56u5 eh

WILDERNESS

THE

ISSUE

WINTER 2020

HUNT CRITTERS

THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

FIGHT

F O R P L AC E S T H AT M AT T E R

The U LT I M AT E RIFLE for wide-open country Page 71

OUTDOORLIFE.COM

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C O N T E N T S Bear hunters crest a ridge in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

90. A Wilderness on the Chopping Block The Tongass National Forest is full of pristine mountain peaks, old-growth forests, and meandering, ice-cold salmon rivers. A new plan to allow road building and logging in more of the forest puts that habitat, and the massive economy it supports, in jeopardy. BY ALEX ROBINSON

Fe at ur e s 38.

The First Frontier On the craggy coastline of North America’s largest island, hunting musk ox and caribou requires covering miles of empty country and enduring big waves, cold winds, and dangerous icebergs. BY ANDREW MCKEAN

48.

Hooked An addiction to opioids almost claimed Lance Clinton’s life. He found salvation in Costa Rica, catching giant cubera and tuna— and now he’s sharing the gospel of kayak fishing. BY MICHAEL R. SHEA

P HOTOG RA PH BY

Ian Allen

56.

Rules of the Wild

76.

100 Rams

Three hunters pack into Utah’s deserted backcountry for a week of elk season.

A young bighorn sheep guide reaches an impressive milestone and shares the wisdom he’s acquired along the way.

BY NATALIE KREBS AND ARAM VON BENEDIKT

BY JAKE FRANKLIN

64.

Blood on the Snow Dogging whitetails through the big woods can be a slog, but this New England tracker is wise to their ways. BY GERRY BETHGE

71.

Ultimate Open-Country Hunting Rifle Drawing on the latest innovations from the competition world, OL’s shooting editor designs the perfect Western game rifle. BY JOHN B. SNOW

82.

Hunting the High Seas Stiff winds, strong tides, and roaring surf are all part of the adventure when it comes to chasing eiders on the Atlantic coast.

BY BILL BUCKLEY

On the Cover Illustration by Ryan Kirby

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Contents W I NTE R 2 020

De pa r tm ent s The Life 07 08 09 10 12

Waypoint: Double wide Editor’s Journal Letters Dispatches This Happened to Me: I got run over by my own quad!

15

Degrees of Suffering Basic rules of thermodynamics dictate success in late deer seasons.

BY TONY HANSEN

24

Out Cold Find the wilderness amid the rat race with the underdogs of the river.

BY JOE CERMELE

Hunting 15

Fishing 24 Get lost chasing what swims in your own backyard 26 Beef up your bait to score giant hardwater lakers 27 Rock and roll for blackfish 28 Fish the forgotten trout killers

31

Custom Shotshells Yes, they are expensive, but these made-to-order loads are opening a new world for sub-gauge waterfowl hunters.

BY ALEX ROBINSON

Shooting 31

These shotshells turn subgauges into goose slayers 34 A look at the top unimounts for riflescopes 36 Gun Test: The Archon Type B 9mm makes a comeback

Gear 100 When things go bad in the backcountry, these are the items that will keep you alive

Camp Talk 118 Wilderness is for everyone, but it’s best enjoyed alone

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OUT DOOR LI FE • WINT ER 2020

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When It Hits the Fan Grizzlies charge, hunting partners get lost, and accidents happen. This gear will get you home in one piece.

BY THE EDITORS

FROM TOP: DUSTIN LUTT/ROCKHO USE MOTION; BRAD HA RDY; STEPHEN M ATUREN ; JEFF WILSON

Staying warm in late-season deer stands 18 New hotspots for a changing waterfowl migration 20 Why is Wyoming’s wilderness off-limits?

22 Farmland coyote intel

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WI NT E R 20 2 0 EDITED BY NATALIE KREBS letters@outdoorlife.com

IVITTUUT, GREENLAND / 2:32 p.m.

The nearest settlement is 25 miles from where Luke Renard snapped this photo, almost within sight of the aptly named Cape Desolation.

Ivittuut is an abandoned Norse village and more recently an abandoned mining camp, and it lies deep

P HOTOG RA PH BY

Luke Renard

WAYPOINT

in an unnamed glacial valley on Greenland’s southwest coast.

As I walked up to dress my caribou (story on p. 38), I stepped on a musk ox skull. The two had died within spitting distance of each other, and I strapped them together on my pack.

