-Freedom line of riflescopes. You want relentless reliability? The VX-Freedom delivers it. You want elite optical performance at a price you can’t ignore? Consider that box checked. You want to unleash your rimfire rifle, dominate from any tree stand, or tag out across an open draw? The VX-Freedom has you covered. Best yet: New for 2019, Leupold has announced the addition of four new models to the VX-Freedom line – including models with illuminated reticles, 30mm maintubes, and more. The new lineup is meant to deliver even more usability to the already relentlessly versatile VX-Freedom family. Two of the new models incorporate FireDot illumination, while two more deliver greater magnification than previously available. All four offer 30mm maintubes. “The VX-Freedom line has been designed from the ground up to deliver the versatility and performance that hunters and shooters have come to expect from Leupold,” said Vici Peters, Product Line Manager for Leupold & Stevens, Inc. “The addition of illuminated reticles and greater magnification range to the line provides our consumers with even more options when selecting a riflescope for their favorite activity – all at a tremendous value.” Both new illuminated options feature 30mm maintubes and a fast-focus eyepiece – one is a 3-9x40 with an illuminated FireDot Duplex reticle, the other a 3-9x40 AR model with a .223 ballistic dial and milliradian turrets to run alongside its FireDot Tri-Mil reticle. Designed to help you settle your point of aim over your target faster, regardless of environmental conditions, the FireDot reticle delivers gamechanging illumination at an amazing price point. New 4-12x40 and 6-18x40 scopes, meanwhile, have a 30mm maintube, a Tri-MOA reticle, and Leupold’s Custom Dial System (CDS) feature. Both models also have a side-focus feature, allowing for more rapid, convenient parallax adjustment at long range – allowing you to further stretch the capabilities of the ever-versatile Freedom line.
different conditions. A free CDS dial is offered with the purchase of any CDSready riflescope, and extra dials are available for a nominal fee. The illuminated VX-Freedoms, meanwhile, maintain Leupold’s Motion Sensor Technology (MST), which puts the FireDot reticle into a battery-saving standby mode after five minutes of inactivity. When the MST detects motion, it instantly activates the sight, so it’s ready when you are. A manual mode allows the sight to be shut off when not in use – like when you’re posted up on a ridgeline waiting for a deer, or when your rifle has been returned to its place in your gun safe. As soon as the MST senses movement, your FireDot reticle will be good to go.
Free Yourself from Subpar Performance
New Features Two of the key features offered in the 30mm VX-Freedom riflescopes are the CDS (in the high-magnification Freedom scopes) and Motion Sensor Technology, or MST, in the illuminated models. Leupold’s one-of-a-kind Custom Dial System (CDS) makes accurate long-range shooting this simple: range your target, turn your CDS dial to match the range, aim dead on, and then squeeze the trigger. With a CDS dial and some practice, you can shoot farther and more accurately than ever before. Here’s how it works: Leupold customizes your scope’s elevation dial to match your exact load, velocity, and even the average atmospheric conditions where you hunt for unprecedented precision. With your CDS dial, you’ll easily compensate for bullet drop and make ultra-quick adjustments on the fly without having to worry about holdovers. You can even create multiple dials for the same riflescope to match different loads or
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September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
The VX-Freedom line, mind you, is designed, machined, and assembled right here in the U.S.A. with one purpose in mind – to give you the freedom to put a Leupold on any hunting rifle, .22, AR, or long gun you own, knowing it will perform for a lifetime. Only a company with Leupold’s history and engineering expertise could deliver an American-made optic that boasts performance and affordability like the VX-Freedom. You’re looking at best-in-class optics – crisp, clear images with unmatched edge-toedge clarity. Did we mention that you’ll be able to see the previously unseen? It’s no secret that the first and last 20 minutes of any big game hunt are often the most crucial – it’s when the animals are most likely to be up and moving and when you’re most likely to get a shot. Thing is, that’s also when there’s not much light to work with, and you can’t hit what you and your riflescope can’t see. That’s why the VX-Freedom line incorporates Leupold’s Twilight Light Management System, a proprietary lens coating system that increases the amount of usable light that reaches your eye. Translation: Your optic will still be able to see Bullwinkle during those last five minutes of legal light even if your naked eye can’t. The VX-Freedom series is everything you’ve come to expect from a Leupold optic. It’s tested to the very same ruggedness standards as our top-tier riflescopes. It’s also backed by the Leupold Full Lifetime Guarantee because we know you’re going to put it through the paces. At the end of the day, you don’t quit, and you don’t back down. Neither should your optics. Epic moments don’t create themselves. With Leupold’s new additions, the VX-Freedom line is delivering the versatility you’ll need – the versatility you’ve been asking for – in the field. All at one of the best value price points on the market.
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You could be in their sights! C O N T A C T
Mike Deming National Advertising Manager
Sportsman’s News • 435-669-4624 mdeming@sportsmansnews.com
September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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ELK HUNTING ESSENTIALS
The gear you need to get the job done By Michael Deming
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horter days, cooler nights, changing of the leaves, and the scream of the bull elk is a vision that lives very vividly in my head 365 days a year. As the last day of September comes to a close, I am already counting down the days until we can do this again. I guess you can say that I have a serious case of “Elk Fever” and I’m pretty sure that there is no cure. Last year, I got to sit in an elk camp with some hard-core veteran guides as well other seasoned elk hunters. The question went around the table of how many elk each of us had harvested over our lives and after some brief discussion, we pared that down to how many branch antlered bulls have you taken. Most had to think about it and add them up, but I’ve accounted for every bull I’ve ever taken due to this severe case of elk fever I have and when I said the number forty-five out loud to our group, there was a pause. “That’s a lot of bulls “was a comment by one seasoned elk hunter and another of the guides said, “I think I might have guided that many”. A few things I have learned over all of this time in the woods is how to make mistakes. I’ve done it wrong just about every possible way you can think. However, you only truly fail if you quit and that’s something I never do. I just learn a little bit more on every outing. The other thing that I’ve learned is what gear is really essential
to help me be successful. There are lots of products on the shelves which make things more convenient or comfortable, but I’ve got my mandatory list of items that go with me on all elk hunting trips. As new products come out, I usually test them out and weed out the old and add in with the new if it makes sense. Here is my list of necessary elk hunting items.
OPTICS Both binoculars and spotting scopes are essential to elk hunting success. If I am in a new area and haven’t had time to pre-scout the area, I am going to live behind my optics. Elk are grazers and that green grass grows better out in the open pastures than in the trees. They will likely be seen in these open meadows, but as hunting pressure kicks in, they are going to come out into these parks and meadows later and later and leave them in the mornings earlier and earlier. This means that you need good quality optics that work well in low light. It also means that you need to look very far away in most cases. I am often looking for the tan bodies of elk at first light as far as 5 or 6 miles away and sometime further. I personally use Zeiss Victory 10X54 rangefinding binoculars and the Zeiss Harpia 95mm spotting scope. Both are extreme top-of-the-line optics and I feel they tip the odds in my favor for finding animals in low light; but whatever fits your budget in this department is much better than not having these tools at all.
RANGEFINDERS Whether you are hunting with a bow, muzzleloader, or a rifle, your best chance for success when the time comes is to know the exact distance to your target. Unless you are a master at range estimation, you are taking a major chance of wounding a great majestic animal and that’s not a risk I like taking. I want to know the exact yardage to my target regardless of the weapon I have in hand. I already carry a set of rangefinding binoculars with me in the Zeiss Victory RF 10X54s, but I am so emphatic about making sure to be precise that I always carry a backup. SIG, Leupold, and Vortex all have some extremely accurate, lightweight, and affordable rangefinders that will fit the bill.
14 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
TRIPOD AND WINDOW MOUNT It doesn’t do you any good to have high quality optics if you can’t hold them still and spend some time behind them. You can cover way more country with your optics than you ever can on your feet. Blundering through the dark timber hoping to find elk was how I was raised, and I quickly learned that this isn’t very effective except for people sitting behind their optics watching me jump elk. I like a good quality carbon fiber tripod like the Manfrotto. I like these to be a three-section unit that will allow me to not only sit down behind it but stand up and glass if the cover in front of me is too high. I put the Manfrotto 128RC micro fluid head on this and I do the same for my window mount. These are some of the very best fluid heads I have used, and I can also put my cameras on them when needed. Having identical heads on both my window mount as well as my tripod allows me to keep the same base on my optics and if I am spotting from the truck, I can grab them and head out quickly without needing to swap out bases. This is a system I have utilized for over a decade and it’s a solid plan.
PACKS You are going to need a daypack with a decent amount of capacity when you hunt elk. It isn’t uncommon to hike 10-20 miles on a serious day of elk hunting. The mornings are usually cool and damp and require extra clothing, but you will gradually heat up and need to shed those clothes as the day goes on. Afternoon rain showers are a common thing in September, and you will definitely want to have quality rain gear with you. The other needed accessories, which I will list below, as well as food and water for the day, takes up a lot of space. This requires a pack that is both large enough to carry all of your gear as well as adjustable and comfortable. It is even better if it has the ability to expand and get some of your elk out on your first load if you are successful. I personally carry the ALPS OutdoorZ Traverse X pack out of their extreme line as it accomplishes all the above requirements for me. Once I get that first load back to the truck, I am definitely going to want an external frame pack for hauling the heavier loads of meat, head, and horns out. The Trophy X by ALPS is a great meat hauling frame pack with a lot of adjustability to make that heavy load as comfortable as possible. It is extremely important to find a pack that fits you and your frame for these heavy loads. I also recommend having a set of trekking poles with this pack. They are extremely beneficial when you are hiking those heavy loads on uneven ground.
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HIKING BOOTS This is truly where the rubber meets the road, so to say. You want a good pair of hiking boots that have been broken in well before the upcoming elk hunt. Ten plus miles a day can cause severe damage to your feet if you are working with a substandard pair of boots. If your feet take too much abuse, you will spend the rest of your elk hunt back at camp and be eating tag soup. High quality boots like Kenetrek Mountain Extremes or Zamberlan 980 Outfitters are proven and dependable and I have both. I’m often asked, “what is the best boot” and I can always answer “what is the best boot for me?” I know my own foot shape as well as the hot spot areas I have identified over the years. I also know tendencies of different manufactures and how those boots work for me. My foot is narrow at the back and wide near the toes and if they were orange, I would surely be a duck. I almost leave two separate tracks when I get out of the pool, which tells you how high my arches are. If your foot is identical, I can give you a recommendation, but you are better off trying on multiple high-quality boots that have been proven performers for other hard-core hunters. Pick the one that fits your foot the best and get fifty plus miles on them before it’s time to hunt.
CAMO CLOTHING There were lots of elk harvested long before camouflage came about, but the development and overall advancement of these clothes has made a huge difference, especially for those of us using shorter range weapons like bows and muzzleloaders. In addition to being camo, the clothing has become so much more technical. Sitka Gear was the innovator in this field back in 2005 and I still have some of those old Mothwing pattern original pieces today. Both the patterns and the functionality of these pieces of gear have come a long way. During this month of September, layering is essential to keeping your scent minimized as well as staying warm, but not hot. I have a full Sitka Gear layering system which keeps me comfortable and dry in absolutely every elk hunting climate I visit. As we move into the colder months and those bulls are on those wind-swept ridges free from snow, it’s extremely cold waiting for a shot opportunity. The multiple layers help break the wind and insulate you from the cold. Granted, it does take a small fortune to purchase a complete set, but you will never complain when you are sitting on the mountain and it’s raining cats and dogs, but you are dry as a bone and waiting out that giant 6X6. For the more budget minded consumer, the Killik Gear line of technical clothing has two great patterns to choose from, K1 and the Big Sky, and performs really well.
GPS UNIT Elk hunting often requires you to leave camp in the dark and you are often not back until it is dark again. The GPS has features that allow you to mark this destination as finding your way back. You can mark waypoints, which are places that are beneficial to your elk hunting success. This could be a wallow you have found, active game trail, an area torn up by fighting bulls, or maybe a trail camera you decided to install. The unit that I like and use personally is the Garmin Rino 755T, which comes preloaded with topographical maps. It also has a two-way radio that allows me to communicate with other hunters in our group. If they have a Garmin Rino as well, I can program them into my system, and it will show their location on my screen. This makes finding fellow hunters very easy; especially in the dark. I also like to have OnX hunt software on this GPS unit
16 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
as well as on my smart phone. This software provides you a map overlay showing the ownership of the land. It shows public, private, state lands, BLM, and forest service. This is a great tool when you are hunting a new area and come across a fence and the elk are just over the hill. You can now determine if this is public land or if you will be trespassing. This software has been a game changer for me going into new areas and figuring out where to hunt.
TRAIL CAMERAS The laws on trail cameras are different in every state, so make sure you check the rules of your state on these great tools before you hit the field. If the state in which I am currently hunting allows me to have trail cameras in the field during the season, I never leave camp without at least one that is all set up and ready to go. This allows me to have an extra set of eyes with me at all times. If I find a heavily used trail or a fresh wallow, I can hang this camera and get data on what is hitting these spots. This will tell me if it is worth my time to sit here in the future. I’ve always used trail cameras for scouting areas but started taking them with me on hunts about a decade ago. I usually have half a dozen or more in camp. There are numerous different brands of cameras to choose from in today’s market, but I’m currently utilizing the Browning Strike Force Apex. I like them because they will accept very large SD cards (up to 512GB) which allows me to take lots of photos or video and get as much data as possible. They are relatively small and carrying a couple of them in my pack doesn’t take up much room.
CALLS Getting an elk to call back to you and actually come in for a shot is probably one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. This requires a ton of experience and even more practice that your family, friends, and neighbors are thoroughly going to hate. Listening to elk in a real-world environment and seeing how they communicate is the best experience possible as it allows you to read body language as well as see the sounds coming out of their mouths while they posture. If you can’t make a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park during the rut to get some skills, you can watch plenty of it on YouTube. The biggest teacher of calling is making mistakes in a real-world environment. Elk that live on public land talk and act much differently than those elk in the park and on private land. However, getting good sounding calls and learning how to perfect the sounds they make the most is a good start. When I was a kid, Wayne Carlton was putting out videos on how to successfully call elk. In my eyes, he was a god and had mastered elk talk like nobody’s business. Living in Montrose, Colorado, he was developing calls and testing them in the field. For decades he perfected his calls, his craft, and made lots of mistakes. Thirty years later I got to meet with him and since I call him my friend. I utilize nearly every call and decoy that he and his son Marc manufacture under the name “Native by Carlton”. The Green Weenie is one of the purest sounds out there and I’ve always got one in my pocket and a backup in my pack.
LIGHTING Leaving camp in the dark and coming back in the dark is common practice, as stated above, when elk hunting. You are often going through deadfall or narrow paths and a fall could be fatal. Being able to see is essential. I like to carry both a headlamp and a flashlight with me in my pack at all times. The new Black Diamond Storm 375 is an excellent light and operates off of four AAA batteries and I also carry an extra set of batteries. It has red, green, and blue night vision modes and the 375 lumens is extremely bright when you need to light up the area to cape out a bull or find a blood trail. My flashlight is a Hybrid Light Journey 600, which is a rechargeable light. It is extremely lightweight and also doubles as a power pack for recharging my cell phone should it go dead. It puts out 600 lumens and will run for 6 hours at this rate. It is ideal for someone watching for bears as the other person capes and quarters and elk. September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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KILL/SURVIVAL BAG This bag has all of my essentials in it that are going to be needed if I’m successful on my hunt or end up needing to spend the night out in the field. This actually happens fairly frequently and should be something you embrace. It will increase your success a lot. When you have been trying to find elk all day and you finally turn up a herd, the last thing you want to do is leave them. Being in a position to be close enough to keep track of them, but not spook them has you ready to strike in the morning. You will need some basic essentials to do this and they are all in this bag. First and foremost is a lightweight tarp. I used to carry the Mountainsmith Mountain Shade Tarp until Sitka Gear just came out with their new Flash Shelter. These are lightweight tarps and if you need to get out of the weather and spend the night, these will do a great job of breaking the wind or keeping you dry. When I’m successful on my hunt, I will lay my quartered and boned out meat onto these tarps to keep it clean and dry. I also carry 100 feet of 3/8-inch polypropylene diamond braided rope. I use this for helping to set up the tarp for a shelter and for hanging quarters in the air to get them cooled down. This is enough rope to get all the quarters of an elk up and out of the reach of bears if you are in bear country. Game bags are essential to keeping your meat clean and flies from getting into them. Caribou Game Bags are extremely lightweight as well as reusable. I always have multiple knives in this bag as well as replacement blades for my Outdoor Edge Razor Pro knife. I carry a 7” folding Flip n’ Saw from Outdoor Edge as well. This can be used for taking out the skull plate, clearing the area for photos, building a shelter, or cutting up firewood.
Fluorescent ribbon is great for marking blood trails and I also have at least two windicator bottles in this bag. I know that this is an essential part of mountain hunting and I know I will always have one with me as I’m never leaving home without this kill/ survival bag. Surgical type rubber gloves (4-5 pair) keeps your hands clean. I keep one pack of disposable wipes which have numerous great purposes in the field. However, once you are successful, it is great for wiping blood off of your trophy to get quality field photos which aren’t offensive to some. I always have some means of starting a fire in this bag. Pyro Putty and the rechargeable Dual Arc Electronic Lighter are great resources for this and have found their way into my bag. I’ve always got a fine tipped Sharpie in a Ziploc bag as well as a small roll of electrical tape. These are essential when you need to sign your tag and attach it to the carcass to be legal. I close out the bag with an Adventure Medical Kits first aid kit and a tube of sunblock and we are good to go. With forty years of elk hunting experience under my belt, I’m sure that I’ve still got a lot more mistakes to make, but hopefully this essential gear list will help you not make some of the same mistakes that I have made. Hopefully you will greet this elk season a little more prepared.
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The 9 Habits of the Record Book Buck Hunter Prepare for and plan a hunt for a trophy blacktail, mule deer or western whitetail.
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This Cascade blacktail was taken in Oregon’s Rogue Unit with a centerfire rifle and a Nosler Partition. The general rifle season offers an opportunity to take a record book blacktail, but the odds improve as the season lengthens.
By Gary Lewis
y quest for a record book buck started on a late-September afternoon at Bend Mapping in my hometown of Bend, Oregon. I yarded out a map of the Rogue Unit and found the biggest road-less area. Next I searched the corresponding topographic map and two miles from the nearest road, located a saddle and a rocky
outcrop. A week later, at dawn, I followed a deer trail up into that saddle. Two hours later, I stood on a ledge on that rocky outcrop. I heard a sound, a buck raking antlers on the trunk of a manzanita, and spotted the buck, or rather, just a patch of its neck and the base of its antlers. My crosshair found its mark, and when I pressed the trigger, I knew it was a tremendous animal. The Boone and Crockett Club, one of America’s first conservation organizations (founded 1887), celebrates the finest of each of the North American big game species. The Pope and Young Club (founded 1961) is the corresponding conservation group for bowhunters. The pursuit of animals for the record books had its genesis in the purest forms of the hunt, where the animal is used for its meat, and the head, hide and memory are preserved recognizing its excellence. That big blacktail buck taken in a patch of manzanita in the mountains east of Ashland, Oregon, did not qualify for Boone and Crockett because it was found east of the line where the club considers true blacktail live. Instead, we call it a Cascade blacktail, and the Record Book for Oregon’s Big Game has a special category for such an animal. Its antlers measured 22-1/2 inches wide, tip-to-tip, and with four symmetrical points on each side and good brow tines, it went in the record book at 137-5/8 inches according to the B&C method of scoring.
Photo by Gary Lewis
This blacktail was taken with an 1840-s style muzzleloader, which makes it eligible for the muzzleloader record books.