I’d guess the musk ox, a young cow from the look of its horns, died during a severe winter. Neither polar bears nor wolves, Greenland’s wild predators, range this far south, and human hunters typically take the entire carcass. —Andrew McKean

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The Life Editor’s Journal

FOR THE LOVE OF WILD LANDS Conserving wilderness is about much more than saving trees

Last fall, I found myself stalking through the old-growth timber of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, and then, just two weeks later, paddling across a choppy, wind-blown lake in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Both places are dealing with their own environmental threats: potential logging and road building in the Tongass (p. 90), and a proposed mine in the BWCA watershed.

And in both places, I found sportsmen and -women fighting to keep the places they love protected. Their reasons were deep and diverse: The wilderness was how they made their living; it’s where they hunted; it’s where they found respite from the stresses of modern life. Besides, if they didn’t fight for these places, who would?

This column is not a preservationist’s plea. We must grow food, extract gas and minerals, and log and manage our forests. (The pages of this magazine are, after all, made from trees.) We must make sure that our public lands are working ones, fit for multiple uses.

But we must also defend our vast, undeveloped lands. These ideals can coexist. As you turn the pages of this issue, I hope you reach a similar conclusion. Wild places are much more than habitats for the

Wading a salmon stream in southeast Alaska.

game animals we hunt. They connect us to what remains real and natural in our world. They’re a way to remember what things looked like before mining and logging and farming. Before progress.

Wilderness isn’t always an arctic island at the end of the Earth, like the one hunting editor Andrew McKean treks across for musk oxen (p. 38), or a federally designated area with an official trailhead, like senior editor Natalie Krebs rides into on horseback (p. 56). I like to think of wilderness as any place where you can escape cellphone service, traffic noise, and other people altogether. It’s a place where you can go hunting and fishing and know you won’t bump into another soul. That could mean decoying eiders from a desolate beach on a cold winter day (p. 82), or snow-tracking a buck into the woods farther than any other hunter is willing to go (p. 64).

Wilderness should also scare you a little. There, stupid mistakes are amplified. A sprained ankle, dead headlamp batteries, or the careless slash of a gutting knife might be inconveniences in the front country; in the backcountry, they become emergencies. The wilderness demands you pay attention to what the hell you’re doing, or pay the price.

This freedom to live in the moment—not the glow of your social media feed, but the real lifeand-death, bloody-hands, muddyboots moment—is the true gift of a wilderness experience. If we destroy our last wild places, we’ll also lose the last of our wild selves.

Alex Robinson Editor-in-Chief Instagram: @alexrobinson_mn

Letters to the Editor Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Please include your name and city/state. Email us at letters@outdoorlife.com (preferred) or write to us at: Outdoor Life, 2 Park Ave., 27 Fl. New York, NY 10016.

Reprints & Permissions Email reprints@bonniercorp.com. Editorial Submissions Materials to be considered for use in Outdoor Life should be sent to the Editorial Dept. at 2 Park Ave. 27 Fl., New York, NY 10016. Not responsible for loss of unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or other materials. Returns only when accompanied by return postage. We do not recommend sending original artwork or photographs.

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O UTD OOR L IFE • WINTER 20 20

PHOTOGR APH BY

Ian Allen

Alex Robinson Editor-in-Chief Sean Johnston Group Creative Director EDITORIAL Senior Editor Natalie Krebs Deputy Editor Gerry Bethge Associate Editor Joe Genzel DEPARTMENTS Shooting Editor John B. Snow Hunting Editor Andrew McKean Fishing Editor Joe Cermele ART Design Director Russ Smith Associate Art Director Robert Dominguez PHOTOGRAPHY Director John Toolan CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Joe Arterburn, Michael Bane, Tom Carpenter, Josh Dahlke, Brad Fitzpatrick, Tyler Freel, Tony Hansen, John Haughey, John Haviland, Ben Long, Tim MacWelch, Colin Moore, Michael Pearce, Ron Spomer, John M. Taylor, Bryce Towsley EDITORS EMERITI Jim Carmichel (Shooting) Jerry Gibbs (Fishing) Bill McRae (Optics)

WEB Group Digital Director Amy Schellenbaum SEO Editor Ben Duchesney Online Editor Ben Romans Associate Online Editor Matthew Every EDITORIAL PRODUCTION Group Managing Editor Jean McKenna Managing Editor Margaret M. Nussey Production Manager Judith Weber Copy Editors T.L. Favors, Nicole Paskowsky

Sporting Goods Sales Representatives Katie Logan, Jeff Roberge Corporate Sales Directors Kristine Bihm, Ann Blach, Kelly Hediger, Cynthia Lapporte, Doug Leipprandt, Matt Levy, Cyndi Ratcliff Direct Response and Classified Sales Representatives Brian Luke, Chip Parham MARKETING Sales Development Director Amanda Gastelum Integrated Marketing Manager Ed Raymond Senior Research Analyst Ava Ziegler Associate Director Eshonda Caraway-Evans Brand Manager Vanessa Vazquez

UT

DOOR LI FE

•

LETTERS

Vin T. Sparano (Senior Field Editor) PHOTOGRAPHERS & ILLUSTRATORS Bill Buckley, Nick Ferrari, Clint Ford, John Hafner, Kevin Hand, Aaron Hitchins, Donald M. Jones, Mitch Kezar, Ryan Kirby, Lance Krueger, John Phillips, John Rice, Tony Shasteen, Vincent Soyez, Jeff Wilson

Gregory D. Gatto Executive Vice President Joe Brown Vice President, Editorial Director BONNIER MEDIA Senior Vice President, Corporate Sales John Graney Vice President, Sales Jeff Timm Digital Sales Manager Lee Verdecchia

•O

Associate Creative Director Steve Gianaca BUSINESS OPERATIONS Financial Director Tara Bisciello Advertising Coordinator Nicky Nedd PUBLIC RELATIONS Manager Cathy Hebert BONNIER CUSTOM INSIGHTS Group Director Michele Siegel Associate Director Paule Anne Kaziewicz PRODUCTION Associate Director Kelly Kramer Weekley Senior Manager Stephanie Northcutt Artist Pete Coffin DIGITAL CONTENT PRODUCTION & PRESENTATION Director Michellina Jones Producer Corey Hillman CONSUMER MARKETING Director Sally Murphy, ProCirc

REALITY CHECK, FALL 2019 We got real about high-fence photos, outdoor television, deer management, and more. The response (especially from our Instagram followers) was overwhelming.

I want to congratulate you on your Fall 2019 issue. As a person who reads six to eight outdoor and shooting magazines a month, I feel qualified to judge this Outdoor Life as the single best magazine issue I have ever read. Keep it up!

Mike Hambuchen, Conway, AR I think you’ll see an increase in subscriptions. Kudos for publishing something transparent and valuable.

As a wildlife photographer, I constantly see images in publications that I know weren’t captured in wild settings. I just can’t compete if those publications allow high-fence portraits. @whistlewing

Lars Dahmén Chairman Chief Financial Officer Joachim Jaginder Executive VP, Bonnier Media Gregory D. Gatto Executive VP, Bonnier Subscriptions David Ritchie

Senior VP, Events Jonathan Moore Senior VP, Digital Operations David Butler Senior VP, Man. Dir., Corp. Sales John Graney VP, Public Relations Perri Dorset VP, Data Science and Analytics Mark Crone VP, Enterprise Solutions Shawn Macey General Counsel Jeremy Thompson Human Resources Director Kim Putman

This product is from sustainably managed forests and controlled sources.

For Customer Service and Subscription questions, such as renewals, address changes, email preferences, billing and account status, go to outdoorlife.com/cs; email ODLcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com; or in the U.S. call toll-free 800-365-1580 and outside the U.S. call 515-237-3697 or write to Outdoor Life, P.O. Box 6364, Harlan, IA 51593. Occasionally, we make portions of our subscriber list available to carefully screened companies that offer products and services we think might be of interest to you. If you do not want to receive these offers, please advise us at 515-237-3697.

Wow. I thought this kind of mindset was dead and buried in social-media culture. Tip of the hat to you. @chenryressel

DON’T PLAY WITH MY FOOD The Camp Talk column in our Fall issue discussed how there’s more to hunting than just the meat.

Love this article! It aligns with why I personally choose to hunt. My most enjoyable memories are not around the kill or the cooking, but rather the people, the solitude, and the stories. I do love to cook, and will always post pics of dishes I am proud of. I think the locavore movement is a trend that we need to let run its course. Their motivations are often different from that of most experienced hunters, but all we can do is hope they enjoy the hunt as much as they do their balsamic-glaze-reduced deer kidneys. @theotherrickjames

Keep going in this vein, and I will subscribe again! I treasure the issues prior to the late ’80s that I inherited from my grandfather. Bring back good writing, fewer sales pitch articles, and vintagestyle artwork, and you will have me back for good. @207_outdoorsman The exact reasons mentioned (like using high-fence deer photos in the past) is why I’ve never purchased a copy of OL. But this—this is an issue I will purchase. I’m glad to see a publication of this magnitude “cutting through the B.S.” @ian_burrow

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Send to letters@outdoorlife.com (preferred) or mail to Outdoor Life, 2 Park Ave., 27 Fl., New York, NY 10016. Manage your subscription at outdoorlife.com/cs.