20 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
Photo by Gary Lewis I don’t always hunt for a trophy buck. Sometimes I hunt for the experience, or to spend time with the kids or friends, but in the 18 intervening years since that first book buck, I’ve put three more bucks, a Columbia whitetail and two Columbia blacktails, as well as several African animals, in the record books. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about the places trophy animals live and how to put them in the sights – especially deer, and especially in the rather primitive sights – of my 1840s-style muzzleloader. These then, are the 9 habits of the successful record book deer hunter. 1. Learn to score and field-judge antlers. Look at a mule deer, whitetail or a blacktail rack and guess its B&C measurement. 2. Target one or more record books. Analyze the entries. Some parts of the West do not grow big deer due to genetics, soil content, habitat, hunter pressure and drought conditions. Record books to consider include the Boone and Crockett, Pope and
Photo by Gary Lewis
Using an 1840s-style muzzleloader, like this Thompson Center rifle is one way to target a place in the record books.
Young, Safari Club, National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association (NMLRA), the Oregon Big Game and Washington Big Game record books. 3. Plan to hunt multiple deer each year, focusing on trophy areas. As an example, a hunter in Oregon could chase mule deer with a muzzleloader in the Juniper Unit and, with a 600-series tag, also hunt with a centerfire rifle in the Willamette Unit for blacktail deer. The same hunter could cross the Columbia River and hunt blacktail deer in Lewis County, Washington, a proven producer of record book bucks, or go north to Alaska and hunt the Sitka blacktail. Sitka blacktails are easy to judge and almost any Rattling deer antlers can bring in a 4-point buck will make the dominant buck to investigate. On this late record book on Kodiak Island or Prince of Wales Island. November hunt, the tactic did not pay off. 4. Gain proficiency with rifle, bow and muzzleloader. Some areas will not produce a book buck for a hunter with a centerfire rifle, but there are lower minimums for record entry in P&Y Club (archery) or the NMLRA (muzzleloader). 5. Learn to read topographic maps and aerial photos. Trophy deer require ample feed, water, bedding areas and escape cover. Being able to visualize the ground while scouting at a kitchen table is a skill that sets big buck hunters apart from the rest of their camo- and orange-clad brethren. 6. Hunt from mid-October to the first of December. In the Pacific Northwest, we have to believe that the buck we are looking for is still out there. He grew big antlers because he is almost nocturnal and has been that way since a youngster. Toward midOctober, bucks, in their peak physical condition, start cruising for females and are prone to make errors in daylight hours. 7. Pass up 3-pointers. A 3-point (Western Photo by Gary Lewis count) buck will almost never make the record book. The trophy hunter has to pass up a 3x3 in order to take an animal with enough inches of measureable antler. It might mean not filling a tag. And that’s the chance to take.
Photo by Gary Lewis
when the weatherman says it’s time to go. Blacktail hunting is better when it’s wetter. 9. The final step? Enter the buck in the record book. After the mandatory 60-day drying period, it is eligible for measurement. Entry in the books costs something around $25, which covers the clerical costs of the record book organization. Some people scoff at record books, but there is a conservation imperative for keeping track of outstanding animals. The data gathered from record book entries shows the areas of the West where big blacktail, mule deer and whitetails make their living. Over a century of history reveals trends biologists and land managers can use to promote better conservation and wise use of resources. To contact Gary Lewis, visit www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.
Photo by Gary Lewis
Watch and study mule deer in velvet like this Central Oregon mule deer and then go back to find them later when the antlers are hardened.
Photo by Gary Lewis
James Flaherty walks out a ridge top at the end of a morning hunt. The pursuit of a record book buck often leaves the trophy hunter empty-handed at the end of the season. Gary Lewis with the buck he took on an evening hunt. By western standards, these are not large deer. Adult Columbian whitetail bucks may tip the scales between 115 and 150 pounds. Hunters who pursue this interesting subspecies of whitetail should expect to take a buck in the 80- to 130-inch class.
8. Hunt in the rain. My friend Sam Pyke (producer of our TV show, Frontier Unlimited) has bagged several trophy animals in his favorite hunting area because he doesn’t hunt until there is a major storm in the forecast. He bought the best rainy weather gear he could get and he is ready September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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PRO'S PICK
CVA Paramount Long-Range Muzzleloader Boldly Going Where No Muzzleloader Has Gone Before
By Michael Deming
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ong Range and muzzleloader seem to be a bit of a contradictory term, but with everyone wanting bigger, better, and faster with everything they own, it’s not surprising that there is a demand for it. CVA was definitely up to this challenge in delivering a muzzleloader capable of accuracy out to 400 yards and beyond. We jumped at the opportunity to put one of these to the test and prepare it for the upcoming hunting seasons. When it arrived, I was excited to get my hands on this new smokepole. I had spoken with the company’s CEO Dudley McGarity earlier in the year and knew all the research that had gone into developing such a precision long range muzzleloader, which made the excitement even greater. When I opened the box, at first glance I thought I had been sent the wrong rifle. This looked a lot more like a benchrest style bolt gun than a muzzleloader. I had been briefed to make sure I read the entire instruction manual before starting to do anything. Being an old grungy Marine by trade, I’m not big on reading directions. I took heed though and set the gun up on the desk and started reading the manual cover to cover. After completing the task, I understood why reading the manual is essential. This setup is totally different than any muzzleloader you have used before. The
manual was written by the folks at CVA, who actually developed this product and it has thorough and valuable instructions on the setup as well as real load data. It is written in simple terms and in a way that even a Marine can understand. Now that I had an understanding of this rifle, it was time to give it a bit of a once over. The stock is a fully adjustable synthetic stock with an internal aluminum chassis.
Adjustment for the length of pull is done with removeable spacers and full comb adjustment is fast and easy with loosening one large knob/bolt on the stock. The barrel is a .45 caliber 26” Bergara heavy barrel, which is 416 stainless steel and nitride treated. It is free floated and ready for long range accuracy with its 1:22 twist. It is a bolt action gun, which makes it very different than most other muzzleloaders you have ever seen. This was designed to eliminate pressure loss with these magnum loads. This bolt setup completely seals the breech making sure this newly designed VariFlame breech plug and magnum rifle primer gives you consistent shots time after time. The action is drilled and tapped to accommodate a Remington 700 short action base and it is recommended that you put on a 20 MOA rail for best long-range results. Getting prepped for your initial range work is essential. As with all long-range shooting, you are going to need precise loads and your owner’s manual does a great job of spelling this out. CVA recommends using Blackhorn 209 High Performance
22 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
PRO'S PICK
CAPTAIN'S LOG • The manual recommended a 20 MOA rail, but the 6,000 feet of elevation and a riflescope with 50 plus minutes of elevation travel is going to get you on target out past 500 yards. This may not be the case at lower elevations as we did not test in those conditions. Because of this, we removed the rail and used medium Talley rings and installed a Zeiss V6 riflescope that was 3-18X50 and could sight in for the recommended 200 yards and 103 total minutes of elevation adjustment was more than enough to get me to 500 yards and beyond. • For consistent accuracy and getting the most out of your rifle, you will want to pick up a digital scale for measuring powder to the grain. This method will provide long range accuracy far superior to the by volume measurement process. It’s worth the added investment. We used the RCBS Chargemaster lite for this purpose, which automatically dumps the proper amount of powder and verifies it by weight. • You are going to want to purchase additional Blackhorn 209 charge tubes. Your rifle comes with three of the 150 grain by volume tubes. These are the best and having twenty of them is ideal for range days. If you can’t find the larger tubes, the 120 grain ones will work and still hold a full load, but with not much room to spare. • You will want to purchase additional VariFlame adapters for your kit. These are the units that hold the large rifle primers. They are reusable, but after a few trips to the range, we have already lost a few of them. Getting a good number of extra ones when they are available is a great choice. Muzzleloading Propellant and measuring it out with a scale instead of by volume, as most other muzzleloading setups do. Your rifle comes with three loose powder tubes, but I recommend that you pick up a couple of extra packages of these before you start. They come in packages of six and I added three packages (18 loads) to my kit. I now have 21 and it’s like hitting the range with a full box of ammo. I can just focus on shooting. This rifle uses the VariFlame adapter and large rifle primers in lieu of a 209 shotgun primer for ignition. This requires you to install these rifle primers into the VariFlame adapter. The rifle comes with the needed items to do this except a small plastic mallet. A plastic bullet puller worked just fine for this process. Your rifle kit comes with 10 of these, but I recommend having at least 10-20 more. You are going to lose a few of them as you are going through the process of setting up and during hunting. Your rifle comes with one package of 15 Powerbelt .45 caliber, 280 grain ELR (extended long range) series bullets. This was enough to get you started, but you are going to want to have plenty of these on hand. They were specifically designed for this rifle and as you will see by the owner’s manual that they have been well vetted. With 20-minute rail and scope mounted, and our preparation completed, we headed to the range to see exactly what this rifle was capable of. It is recommended that you sight the muzzleloader in at 200 yards. The 20-minute rail and this sight in distance, will provide you with enough travel in most riflescopes to shoot well past 400 yards. During our testing at 6,000 feet of elevation and 105 grains of Blackhorn 209 measured by weight, we were shooting a consistent 2,320 feet per second. The lows were measured right at 2,315 and a high of 2,332, which is very consistent with what we see shooting regular rifle loads. My down travel on my riflescope didn’t allow me to sight in at 200 yards and because of this, I opted for a 250 yard zero. A good three shot group and adjustments to windage and elevation and I was dead on. Shooting back at 100 yards put me exactly 7 inches high. It was now time to stretch this thing out and see what it was capable of. I plugged all my ballistics data into my shooting app. Three-shot group at 400 yards measured long-range The Ballistic Coefficient (BC) of the bullet we are 2.875 inches. shooting is .452 according to the paperwork in the packaging. This was
24 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
my only missing data for the app and I was ready to shoot. I made adjustments to my turret and let her rip at 400 yards. The group was excellent, but very low. Several groups later, I had manipulated the real data on my app to reflect a BC of .335 and I was hitting bullseyes every shot. A call to CVA confirmed that they were showing an actual BC of .333. At 400 yards and everything totally dialed in, I was able to put sub-MOA groups on paper and one measured 2.875 inches, which is extremely impressive for any rifle let alone a muzzleloader. In the owner’s manual, it is recommended to use a scope of at least 18 power and I can see that I needed more scope to get the most out of this gun. I’m sure that we can stretch this muzzleloader out well beyond 500 yards. Sign up for our YouTube channel (sportsmansnewstv) and you will get to see those longer-range shots when we post the video of the entire test.
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Quest Centec NXT Youth Bow By Shane Chuning
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etting the kids a bow is a great way to share the outdoor experience with them as well as get them hooked on shooting. Being able to shoot in the backyard even at 15-20 yards is a great way to improve their skills and grow them into future archers who can enjoy going to the field with you. All of these are things that are very tough to do with rifles unless you live in the country. Getting a bow and all the accessories for these junior shooters can be a bit expensive and since they are constantly growing, you could be doing this multiple times throughout their time as a young archery. Quest is doing their part with helping to keep these costs down upfront as well as delivering a new youth bow in the Centec NXT which is going to allow the bow to grow with the kid. We put this new bow to the test and here is what we can tell you after getting it out of the box and tuning it up. Quest has really done a great job with this bow. It’s 29” axle to axle and comes as an entire kit. It is going to have everything you need to start shooting except a release and a half dozen arrows. It comes with a whisker bisquit rest which is a very simple setup for young shooters and a 4-pin sight. It has adjustable draw length from 19” to 26” which means that this one bow should last for numerous years of growth. At 19” of draw, the peak weight of this bow is right at 43 pounds and can be adjusted down to 15lbs. At the maximum draw length of 26”, it has a peak weight of 47 pounds and delivers plenty of kenetic energy with our 318 grain arrow, which was firing out at 239 feet per second. This is roughly an IBO equivalent of 321 feet per second. This adjustable draw length doesn’t require the use of a bow press to move throughout the different draws. We did notice that there are some minor timing issues with the cams when we went through this process, but it isn’t significant enough to make much difference for someone who is a casual shooter and just looking to enjoy the experience. A draw board to check this and a bow press to put a twist of two of the cables and this is easily fixed if your kid is a real serious shooter. A well-tuned bow is going to shoot broadheads in the same place as your field points and this would be a good reason to adjust the timing on the cams if you are actually going to hunt.
26 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
Most kids aren’t shooting much past 20-30 yards in a hunting situation, so it isn’t essential. We shot the bow right out of the box without touching anything just to see what we were working with and we shot a perfect bullet hole right out of the gate. Absolutely no tuning needed. One special piece of equipment that needs a special mention is the EZ Grip Anti Torque Training device. We actually had to look at the Quest website to see what this additional piece of plastic was that was in the box. It attaches to the handle and teaches the appropriate grip for a bow. This is essential for accuracy for your entire archery career, but it is especially important when you are a kid and don’t have any experience. This not only forces your hand onto the grip appropriately each and every time, but this will also eliminate those nasty slaps on the forearm from the string that will cause many more bad habits if regulary repeated. The overall perception of this bow in putting it through the paces is that it is one of the best youth bows we have ever been able to shoot. Quest has delivered a winner here and having a bow that will grow with your kids is truly going to save you a lot of money in the future.
September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
27
Video Product Reviews
Leupold BX-2 Alpine Binoculars
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ood outdoorspeople get into the habit of having good optics on hand every day. I keep a pair of binoculars under the front seat of my truck in case I want to get a closer look at something that is out of reach because of terrain or property boundaries. These binos should be lightweight, take up minimal space, rugged enough to take a beating on bumpy roads, bouncing around the jack and other gear crammed under the seat, and able to handle the inevitable spilled cup of coffee. They also need to be affordable enough that I won’t weep too hard if someone smashes the window and helps themselves to my stuff. My go-to for this purpose is a pair of Leupold BX-2 Alpine binoculars. These are the perfect size to stow away in my truck and like all Leupold products, they feature premium coated glass and are designed and tested for punishment. The BX-2 Alpine Binoculars are extremely comfortable in the hands and have threeposition locking eyecups for use with glasses or shades. The lightweight magnesium body makes them strong, but super light and they are covered with a rubberized armor coating for a comfortable and sure grip, even when you use them in the rain. An oversized focus knob turns easily under the finger for quick focus while looking through the lenses. On the inside, they are made with very clear glass and do a great job of gathering light, even with their smallest 42mm objective. They also feature the Leupold Twilight Max Light Management System, which improves their low light performance and can add an additional 20 minutes of viewing Scan this QR Code with your smart phone to view time at sunset and sunrise. It also reduces the majority of glare t h e S p o r t s m a n ' s N e w s from reflective objects and provides excellent use of the entire YouTube Channel. eyebox for edge to edge clarity.
The BX-2 Alpine binos are available in 8x42, 10x42, 10x52, and 12x52, so there is a configuration for most of your daily glassing needs. They also have a standard ¼-20 thread under the logo cap in the front for easy mounting to a tripod with a binocular adapter. Nothing beats reliable gear that takes the kind of abuse I throw at it, except maybe knowing that the company stands behind their product and are confident enough in their manufacturing to offer a lifetime noquestions-asked guarantee. Leupold warranties these binos for life and will repair or replace them if they ever break. Whether you are looking for the source of smoke, the focus of a flock of circling turkey vultures, or just want a closer gander at that bull that just stepped out of the tree line, having these handy will become a habit you will wonder why you never adopted sooner. And at the affordable prices of these binos, you will be able to equip every rig in your fleet with a pair. Check out our video putting these binos through their paces by scanning the QR code in this article and see the excellent clarity of the BX-2 Alpines at your local Sportsman’s Warehouse optics counter.
ALPS OutdoorZ Enforcer Predator Vest
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LPS OutdoorZ is known for making reliable and well-made products for the outdoorsman and woman. Their newest offering is a hybrid between a pack with a seat and storage, and a vest. The real kicker for this product is the inclusion of a folding kickstand that supports your back during long sessions of sitting and waiting. Designed for the predator and varmint hunter, the Enforcer provides an 800 cubic inch (13L) main compartment with wide zipper access and a hydration pocket for your favorite water bladder. It doesn’t come with a bladder, but we recommend the ALPS Reservoir 3.0. The vest/pack has a fold down memory foam seat that is 2.5 inches thick for extra comfort on those long days waiting for the song dogs to come into the call. It has a tough textured vinyl bottom to stand up to even the rockiest ground and thorny plants. Two magnets on the bottom mate up with magnets on the pack to prevent it from flopping around and nylon straps buckle it in place for storage. It is easy to deploy without taking the vest off. The Kickstand frame gives the pack rigidity, but it also deploys when you sit to prop you upright. Two clamps on the legs allow you to easily adjust it to the preferred angle. Shock cord inside allows the legs to auto retract when the clamps are loosened so it can be easily stowed away. The entire Kickstand and frame can be quickly removed for those days when you are running and gunning and don’t have time to sit. The frame does have a small depression right under your neck and head and this allows you to rest your head back in the seat. The biggest downside to this is that it is easy to nod off and take a little snooze and that might cost a you a nice pelt. The back of the vest portion is deeply padded for exceptional comfort, even when fully loaded and worn for hours. A deep depression on the upper back allows air to circulate to keep you cool. Wide shoulder straps and waist belt Scan this QR Code with spread out the load to avoid fatigue. your smart phone to view In addition to the 13-liter main compartment, there are the Sportsman's News two removable pockets on the belt. These pockets contain YouTube Channel. additional storage netting pouches, as well as one with elas-
28 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
tic webbing for cartridges and the other with wider spaces for shotgun shells. Small, frequently accessed items are going to be right where you need them in these pockets. With the Enforcer pack, you will be able to stay afield longer and, in more comfort, as well as access all of your gear. It is roomy enough for even bigger electronic predator calls and essential gear, but small and light enough to be minimal. The exterior is made of quiet soft Tricot fabric in Realtree Edge camo and features four-way stretch coyote brown pockets on the front. The material has a DWR water resistant treatment to keep your gear dry from a quick downpour. Scan the QR code to see the ALPS OutdoorZ Enforcer in action.
Franchi Affinity 3 Elite Shotgun
Video Product Reviews
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esigned with the waterfowl hunter in mind, the Franchi Affiniti 3 Elite shotgun provides next-level enhancement of Franchi’s already stellar shotgun. With Cerakote finish on the barrel, action, and magazine cap to protect the metal from the elements, to special Optifade camo patterns to provide the best concealment in a variety of environments, to upgraded fiber optic front sights, the Elite sets you apart from your standard shotgun. And the upgrades aren’t just aesthetic. A SureCycle bolt release and an oversized bolt handle make it easier to operate with bulky winter gloves. The Franchi Precision Cone improves your shot pattern consistency and the chrome-lined barrel makes it easier to clean out fouling. Available in either the Affinity 3 or the 3.5, you can get it chambered to accept 3-inch shells or 3.5-inch shells, and of course they will both shoot 3 and 2 ¾-inch without modification. This means you can easily switch between light trap target loads all the way up to heavy high brass magnum loads without fear of extraction issues. Scan this QR Code with The Affinity Elite is a semi-automatic and uses the your smart phone to view t h e S p o r t s m a n ' s N e w s proven Inertia Drive for consistent and reliable feeding YouTube Channel. and extraction, even when dirty, damp, or dry; so, when
those big honkers come fluttering in, you know you will get the job done. Other features that make this a great shooting shotgun is a thinner wrist for a lower bore axis cheek weld for better sighting, an adjustable cast and drop on the stock for better fit and more comfortable length of pull, and slimmer forends, so the gun is a great fit for any shooter. The ergonomics of this work together with the mechanics to make it a natural pointer and is great for busting clays or ruffling feathers. And the TSA butt pads help absorb felt recoil. The Elite comes with a shim kit for adjustment, oversized extended choke tubes in close, mid, and long-range in a case with a wrench, so it is ready to pull it out of the case and get shooting. Our test model is an Affinity 3 Elite in Optifade Waterfowl Marsh in 12 gauge. It is also available in Optifade Waterfowl Timber and in 12 or 20 gauge. For the sportsman or woman looking for a comfortable and easy to shoot gun that has a ton of versatility, reliability, and value, they should take a hard look at the Elite series of Franchi Affinity 3 or 3.5 shotguns. Scan that QR code in this article and watch as we put this gun to the test and then check them out at your local Sportsman’s Warehouse gun counter.