Chief Digital Revenue Officer Sean Holzman Senior VP, Consumer Products Elise Contarsy

This would make me want to buy a subscription more than an unrealistic “trophy” whitetail cover page. This right here is relatable. @lifetime_pursuit_outdoors

I find non-hunters are so removed, they haven’t the slightest clue what wild game tastes like. But every time I bring wild game for lunch, everyone wants a taste. They may only get a sliver of why I hunt, but food can bring light to something that is otherwise an enigma. Throughout history, food has proven to be powerful—culturally and socially. There is a place for both your average joe preparing game and the foodie who creates something elaborate. In the end, I am for anything that normalizes eating wild game and gets people excited about it. It doesn’t matter if that’s a home-cooked meal or a five-star spread. @teresa.rvss

I love this, and it’s about time! So much B.S. out there on trophy hunting, and yet the number of hunters continues to dwindle. We need to celebrate the hunt, and for some of us, just getting a fair shot at any deer, much less a shooter, is a trophy in itself. Oh, and by the way, I’ve never read or purchased your magazine before, but I did buy this issue. @samsnap2

Chief Executive Officer Eric Zinczenko

Yes! Keeping it real. This is what the future of hunting needs. Good on you for having the brass to pioneer the shift! P.S. There’s not a damn thing wrong with that cover buck.

He’s a stud! @huntnovascotia

O UTDO ORLI FE.COM

9

D I S PAT C H E S

The Life

WHAT THE OL STAFF IS...

CA R R YIN G

retired: The handle dug into my leg, it was heavy, and it was a bit boring. Gerber’s Kettlebell is compact, making it all but disappear in my pocket. It locks into place with a solid click, the dual finger choil fits perfectly in hand, and the bellied blade slices easily through EDC tasks. This affordable knife ($31) has plenty of work to do.

—Ben Duchesney, SEO editor

W AT C HIN G

STREAMING

Ben Potter’s films never disappoint, and neither does I just saw They Shall Not Grow Old, a WWI documentary from 2018, and I wish I’d seen it in a theater. It must have been incredible on the big screen.

Director Peter Jackson and his team slowed original footage to a more lifelike pace and painstakingly colorized it. The result is a relatable portrait of doomed young men, captured moments before they jump into the meat grinder of the 20th century. If you’ve had a bad day in the deer woods and need some perspective, rent this when you get home. —Matthew Every, associate online editor LISTENING TO

10

the new waterfowl series he’s spearheading.

Hunt41.com documents a group of guys targeting all 41 species of North American waterfowl. It’s a fantastic mix of private- and public-land setups

Bob Lee Swagger is back. In Stephen Hunter’s latest book, Game of Snipers, his iconic character is summoned to save the day once again. This time, the foe is another sniper, arriving in the U.S. from the Middle East to take out a high-level political figure.

No other fiction writer is as accurate or as passionate as Hunter when it comes to describing guns and gunfights. This time the focus is on long-range shooting and the nuances of making a nearly impossible first-round hit. Naturally, as a ballistics geek, I couldn’t get enough.

When I interviewed Hunter—you can find that Q&A at outdoorlife.com/ GOS—I wasn’t surprised to learn that he had purchased an Accuracy International rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor for “research” purposes. His trigger time and expertise with that rifle are reflected in the book. That technical knowledge, combined with his gift for fleshing out characters, makes this one hell of a read.

—John B. Snow, shooting editor

across Utah, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, but the best episode by far was filmed in California. The boys race to their stake by mountain bike and boat at the Mendota Wildlife Refuge before turning to openwater Delta divers, then finishing with staggering numbers of puddle ducks, specklebellies, and snows.

They’ll hunt the four flyways until all 41 species have been catalogued.

—Joe Genzel, associate editor

Whiskey Myers’ self-titled album dropped this fall, and it’s kick-ass. The East Texas band is part of the new wave of real country mixed with rock (no bro country here). I went to one of their concerts this summer in Illinois, and lead singer Cody Cannon melted our faces off. Plus, they’re duck hunters. —J.G.

OUT DOOR LIFE • WINTER 2020

WARNE R B ROS. P ICTURES ( THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD ) ; HUNT 4 1 (WATERFOWL); PE NG UIN RAND O M HOU SE ( B OOK )

RE A DI NG

HELL ON WHEELS

The Life This Happened to Me

WAYNE LEONARD THOMASVILLE, AL THTM

i cruised home, at 30 mph, but I didn’t realize my safety-harness lanyard had fallen out of my pocket and was dangling beside the back wheel...