Zeiss Conquest V4 Torture Test
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hen you walk into the doors of Sportsman’s Warehouse with the intention of buying a riflescope, you want to look at all the features and benefits as well as the clarity and functionality, and the Zeiss Conquest V4 series has numerous different models to choose from and perform excellently in this department. These scopes have a 30mm tube and .25 MOA click values. They are a second focal plane which means that your reticle stays the same size at every magnification setting. The second focal plane is desired by many long-range shooters due to the fact that the subtensions don’t cover up more of the target for long -range shooting. The 4-16X50 is one of the most popular configurations for field use. The 4 power is excellent for extremely close up shots in the trees, but the 16 power will bring those thousand-yard targets up close and personal for precise shooting. It comes with external elevation turrets which makes adjusting for that specific yardage quick and easy. When you return back to zero, the Zeiss ballistic stop ensures an absolute and positive return to zero. This zero stop is on all exposed turret option scopes. The one thing that you can’t see or plan for is what happens when your scope meets the real world. I know that we all do the very best to take care of our prized possessions and especially these scopes that could very well be the difference in connecting on that trophy of a lifetime or missing. What I mean by this is what happens when your rifle falls out of the scabbard on your ATV or when you lean it up against a tree and it falls over onto a big rock. What about leaning it up against the truck and then taking off. I once found a rifle in the middle of the road and as we got out of the vehicle to check it out, the owner realized that his children didn’t put his rifle in the car, but on the car. He had turned around to backtrack and see if he could find his prized possession. Scan this QR Code with These are all things that I’ve witnessed happening your smart phone to view t h e S p o r t s m a n ' s N e w s in over 30 years of hunting. Nobody is going to let you YouTube Channel. bang on these scopes and put them through this torture test to see if it is something you want to buy, but we sure
have. We have replicated some of these exact situations and a few more to see just how durable they can be. Most importantly, are they still functional and on target once we put them through this torture test. Make sure you watch the full video on our YouTube channel or by scanning the QR code.
September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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Video Product Reviews
Sitka Gear Jetstream Jacket
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he industry leader in technical clothing, Sitka Gear, is always putting out new and exciting products to make the extreme hunter and outdoorsman’s life better. We are usually putting these new products to the test for these videos. However, this is a revisit to a product that came out nearly a decade ago. It’s the Jetstream jacket and has been a dependable and long-time favorite of the Sportsman’s News team, since its inception. Mine has been around the globe on numerous occasions and continually delivers protection, comfort, and dependability. After using a product this long, you truly have a well-formed opinion and mine is that this jacket is a must have for the serious outdoorsman. It is a polyester knit softshell-face fabric jacket and an integral part of the Sitka layering system. It employs windstopper technology, which means that it does a really good job of cutting the wind. A cold blowing wind will pierce through your bones and rob you of valuable body heat, but that won’t happen with this jacket. The outer face is treated with DWR or durable water repellant which is very helpful with those light afternoon showers. It will prevent the fabric from absorbing water but isn’t designed to replace rain gear. When it is “Go Time”, you will appreciate the full-length pit zips, which do a great job of allowing excess heat to escape. The hood is well designed and cut to allow you good peripheral vision. When not in use, it can be tucked out of the way. The overall fit of this jacket is what makes it my absolutely favorite jacket in the line. Since it is part of the layering system, it has its function and isn’t trying to be Scan this QR Code with too many different things. This allows you to wear a pack, your smart phone to view t h e S p o r t s m a n ' s N e w s and a heavy one at that, without having any problems with bulking of material around where the straps will ride. The YouTube Channel.
sleeves allow good movement, but don’t have excess fabric, which allows me to shoot my bow without interfering with the string. It is available in both Optifade Open Country pattern as well as the SubAlpine pattern. Since I don’t always wear camo, it is nice to have the solid patterns available as well. Those are Sitka Black, Dirt, and Moss colors. Regardless of what pattern suits your needs, this is guaranteed to quickly become your favorite jacket for all seasons.
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30 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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e have all heard it before, “competition will get you killed”. While this is not an article dedicated to dispelling this myth, I am going to talk about how competition can improve your mental game and make you a better tactician. I’m not arguing that the way a stage is run during a shooting match translates into good tactics. It does, however, train your mind to execute a plan, make decisions under pressure, and perform the physical skills of shooting under that pressure. I think we can all agree every tactician or gun fighter should have these skills. Tactics Let’s start with a brief discussion on tactics. I will begin by giving my definition of tactics. Implementing tactics is simply choosing the least dangerous option for the given situation. The mission or purpose must be considered first, then the problems you face must be solved to successfully accomplish that mission. Using tactics is a process of making decisions under stress, which ultimately is dynamic problem solving. Competition is not a replacement for more task-specific training such as Force on Force or Close Quarters Battle (CQB). Competitions are, however, a great way to learn to control emotions, anxiety, and stress while performing complex plans, solving problems, and shooting. The best part is that all of this is done under pressure. Competition, if approached with the correct attitude and mindset, can be one of the best mental and physical training exercises you can participate in.
Using Competition for Mental Training Now let’s talk more specifically about what shooting competition, specifically the action shooting sports—3 gun, USPSA, IDPA etc.— can do for your mind. Competition trains your brain to perform and stay focused under pressure. Often referred to as “match pressure”, shooters sometimes have their performance impacted by the pressures of time, everyone watching them, and their own desire to win. You can often see the impact these pressures have on shooters as soon as they start a stage. I have seen people who are normally considered great shooters on a stationary firing line fall apart during a stage at a competition. I have seen people freeze and forget where they were supposed to move to engage the next target. I have seen people fumble basic firearms skills, such as reloading the gun, they are normally proficient with on a stationary line. I have seen shooters accidentally run passed targets without engaging them. I have seen shooters engage and miss targets all together because they started trying to shoot faster than their current capabilities. These are the same performance issues that often plague both police and defensive shooters when a stressful event hits. Plain and simple— the more you compete, the more the competitions train you and your brain to think and perform under pressure. Pressure itself does not have any effect on performance. What does have an effect, either positive or negative, is the individual’s response to that pressure. As world famous shooter and coach Lanny Bassham said, “Here’s a myth—Pressure causes performance to drop. Pressure does not cause your performance to drop. What I learned about pressure was that when you feel the physical effects of pressure, it’s real. You feel an adrenaline rush and your heart rate and blood pressure go up. I’ve seen shooters shoot extremely high scores with their legs shaking. Pressure doesn’t cause your scores to go up or down, but your attitude does. Your attitude is what’s important.” So, how do we develop an attitude that will allow us to use pressure and stress to improve our performance? By training our mind to stay focused on the process of shooting and not get overwhelmed. Some of the fundamentals that should be focused on are: making sure the shooter’s grip on the gun is correct, making sure the sights are aligned and on target, and isolating the trigger finger so there is no unwanted input on the gun when firing. The problems start when we allow our minds to focus on the possible outcomes—good or bad—instead of the process that will bring success. I’ve seen it more times than I can count, a shooter gets concerned about his performance or ability to shoot a target, and that stress gets into their head. Like a self-fulfilling
34 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
prophecy, they fail. As shooters learn to control their mind and focus on the proper process of shooting, you see their performance improve, confidence grow, and a newfound poise develop under pressure. The more we learn about the brain, the more we are coming to understand the mind can, in fact, train the brain. We can recondition, or rewire, how the brain handles things like stress. We can condition the brain to focus on the things that help performance and avoid the things that hinder it. Mental plasticity is the ability for us to change our brain through mental training. Competition is 90 percent mental. The mental skills we can learn and train in a shooting match are some of the most important for real life tactical or combat situations. To learn more about how the mind trains the brain, I suggest reading Sharon Begley’s book Train the Mind, Change the Brain. Is Your Mind Free to Think? Subconscious competence with motor skills is one of the greatest tools you can develop for any competition or firearms training. Through the process of myelination, we can build the motor neural pathways and develop physical skills to the point that we no longer need give them conscious thought. This applies to almost all the skills of shooting: draw, grip, a trigger process that does not disturb the sight picture, reloads, and recognizing the sight picture required to get a hit. All these skills can become subconscious through deliberate training and practice. The human brain cannot multitask. So how do we effectively perform in situations where we must think, make decisions, and perform complex motor tasks? We must make as many of those tasks as we can programmed motor skills. Both competition and tactical situations require decisions be made in very short periods of time, and motor skills of shooting be performed faster and with greater precision than our opponents. Competition—along with Force on Force and other tactical training—is the perfect environment to build and test those skills. If there is a part of your shooting ability that has not been developed to the point of subconscious competence, I can assure you it will show up quickly (and probably in a very humbling way) in a
match. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather learn what areas I’m deficient in during a “game” than in a life-and-death situation. Not only can we build the skills we need so that no conscious thought is required to perform; we can also increase our speed and effectiveness with these skills. The more we push skill into the cerebellum (the part of the brain believed to store programmed motor skill), the faster and more proficient those skills can become. As Tim Conrad explained in his January 2013 article on muzzle flip, “The conscious signal can take up to 0.3 seconds from recognizing the desired sight picture to moving the trigger finger—too long to capture the opportunity for a perfect shot. However, if the signal is initiated spontaneously in the cerebellum where such procedures are thought to be stored through repetition, the reaction speed is much quicker. Signals are processed by the “deep brain” almost twice as fast as the problem-solving frontal lobes.” Are You a Problem Solver? One of the skills that I find myself practicing the most in a match is quick problem solving. Sometimes the unexpected happens on a stage and you need to alter your plan immediately to try and salvage the stage. This is where you test your subconscious motor skills and see if your mind is trained to think under pressure. Here is a typical example of problem solving in match: You have a solid plan to engage an array of steel knock down targets with your shotgun. You have a few targets requiring bird shot. After the bird shot targets, there are three long-range slug targets. Before you start the stage, you load the magazine of your shotgun with the correct amount of slug rounds and bird shot rounds in the order you will need them. During the stage you experience a malfunction with your shotgun. You must clear the malfunction from the shotgun, but in doing so you lose two bird shot rounds that were loaded in the magazine. The malfunction clearance has changed your round count and your original plan is no longer possible. If you lose track of the amount and order of ammo in your gun, you may shoot a slug round at a bird shot target. Shooting a slug round at a target that is too close—a target requiring a bird shot round—is an automatic disqualification for safety reasons. In the middle of this stage, with the pressure of time and the added pressure of possibly making a mistake and being disqualified, you must make a quick decision. Should you do a standing reload with your shotgun? Will that put the bird shot in the right order? Will that take too much time? Would it be faster for you to engage the slug targets first and then transition from the shotgun to handgun for the close steel targets? What is the fastest option—which is the safest option? I’ve seen shooters handle this situation by freezing and getting flustered, and others move through the problem so fast and fluid you’d never know they changed their plan. That is valuable training. You just practiced clearing a malfunction under stress, while simultaneously developing and troubleshooting a complex decision under pressure. Sounds like skills that translate into
a good gun fighter. It is no coincidence that many of the people I’ve seen so effectively solve these types of problems during a shooting competition are the same people I want going through the door with me to get armed bad guys in real-life situations. I have personally seen these people perform incredibly well in both environments. How Confident Are You? Having confidence in your skills is one of the greatest attributes you can take with you into any high-stress situation. We know that confidence allows us to stay calm in bad situations because it helps us manage stress. One of the key factors that contribute to poor performance in critical incidents is when the person involved believed the situation was outside their capabilities. When the professional has put themselves in difficult and challenging situations, many times they develop the skill to win those situations. They will perform with great skill and composure, and they will believe they can win. I have made shots quickly and under match pressure, that years ago I would have said were not possible. I have developed an understanding of exactly what I am capable of as a shooter. That knowledge and experience brings with it a great deal of confidence in what I can do, and what I should not do in real-world situations. I have tested my limits in safe environments so I know what I can do under pressure. This confidence is not based on hope or a result of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the seemingly pervasive tendency of poor performers to overestimate their abilities relative to other people. If you want to influence your body, brain, and mind to perform at your best when the stakes are the highest—you need to train. You need deliberate training on firearms fundamentals. You need Force on Force training, scenario-based training, and stress training; you also need competition. You need as much training as you can get. The number of hours we are looking for to become masters of our craft is 10,000 hours. That craft involves firing a gun to defend life, and there are a lot of people counting on you to be able to perform at a very high standard and under the most stressful and pressure-filled conditions. You owe it to yourself, your family, and the public you are protecting to do everything you can to be the master of both your mind and your gun. Curtis Robertson has been a Police Officer with the Sandy City Police Department for the past 17 years, working in the patrol division, Metro Gang Unit, as the department training officer and range master. He is currently the sergeant over the narcotics/special investigations unit. He is a SWAT team leader and Sniper team leader. Curtis Has over 16 years’ experience as a firearms instructor and use of force instructor. Curtis Teaches a variety of subjects for the police academy including building search tactics, active gunman, Taser, deadly force decision making, and edged weapon defense. Curtis is also an active competitive shooter. September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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OUTDOOR WRITER'S CONTEST
An Elk To Remember By Benjamin Mahoney
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s most of you know, taking a mature bull elk with a bow and arrow is quite possibly one of the hardest yet most rewarding accomplishments in the sporting world, and to me, growing up a poor farm boy on the east coast, to say it was a dream would be a gross understatement. I was raised by a family of hunters; so naturally, Sunday nights consisted of “Amen” followed by a hearty meal and the Hunting Channel. I couldn’t get enough of it, I wasn’t into Football or Hockey, I had elk on the brain. So, at the age of 18, I packed my bags, loaded my truck and headed west. I soon found myself living in Fort Collins Colorado, which rests in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. My first couple of years hunting elk had about the same success rate as if I had been hunting Sasquatch or old Nessy herself. Apparently, public land elk are a little spookier than the ones I had grown up watching on tv. This was also during a time period when maps were still on paper and the internet was being dialed up through a phone line. Over the next of couple years, I had some close encounters; both of my brothers and even my father were able to notch tags on the elusive Wapiti, but not me. After 5 years in Colorado, I decided to move even further west to Missoula Montana. My first fall in Montana came with some close calls and even though I wasn’t able to connect on one, two of my friends did, bumping my pack out ratio to 6 and 0. I immediately fell in love with Montana and knew I was in the right place, but life had other plans for me and in the winter of 2007, I came down with a mysterious illness. Six months later, I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease. To make a long story short, I spent the majority of the next 10 years moving from state to state for medical treatments, doctor appointments, or just sick in bed. By the summer of 2018, I had gotten a lot of my symptoms under control and I had started working again, so naturally I decided it was time to move back to Montana. After all, I still needed to check that bull elk off my bucket list. By August of 2017, I was once again living in the Treasure State, but there was only one problem, I wasn’t
36 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
Sportsman’s News Outdoor Writing Contest Finalist See pg. 4 for entry details.
a resident and I couldn’t afford a non-resident elk tag. The cost of the move combined with old medical bills had my accounts in a major draught. So, for an early Christmas present, my amazing mother bought me the $900 tag. She knew how much it meant to me and all she said was, “you better kill a big one”. September came and with it, the crisp cool nights and quaking of the aspen leaves. Having been gone for so long and with such little time for scouting, I called an old friend from my first go-around in the state and coincidentally, he had just moved back to the area too. Two weeks later, we were headed east of Missoula to a spot my friend had found on a map. Neither of us had been there before but it looked good and definitely warranted a scouting trip. We had just turned on to the dirt road that would lead us to the spot and right there in the road was a fresh pile of elk droppings. Taking that as a sign, we pulled off, grabbed our gear and headed up the mountain. We were gaining elevation quickly so when we reached a bench with a good vantage point, we stopped to take a break. Within seconds of stopping, my buddy slowly raised his hand, pointed his finger and whispered the word “elk”. Slowly we crouched down and to our complete surprise; we had just stumbled right into the middle of a herd of bedded elk. We were actually too close, so in fear that they would smell us, we belly crawled back down off the ridge and around to the side in an attempt to get downwind of them. After glassing about 20 cows and calves, we put some more distance between us and them, I made a couple soft cow calls and a bull let out a good bugle. Almost immediately, bugles began to erupt from all over the mountain. The closest bull had a certain irritation in his voice and we knew he was coming in for a fight. We quickly spread out on the hillside and a minute or so later, he bugled again, this time he was just out of sight. A few more moments passed and then there he was. I could see him moving towards me through the timber. When he had closed the distance to about 30 yards, I drew my bow, anchored my pin and let the arrow fly. A loud “Thwaack” rang out through the trees and to my horror, the arrow had
OUTDOOR WRITER'S CONTEST struck a small pine tree and stopped dead in its flight just a few feet from hitting the bull. The bull immediately ran down the hill and then turned back around to see what had just happened. Unfortunately for him, he stopped broadside in front of my friend. Another loud “Thwaack” echoed through the woods and needless to say, I was now packing out bull number 7 without ever notching a tag. I was elated for my friend but I have to admit, I was tearing myself apart inside for missing that shot. It was around midnight, and we were still packing out the last quarters of my friend’s bull when we stopped for a moment to rest. I will never forget this, my friend looked at me, then looked up to the sky and said, “the stars sure are pretty tonight”. Still beating myself up inside, I just looked up and thought to myself, it would be a lot easier to enjoy the stars if I were packing out my own bull. He must have read my mind because he then looked back at me again and said, “don’t worry man, we are coming back in here again next weekend”. I don’t think he could see me in the darkness, but my smile was touching my ears. Six days later, we were back at it again. This time was even better. Somehow, we had found ourselves surrounded by screaming bulls. Thirteen years into my quest to kill an elk and here I was, smack dab in the middle of 4 different bulls, the wind in my face, and my good friend calling for me. It was an experience that I can’t easily describe. I felt like one of those professional hunters on TV. The sun was starting to set and one of the bulls was getting close, so I ran as fast as I could to the nearest cover. My knees had barely hit the dirt when he bugled again. He was just out of sight and I knew he was coming, so I slowly dropped my pack and melted into the underbrush around me. A few moments passed and then there he was, a big mature monarch of the mountains. He materialized up out of the dark timber like a ghost from darkness. He was making no sound as he closed the distance. The big bull walked right to the edge of the timber and stopped, I could see everything but his vitals, it’s as if he knew right where to stop. I could see his long main beams, the drool dripping from his mouth, and the steam from his breath rising in the cool crisp air. And I sat there motionless, as the last rays of sunlight slipped from
the pines and I watched as the big bull tilted his head back and let out an ear piercing bugle. I asked the creator to let him take just two more steps and after what felt like an eternity, he did. I drew my bow and held my breath to compensate for the uncontrollable shaking, lowered my 40 yard pin behind his shoulder and let my arrow fly. The arrow struck the big bull perfectly behind the shoulder with almost no sound at all. Just as quickly as he had appeared, he disappeared back into the darkness. An hour later I found myself sitting in the darkness with my good friend Zach on my left and my big 6x6 bull elk laying on my right. With a smile on my face, I wiped the tears from my eyes, looked up at the sky and said to Zach, “the stars sure are pretty tonight!”