After a morning hunt, I climbed down from my treestand and walked back to my 4-wheeler.

...and dragged me under the tire! the quad ran over my stomach and chest, knocking the wind out of me and driving me into the dirt.

...until it caught and started wrapping around the rear axle! It snatched me off the 4-wheeler...

thankfully, the strap broke and cut me loose. i couldn’t get up, but i could reach my phone.

my buddy took me to the e.r. Next time, I’m taking off my harness before getting on the quad.

WRITE US!

IF WE USE YOUR STORY, YOU’LL GET THIS BOOK!

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O UTD OOR L IF E • WINTER 20 20

“ This Happened to Me ” has been a fixture of OL since 1940. We’ve compiled our readers’ most hair-raising misadventures in a single volume. You can pore over the 183 pages of this action-packed book knowing you’re in good company.

Copies are also available for purchase at outdoorlife.com/THTMBook. » We publish true adventures. Send yours to THTM@OutdoorLife.com. Only those used will be acknowledged.

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WI NT ER 2 0 20

EDITED BY ANDREW MCKEAN hunting@outdoorlife.com

Hunting

A late-season hunter waits on a frosty Alberta buck.

LATE-SEASON WHITETAILS

DU STIN LUTT/ROCKHO USE MOTIO N

DEGREES OF SUFFERING

For those who endure polar vortexes, dead-winter deer hunting can be red-hot

by TONY HANSEN

Hunting whitetails in extreme cold is a little like parenthood.

Rewards might await, but you’ve got to expect plenty of discomfort along the way.

Maybe it’s not that bad (whether I’m talking about brutal cold or parenting, I’ll leave to your imagination), but hunting in arctic weather can certainly be an exercise in perseverance.

It’s also a wealth of burgeoning opportunity. In recent years, as wildlife managers try to find more ways to control deer populations, particularly in areas where chronic wasting disease outbreak-response plans call for substantial population reductions, extended late-season opportunities have become more abundant.

During these bitter-end hunts, the conditions that cause whitetails to move along consistent travel routes with predictable frequency are the same ones that make waiting

O UTDO ORL IF E .C OM

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Hunting Late-Season Whitetails

DOUBLE WIND-STOPPING LAYERS Hunt enough in truly cold weather, and you’ll quickly realize there is a difference between 15-degree temps and 15-degree temps with wind. Keep the wind from reaching your core, and you can stay warm—or at least warm enough to stay in position long enough to hunt the prime times of the day. But if the wind gets to you, you’re done.

Blocking the wind is your first order of business in wintery conditions. You already know the standard “dress in layers” mantra. You’ll need a moisture-

wicking base layer to keep you as dry as possible. Then stack on layers featuring high-loft insulation. That’ll get you through most basic cold conditions.

To endure the truly frigid, you’ll need at least one—preferably two—windblocking layers as well. I like to wear a wind-blocking vest under an outer layer that is also windproof. The one-two punch stops the heat-robbing wind and seems to make the high-loft insulation more effective.

SHELTERS As good as today’s insulating materials and technical fabrics are, it’s hard to beat the comfort offered by a shelter in truly brutal weather conditions. For those who hunt the upper Midwest and Northeast, the deer shack is a staple for a reason: It’s effective, and it allows you to hunt longer and more comfortably in extreme cold.

Pop-up and hub-style ground blinds

are handy and effective at concealment.

But when you’re dealing with the coldest of conditions, they are inferior to a more permanent blind.

Commercial options featuring windblocking wall materials, sealed windows, and full insulation are excellent.

They’re also fairly expensive. If you’re the DIY type, you can save a bit of cash by constructing your own. Just be sure to have a plan for getting your blind to your hunting location—those shooting houses are heavy.

SUPPLEMENTAL HEAT I spent my first hunting seasons chasing whitetails in the big conifer stands and tamarack swamps of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. If you’re wondering what damp cold feels like, spend a winter in the U.P. That said, the coldest I have ever been was on a hunt in the prairie habitat in Kansas. The winds ripping across that frozen moonscape were almost unbearable. My water bottle froze in my pack in just a few hours, and my fingers and toes barely functioned. I spent most of my time hunting from an enclosed blind that week, with a portable propane heater cranking just so I could stay afield longer. Without that heater, I’m not sure I could have hunted long or hard enough to be effective.

A word of caution here: Any device that relies on a flame gives off some amount of carbon monoxide, a deadly, odorless gas. Look for models with an auto-shutoff feature and a low-oxygen sensor. Or go old-school. In the deercamp country of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, it’s common to see (and smell) small wood-burning stoves in permanent blinds.