September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
37
Blast-n-Cast Bonus
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tatistically speaking, if you cast you probably blast. Conversely, you’re very likely to also cast if you blast. You see, there are two kinds of traditional outdoors folks in my mind; hunters that fish, and anglers that hunt. And while I’m aware that some anglers actually don’t hunt, it’s more rare to find a hunter that doesn’t at least dabble in fishing. Well, it stands to reason that if fishing is fun and hunting is fun, then hunting and fishing together makes for a really fun day. Enter the good ol’ fashioned cast-n-blast outing. At this time of year, we’re all looking ahead at hunting seasons. Even as a professional angler, I totally get it and also find myself distracted from the joys of angling by fur, horns, and the promise of freezers full tasty, organic, and really free-range meat. But, fish are delicious too and they tend to live in places where we hunt. It seems to me, harvesting a few fish to be enjoyed alongside your wild game meals is a make-sense idea. Furthermore, I’m also a big believer in the blast-n-blast concept. What I mean by that is mixing up your your big game hunt by adding in a bit of small game action. Here again, it leads to a more diverse freezer stash and in the same way the cast-nblast adds interest to an outing, so too does the pursuit of small game. When your big game hunting is slow, some action goes a long way. Since we’re headquartered in the West, we have some great options available for both concepts. One that I really enjoy is mixing some brown trout action into a biggame hunt. Browns are in some level spawn phase during most big game seasons, meaning they are beautifully colored and very aggressive. In a lot of areas of the West, they populate rapidly as well, so selectively harvesting a few can be good for the fishery. Like all wild trout, they are very tasty. If you’re hunting near a larger river drainage (think, Colorado, Arkansas, Platte, etc) or any of a range of reservoirs and pothole style lakes, brown trout are a great option. An even better trout option from the standpoint of fishery management and also general fall catch-ability is the brook trout. “Brookies” can be found in mountain streams throughout classic big game country and they too are fall spawners and subsequently colored beautifully. The best part is that they reproduce to the point of overpopulation in many places, meaning that harvesting a few, or possibly even a bunch of them, is usually good for the overall health of the streams they inhabit. That same population density also makes them aggressive feeders, which is another way of saying very easy to catch. For opportunity trout fishing as described, a multi-piece pack rod like St Croix’s Triumph Travel Se-
Chad LaChance
38 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
ries is a good choice because it breaks down for easy packing. Pair it with a small Abu Garcia Cardinal S spinning reel spooled with six pound test Trilene Braid or Fireline. Gather up a few tiny tube jigs, inline spinners, and maybe a small floating plug and get to catching. If you’d rather fly fish, your rod probably already breaks down for packing. Simply grab a few small, old school sparse streamers like a Mickey Finn and swing away. If you plan to eat your fish in camp, recipes are limitless. I favor a classic foil wrapped whole fish with a bit of butter and lemon and S&P for simplicity. Keep in mind these will be extremely fresh and wild fish; so long as you don’t overcook them, it’s hard to go wrong Since my big game hunting is mostly high plains-based, my personal favorite blastn-blast is mixing in some cottontail hunting. We’ll take a mid morning break from glassing for horns to spot sunning bunnies. Since they are stationary, I can shoot them with no meat damage making for perfect food quality. Rabbit is very delicate in flavor and super versatile. Prepare it in lieu of chicken in almost any recipe, making for a nice change up from venison dishes. Another good (and quieter!) blast-n-blast option is harvesting grouse while bow hunting deer or elk. An arrow or two in your quiver tipped with blunt or judo points is perfect, and flu-flu style vanes help too. Grouse have fairly potent lean dark meat so I typically season robustly, add a bit of flavorful fat (bacon grease works well), a touch of liquid (wine perhaps), then foil-wrap and roast. A few items will help if you plan to take your bonus fish or game home instead of eating it in camp. I carry a separate smaller cooler dedicated to the bonus meat. That way, I don’t worry about cross-contaminating my daily lunch/dinner/snack food cooler with, say, freshly cleaned rabbit. I pack a few plastic bags to keep meat dry from any ice that may melt as the flesh cools and a smaller/fillet knife to clean my small game/fish. That way, my deer processing/caping/boning knives are clean and ready should I punch my tag. A little bit of forethought and planning can really add some excitement and diversity to your hunt, not to mention food to your freezer.
Identifying Pacific Salmon Species Found In Alaska By Kent Danjanovich
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eteran Alaska fishermen know their stuff. From tackle and gear needed, to species that they will be going after as well as time of runs, they have it down to a science. But for the vast majority of novice Alaskan travelers hoping to experience a trip of a lifetime, which hopefully includes catching a bunch of fish, well, let’s just say experience and knowledge in this case is going to win out just about every time. When the topic is Alaska, I guarantee the word salmon is also going to be part of that conversation. Now, the first thing you have to remember is, the winters are long and the summers are short up north and the window for taking advantage of fishing is pretty narrow. The first runs of salmon (kings) start to show up in May in some areas and the last species of salmon (silvers) finish up in the first part of October in others. That’s a pretty small window of opportunity, especially when you take into consideration that not all species are running at the same time. The following is a brief article about the five species of Pacific salmon that are available in Alaska. Some species are more prolific in some areas than others and of course, some runs are much larger than others. But hopefully, this will shed a little light on the different species for those with inquisitive minds!
Chinook Salmon
The Chinook salmon (also known as king salmon) is the largest species of Pacific salmon . The common name refers to the Chinookan peoples. The flesh of the salmon is also highly valued for its dietary nutritional content, which includes high levels of important Omega-3 fatty acids. The Chinook is blue/green, red or purple on the back and top of the head, with silvery sides and white ventral surfaces. It has black spots on its tail and the upper half of its body. Chinook have a black gum line which is present in both salt and freshwater. The current sport-caught world record, 97.25lb, was caught on May 17, 1985, on the Kenai River. Chinook may spend one to eight years in the ocean (averaging from three to four years) before returning to their home rivers to spawn. They also undergo radical morphological changes as they prepare for the spawning event ahead. All chinook lose the silvery/blue they had as ocean fish and their color darkens, sometimes with a radical change in hue. Chinook spawn in larger and deeper waters than other salmon species and can be found on the spawning redds (nests) from September to December. The female salmon may lay her eggs in four to five nesting pockets within a redd. After laying eggs, females guard the redd from four to 25 days before dying, while males seek additional mates. Chinook eggs hatch, 90 to 150 days after deposition, depending upon water temperature. Egg deposits are timed to ensure the young salmon fry emerge during an appropriate season for survival and growth. Fry and parr (young fish) usually stay in fresh water 12 to 18 months before traveling downstream to estuaries, where they remain as smolts for several months. Some Chinooks return to the fresh water one or two years earlier than their counterparts and are referred to as «jack» salmon. "Jack" salmon are typically less than 24 inches long, are sexually mature, but just return at an earlier age. Interesting Note: A Chinook’s birthplace and later evolution can be tracked by looking at its otolith (ear) bone. The bone can record the chemical composition of the water the fish had lived in just like a tree›s growth rings provide hints on dry and wet years. The bone is built with the chemical signature of the environment that hosted the fish. Researchers are able to tell where different individuals of Chinook are born
and live in the first year of their lives. Testing is done by measuring the strontium in the bones. Strontium can accurately show researchers the exact location and time of a fish swimming in a river.
Sockeye Salmon
Sockeye salmon, also called red salmon, is an anadromous species of salmon found in the Northern Pacific Ocean and rivers discharging into it. This species is primarily red in hue during spawning. Juveniles remain in freshwater until they are ready to migrate to the ocean, over distances of up to a 1,000 miles. Their diet consists primarily of zooplankton. Sockeye salmon is the third-most common Pacific salmon species, after pink and chum salmon. Sockeye salmon use patterns of limnetic feeding behavior, which encompasses vertical movement, schooling, diel feeding chronology and zooplankton prey selectivity. They can change their position in the water column, timing and length of feeding, school formation and choice of prey to minimize the likelihood of predation. This also ensures they still get at least the minimum amount of food necessary to survive. All of these behaviors contribute to the survivability and therefore fitness of the salmon. Sockeye salmon exhibit many different life histories with the majority being anadromous where the juvenile salmon migrate from freshwater lakes and streams to the ocean before returning as adults to their natal freshwater to spawn. Similar to most Pacific salmon, sockeye salmon are semelparous, meaning they die after spawning. The majority of sockeye spawn in rivers near lakes and juveniles will spend one to two years in the lake before migrating to the ocean, although some populations will migrate to saltwater in their first year. Adult sockeye will spend two to three years in the ocean before returning to freshwater. Females will spawn in 3–5 redds over a period of several days. The eggs usually hatch within six to nine weeks and the fry typically rear in lakes before migrating to the ocean.
Coho Salmon
During their ocean phase, coho salmon (also known as silvers) have silver sides and darkblue backs. During their spawning phase, their jaws and teeth become hooked. After entering fresh water, they develop bright-red sides, bluish-green heads and backs, dark bellies and dark spots on their backs. Sexually maturing fish develop a light-pink or rose shading along the belly and the males may show a slight arching of the back. Mature adults have a pronounced red skin color with darker backs. They also develop a large kype (hooked beak) during spawning. Mature females may be darker than males, with both showing a pronounced hook on the nose. The eggs hatch in the late winter or early spring after six to seven weeks. Once hatched, they remain mostly immobile during the alevin life stage, which lasts for 6–7 weeks. Alevin no longer have the protective egg shell and rely on their yolk sacs for nourishSeptember 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
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ment during growth. Young coho spend one to two years in their freshwater natal streams, often spending the first winter in off-channel sloughs, before transforming to the smolt stage. Smolts are generally 4- to 6-inches and as their parr marks fade, the adult's characteristic silver scales start to dominate. Smolts migrate to the ocean from late March through July. Some fish leave fresh water in the spring, spend summer in brackish estuarine ponds and then return to fresh water in the fall. Coho salmon live in salt water for one to three years before returning to spawn. Some precocious males, known as “jacks”, return as two-year-old spawners.
Chum Salmon
In Alaska, they are the first salmon to spawn, in June and August. Chum salmon fry migrate out to sea from March through July. They spend one to three years traveling in the ocean. They will die about two weeks after they return to freshwater to spawn. A single female can lay up to 4,000 eggs. Along with vertical stripes along their sides, chums have an ocean coloration of silvery blue green with some indistinct spotting in a darker shade and a rather paler belly. When they move into fresh water the color changes to dark olive green and the belly color deepens. When adults are near spawning, they have purple blotchy streaks near the caudal peduncle, darker towards the tail. Spawning males typically grow an elongated snout or kype, their lower fins become tipped with white and they have enlarged teeth, this is where they get their nickname, Dog salmon. Chum salmon have kind of taken a bad rap over the years because they are not used as much for table fare, but they are one of the hardest fighting fish on any type of tackle and offer sport fisherman another great option when visiting Alaska waters.