Disposable chemical heat packs are standard for extreme-cold hunts. I like the large body-size ones with adhesive backing. I’ll put one on each side near my kidneys, and toss a couple of handsize packs in my jacket pocket. Stick-on toe warmers typically aren’t very effective inside your oxygen-blocking boots, but they can still be helpful.

A northern Wisconsin bowhunter checks his shooting lane.

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OUTD OO R LI FE • W INTER 2 020

D USTIN LUTT/ROCK HOUSE M OTION ( 2)

on them so difficult: extreme cold.

We’re not talking about your run-ofthe-mill cold. We’re talking about conditions that make 30-degree days seem like spring. The type of cold that freezes the snot in your nose and ices facial hair.

Hunting in these circumstances requires special gear, special tactics, and a special frame of mind.

SUPER-COOL DEER GEAR SITKA FANATIC BIB Bibs are a must for extreme conditions, and Sitka’s Fanatic bib is my go-to. It has exactly the features needed to combat cold: a windproof layer and high-loft insulation.

This revamped iteration of the Fanatic bib has smooth fabric on the bottom of the legs and inner thighs, to minimize the collection of burrs. ($439; sitkagear.com) HEATER BODY SUIT If you absolutely must sit in a treestand during a polar vortex, this is one piece of gear you’ll want to pack in. Functionally a sleeping bag for hunters, the Heater Body Suit wraps you in a windproof, insulated cocoon.

A suspender system and interior zippers allow you to unzip the bag, free your arms, and operate a gun or bow.

It’s definitely warm, and its popularity among Canadian hunters is a testimony to its effectiveness in frigid locales.

Practice deploying your gun or bow in this clumsy get-up long before a deer arrives. ($380; heaterbodysuit.com)

A bowhunter sleds out a heavy central Kansas whitetail, taken during a snowstorm.

CLAM SUB-ZERO X BOOT This brand that makes icefishing gear understands a thing or two about cold-weather boots. The Sub-Zero X Boot is heavy. It’s bulky. It’s not especially attractive. But it’s damned warm. The rubber boots feature a removable liner, which is a critical part of the system. Any amount of dampness in a boot will greatly impact its ability to insulate.

This boot can be completely dried between uses. ($180; ganderoutdoors.com)

O UTDOOR LIF E.C OM

17

Hunting Ducks

CHANGING COURSE

America’s flyways are shifting, and so are the country’s waterfowl hotspots

18

A pintail drake drops into a Montana pond.

by BRAD FITZPATRICK

PACIFIC FLYWAY CENTRAL OREGON

MISSISSIPPI FLYWAY SOUTHERN MISSOURI

ATLANTIC FLYWAY EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA

▶ “If you’ve spent the last 30 years hunting the Pacific Flyway like I have, you can’t help but notice the changes,” says Alex Langbell, owner of GunDog Outdoors. He believes conservation efforts by private landowners have increased the number of birds in Oregon and many are staying through the year. And he’s seen goose populations shift eastward.

“Within the last 10 years, snow geese— which traditionally have migrated along the I-5 corridor of Oregon and Washington—are showing up in significant numbers on the eastern sides of both states.”

The annual waterfowl report by Oregon’s Department of Fish and Wildlife confirms this. Farther south, the Klamath Basin has become another major winter staging area for geese and ducks, and offers excellent hunting opportunities.

▶ Like many Midwestern states, Missouri was hit hard by spring floods, resulting in reduced crop production. But the Missouri Department of Conservation has awarded millions of dollars to landowners for wetlands restoration, and state-funded conservation projects have improved habitat in the Show Me State significantly.

Consequently, more birds are overwintering there than ever before, according to MDC waterfowl biologist Andy Raedeke.

If you’re looking for public land that offers open waterfowl-hunting areas, check out the Cape LaCroix Bluffs Conservation Area and Bull Shoals Lake, both of which have the potential to hold large numbers of birds through the end of the season.

▶ The lakes, rivers, and sloughs around Pamlico Sound offer some of the best waterfowling on the Eastern Seaboard.

“North Carolinians have learned about Hyde County,” says Chase Luker, huntereducation coordinator at the state’s Wildlife Resources Commission, “but waterfowlers outside the state are just starting to hear about it.” Luker is also a guide with Dare to Hyde Adventures, and he’s noticed a major uptick in bird numbers. “We’re seeing birds arrive later, but when they do, it’s in force.” Most notably, Luker has seen more pintails and greater scaup than ever.

According to a 2015 midwinter survey, dabbler populations increased 22 percent and divers rose 29 percent over the previous 10 years. In good news for locals, that trend is projected to continue.

OU TD OOR L IF E • W INTER 2 020

D ONALD M . JONES

NORTH AMERICA’S ANNUAL waterfowl migration is one of the greatest natural spectacles on Earth. But over the past decade, biologists and hunters have noticed a shift in migration timing and patterns. Birds are arriving at their wintering grounds later and frequenting areas outside traditional stopover locations. This puzzling behavior has drawn the attention of state agencies and nonprofits such as Ducks Unlimited, but there is no consensus to explain the change in waterfowl migrations.

“We’ve seen major shifts north and south,” says Dr. Frank Rowher, president and chief scientist at Delta Waterfowl. Rowher says that mallards in the Central Flyway, for example, are still migrating to the Gulf of Mexico, but they’re arriving later. Theories abound to explain the changes: urban sprawl, a warming climate, hunting pressure. Satellite tracking has been a crucial tool in understanding the dynamics of migration. Based on years of data from GPS tracking collars, band reports, and hunter observations, here are some of the biggest trends in the fall flight.

SURVIVE AND THRIVE IN THE WILD

Available wherever books are sold

weldonowen.com

Hunting

Outfitter Lee Livingston (far left) guided the author to this Wyoming wilderness ram.

Access

WYOMING’S WILDERNESS PROBLEM Nonresident hunters are required to hire a guide to access Wyoming’s wilderness. Courts say it’s legal. But is it equitable?

I WOULDN’T HAVE MET Lee Livingston, or have gotten to count him as a lifelong friend, if I hadn’t hired him to guide me to a Wyoming bighorn sheep.

On the other hand, I could have killed that ram without Lee, a registered outfitter based in Cody. Maybe it would have taken me longer. Maybe I would have settled for a smaller specimen. But as an accomplished big-game hunter, I could have found a way.

Only Wyoming wouldn’t let me.

As long as there’s been federally managed wilderness in Wyoming, the state has required nonresidents to hire a licensed guide or be accompanied by a resident in order to hunt big-game species in designated wilderness areas. It’s not a small amount of space.

Wyoming boasts 14 wilderness areas totaling more than 3 million acres of federally managed public land.

I don’t need a guide to access that land in the summer with a fishing rod. I can hike and camp entirely guide-free with my family. But if I shoulder a rifle or a bow, I’m breaking the law if I enter that public land without a guide.

It’s a rule that Keiran O’Brien knows all too well. O’Brien, now 82 years old and still living in his hometown of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, was 47 and an elk-hunting machine when

20

OUT DOOR L IF E • WINTER 2020

he and two brothers packed into the Teton Wilderness in 1984. A game warden ticketed them all for hunting without a licensed guide. O’Brien appealed, and the case went all the way to the Wyoming Supreme Court.

“It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now,” O’Brien said in an interview last fall. “For nine or 10 months of the year, you can hike naked in the Wyoming wilderness, and nobody messes with you. But for two months of big-game season, you’re a criminal if you hunt your own public land without a guide.

It’s un-American, and it’s designed to keep outfitters in business.”

O’Brien’s appeal maintained this law violated three clauses of the U.S. Constitution: the equal-protections clause that ensures the rights of U.S. citizens are maintained in all states; the immunities clause that ensures residents of one state are afforded rights granted by all states; and the

“YOU’RE A CRIMINAL IF YOU HUNT YOUR OWN PUBLIC LAND WITHOUT A GUIDE.”

supremacy clause that requires states to adhere to federal law—in this case, that of the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Wyoming’s highest court disagreed on all counts. In a split 3-2 decision, the court ruled in 1986 that O’Brien, and every other nonresident big-game hunter, must have either a licensed guide or a qualified state resident take them into wilderness areas. The court maintained that the rule ensures public safety, since guides are familiar with the dangers of the wilderness and how to keep their clients safe. Besides, the court said, states are within their rights to limit other aspects of hunting, including the number of big-game tags that are reserved for residents.

But Wyoming’s wilderness rule has come under renewed scrutiny as the national “keep it public” movement gains momentum. Do states have the authority to exclude Americans from their own public land, regardless of their state of residency or which activity they pursue?

“It’s a tradition that’s rooted in a system where folks profit off the allocation of those [big-game] tags,” says Tim Brass, the state policy and field operations director for Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, which hasn’t taken a position on the guiding law. “Embedded traditions are hard to change. The safety aspect doesn’t hold water at all. Hunters hunt safely in the wilderness in every other state.”

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Hunting Coyotes

FIELD OF SCREAMS

An Ohio coyote slides through standing soybeans.