Pink Salmon
The scientific species name for Pink salmon is based on the Russian common name, gorbusa (ropoywa), which literally means humpie. They are the smallest and most abundant of all Pacific salmon. In the ocean, pink salmon coloration is bright silver. After returning to their spawning streams, their coloring changes to pale grey on the back with yellowish-white belly (although some turn an overall dull green color). As with all salmon, in addition to the dorsal fin, they also have an adipose fin. The fish is characterized by a white mouth with black gums, no teeth on the tongue, large oval-shaped black spots on the back and a v-shaped tail. During their spawning migration, males develop a pronounced humped back, hence their nickname “humpies”. Pink salmon in their native range have a strict two-year life cycle, thus odd and even-year populations do not interbreed. The female lays from 1,000 to 2,000 eggs in several clutches, often fertilized by different males. Females guard their eggs until death, which comes within days of spawning. The eggs hatch from December to February, depending on water temperature and the juveniles emerge from the gravel during March and April and quickly migrate downstream to estuaries, at about one-quarter gram in weight. The fish achieve sexual maturity in their second year of life. They return to freshwater in the summer or autumn as two-year-old adults.
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41
PRO MEMBER UPDATE
Steve Jones Backcountry Hunts Kolten Bishop wasn't the lucky winner of this trip but was lucky enough to have a good family friend who was generous enough to share his good fortune with a youth.
By Michael Deming
The Sportsman's News Pro Membership Sweepstakes will give away this trip again on September 30th. Go to ProMembershipSweepstakes.com to enter to win.
Steve Jones, (left) owner and outfitter has been doing this for over three decades and proves to run a world-class operation each and every time.
The sunset views at camp are some of the finest experiences of being at Steve Jones Backcountry Hunts in West Texas.
Learning to glass for sheep takes patience and learning to do it at an early age is essential to long-term success in the field. Kolten was always up to the task and spent hours searching for his quarry.
HUNT AND FISH LIKE THE PROS
42 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
The desert is full of beauty this time of year but like everything else in West Texas, it wants to poke you, cut you, or bite you.
The Sportsman's News Pro Membership Sweepstakes gives away $300,000+ worth of trips like this every year. A new grand Prize every 10 days. Go to www.ProMembershipSweepstakes.com for your chance to be featured here.
PRO MEMBER UPDATE Brooks Hansen of Camp Chef was already in Texas and became a guest of Sportsmans' News and Michael Deming for this trip. It took him less than 24 hours to find a big ram with great hair and make a fatal shot with the Browning X-Bolt.
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Kolten and his dad Melton Bishop were able to connect on a big male javelina on the second day of the trip.
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2/21/2019 10:56:49 AM September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
Presents Wild Game Recipes of Steve Mayer "The Wine Guy"
Braised Venison Shanks
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hanks, if you butcher your own meat you know this cut well. You are never quite sure what to do with them. They are full of tendons and serious hard muscle tissue, so we often just throw them in the grind pile for burger. These same characteristics make them ideal for slow cooking, and they are loaded with flavor. You can use any type of wild game with this recipe, and if you could try some lamb shanks if desired. This savory recipe will warm you up on a cold day and bring back fond memories of the hunt.
Ingredients
• 4 venison shanks • Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper • 4 tablespoons olive oil (split) • 1 yellow onion diced • 4 stalks celery diced • 4 large carrots diced • 1 pound white mushrooms sliced
thickly • 7 cloves garlic chopped • 1 can tomato paste (6 oz.) • 1 can low sodium beef broth (14 oz.) • 1 bottle red wine (Syrah or Zinfandel) • 1 tsp dried thyme (or 5 fresh sprigs) • 4 bay leaves
Preparation Method
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. You will need to use a large enameled cast
44 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
iron casserole or heavy pot that is oven proof. A Dutch oven will work perfectly also. Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in the pot over medium high heat on the stove top. Season the shanks with salt and pepper and brown in the oil. Do them two at a time and brown for 3-4 minutes per side, turning them to brown on all sides. Transfer them to a tray when they are done. Add a splash or two of wine to the pot and scrape the brown bits that have stuck to the bottom (called fond). They will detach and add great flavor to the sauce. Now add the other 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan, along with the onion, celery, and carrots. Lower the heat to medium and sauté the vegetables, stirring frequently, for 5-7 minutes until they start to soften up. Add the mushrooms and garlic and sauté another 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and broth. Pour yourself a large glass of wine and add the remaining wine (about a half bottle) to the pot. Drink some of the wine and stir the pot until well combined. Mix in the thyme and bay leaves, add the shanks back in and bury them in the liquid. Cover the pot and place in the oven. Allow to braise at least 3 hours or more until the meat is tender. Serve these with mashed potatoes, a French baguette, and a fresh garden salad. Another bottle of California Syrah or a jammy Zinfandel would complement this meal perfectly. If your tastes prefer beer, try a porter or a stout with this dish. Cheers!
OUTDOOR WRITER'S CONTEST
Doubly Blessed By Kenneth Weimer
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ate September brought on all of the new wonderful opportunities for the fall hunting season in Wyoming. I had already spent 10 days in the Big Sandy Openings in northwest Wyoming enjoying the early fall weather and having a great time fishing for brookies and rainbows. Then that was wrapped up with several successful days of sage chicken hunting. Back home in Northeast Wyoming it was approaching late September. A friend that had lived in Wyoming previously, Pete was now coming from his new home in Michigan to hunt this area and stay at our home. Pete is just a young fellow in his mid-thirties, however, he was badly injured while serving in the air force during our recent combat efforts. He is one tough guy and pushes himself to hunt and fish but it is not easy like I and many others take for granite. He is a disabled vet but he makes no big deal about his condition and seldom complains though it is obvious that he is hurting at times. Pete arrived and we began scouting the areas near home. He had a permit for any antelope and a general deer license. I went out with him several days later on his first hunt. He was looking for large critters. He passed up some real nice bucks, antelope and mule deer both, that I suggested he might later regret. But Pete was in no hurry and is evermore the optimist, not that I’m not but too many times I have passed up a good hunting situation only to never have it repeated. The next day I was unable to go with him. He had been out all day when I received a call from him that evening just before dim light. He had shot a real nice buck antelope up a creek a good way from his vehicle and wondered if I could come out and help him drag it out. He was only a few miles out of town so I immediately went out to help him. It was getting late. The weather was notably changing into much cooler, cloudy and windy conditions compared to the pleasant fall days that had prevailed. Now I
needed to get over a menacing barbed wire fence and up the creek to find and help my friend. I felt like it was a bad idea climbing up a wood post to top the fence and jump over it, but being in too much of a hurry, I did anyway. I made to the top of the post and was teetering a bit as I prepared to jump clear of the wire and land. As I jumped, I went off balance and my right leg caught in the top wire. Instead of landing upright I hit on my right shoulder and back. Conscious and finally able to stand up, it was a long while before I could breathe. Eventually I decided I might live and began to make my way up to Pete his beautiful buck antelope. I didn’t have to explain much, I must have looked like I was in a fight and lost. Anyway, we worked together and were able to get the animal out and to his vehicle.
46 September 2019 | SPORTSMAN’S NEWS
Sportsman’s News Outdoor Writing Contest Finalist See pg. 4 for entry details.
Oh great, my antelope and deer season open in three days and I feel like I have been hit by a truck. Next day found me in the local hospital emergency room. A separated shoulder (my gun arm) and four broken ribs, not to mention all of the cuts from the barbed wire and bruises. I couldn’t make opening day but I did finally manage to get out the last few days of the season which was two weeks long. The first day out I had no chance to get anything. Then we began to get a full-blown early winter storm. Lots of snow, cold and wind. I made it out the second day but no opportunities again. The third day was the final day of the season. The weather had climaxed to its worst the night before. That morning there was at least six inches of snow and the temperature was three above. So out I went. No one was available to go with me and I often hunt solo anyway, so Lord it’s me and you and that’s more than enough! I had the hunting area virtually to myself and began seeing some pretty good buck antelope here and there and some smaller mule deer bucks. I kept moving on looking for just the right situation and critter. Two hours after daylight I spotted a nice 4x4 buck mule deer with a number of does. They were feeding and if I was careful there was brush in between the buck and myself. Just had to keep from scaring the does. I began slowly closing the distance in the fluffy, quite snow until I was near 50 yards. Once the buck lifted his head, I had a real nice shot at the front of his neck. There was no hesitation. One shot from my Savage .243 and he dropped in his tracks. The does, not too startled to my surprise just slowly milled away. It had now warmed to about 10 degrees and the sun was shining. It was a bit more than painful to get the deer gutted and out to my vehicle. However, getting him loaded in the back of the pickup truck surely would have made an interesting video for someone to enjoy. Once I had the deer loaded. A brief rest and a cup of coffee put me on my way to look more for a buck antelope. About an hour later I spotted a lone buck, a very nice specimen. Nice hooked thick horns. He was angling away from me at about 100 yards. What a beautiful sight. A nice lone buck antelope milling along in the fresh snow. I quickly came to the conclusion this was the animal provided for me. Look no further. I got into a position to shoot while he crossed a shallow ravine in front of me. As soon as he had crossed the ravine and took a few steps on the opposite side I fired. The .243 did its job again, as did the 100 grain Federal ammo I was using today. He dropped dead in his tracks. Once again, I had the fun of getting the buck out to my vehicle and loaded next to the buck deer. Once all of this was done and after a brief recovery, I began driving the short distance back home. As I went along, I encountered a real nice set up for a doe antelope. This was the final day to fill that license as well but I thought that I had my hands, and my truck full enough. This was without question a double blessing with the two bucks and plenty to be satisfied with on the final day of the season.
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