FROM HIS HOME in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Geoff Nemnich can drive west to Wyoming’s wide-open prairies and badlands in pursuit of coyotes.

Or he can turn east and hunt his way down the irrigated farmland of the Platte River.

The tactics he deploys in the tighter cover of the Midwest are more nuanced than those he uses on western landscapes, with softer calls, sneakier approaches, and closer attention to wind. But Nemnich, who spends six months a year hunting coyotes and reporting on his experiences on his website, coyotecraze.com, says securing access is where all Midwest predator hunting should start.

How much property is required to hunt coyotes in America’s Corn Belt?

It depends on the specific topography and cover, but in general, if you think of a typical deer-hunting spot, that’s nowhere near enough for coyotes. In a lot of places, 50 acres can produce decent deer hunting. For coyotes, you need maybe ten 50-acre lots to have room to work. It is different from deer hunting, when you hope to draw deer to your location through their natural movements or with some attractant. by ANDREW With coyotes, you’re MCKEAN using the entire acreage because you don’t

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A Q&A with an expert farm-country coyote hunter

know where the coyotes will come from or where you’ll have to set up for the wind. I can call an entire 50-acre property in about 20 minutes, so you want to have multiple properties to hit in the course of a day, and enough so that you don’t return to them too soon and educate any coyotes you don’t kill.

What cover do you look for?

I want to hunt a place with some sort of drainage running through it, whether that’s a little creek or just a low brushy spot between fields. That cover is where coyotes will be in the daytime, when you’re out calling to them. In farm country, where there might be a road on every section line, coyotes have learned to hold tight, especially after crops are harvested. They’ll be bedded up in brush or creekbottoms, or even a brushy fence-line corner or a tree row. Big patches of timber are hard to hunt. You know

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there are coyotes in there, but there’s no way to predict just where they are.

Does your calling strategy differ on smaller properties?

I start with sneaking in to where I’m going to call. Ideally, I want to be within 250 or 300 yards of where the coyote is, which means I have to be very stealthy on my approach.

I’ll generally start with a soft vole squeak, just something to get the attention of closein coyotes. If I don’t get a response, I’ll blow a louder prey distress call. But in January and February, I almost always go to coyote vocalizations, either challenge howls or pup distress whines. My thinking is that coyotes have heard so many rabbit-in-distress calls, they’re wise to them. Plus, it’s starting to be breeding season, and they’re more likely to respond to another coyote. I always have a high-pitched call

Cargo/Trunk Liner

in my rotation. I don’t know why, but coyotes will respond to that high pitch, even if it’s a prey species that doesn’t naturally exist anywhere around them. I’ve called Iowa coyotes with a desert-cottontail-indistress call, and I’ve killed coyotes in Georgia playing a snowshoe hare call.

Can you predict where a coyote will show up when it responds to your call?

That’s a big part of my setup.

I want to be in a spot where I have a shot at a coyote that steps out of cover. A lot of people think a coyote will just run in to the sound of a call, but it’s much more common that they’ll come to the edge of cover, where they think they’re hidden, and then watch. I want to be able to see those edges.

If there’s a lot of cover and too many options, then you need a couple of buddies to be on the guns while you do the calling.

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With the remote’s range, you can put the speaker well out of sight of your calling location. ($145; icotec.com)

CATCHING CHILLS

OUT COLD There’s more than one way to get lost in winter fishing

by JOE CERMELE

24

OU TD OOR LIF E • WINTER 2 020

Oil refineries. Highways.

Traffic. Ask an outsider what comes to mind when they think of New Jersey, and there’s a strong chance one of those three things pops into their brain. We certainly have

them all in my home state.

What those not born and raised in “Dirty Jersey” often don’t know, however, is that those ugly attributes largely exist only in a diagonal line between New York City and

Philadelphia. Travel outside that corridor, and you’d be shocked by how quiet and rural New Jersey can be.

In the southeast corner of the state, I could convince you that you were so help-

EDITED BY JOE CERMELE fishing@outdoorlife.com

Fishing WIN TE R 20 20

Chain pickerel are one of our fishing editor’s favorite winter targets.

lessly lost in the wilderness, you might never see civilization again. Here, in the 1.1 million acres of scrub forest that make up the Jersey Pine Barrens, you can follow sand trails for miles before

P HOTOG RA PH BY

Brad Hardy

they dead-end in swamps.

Good luck noting landmarks, because it all looks the same.

And if you’re out there after dark, you might fall victim to the Jersey Devil. Even though I know my way around many

of the pine tracts, I still don’t muck with them after sunset. In daylight, on the other hand, the Barrens is my favorite place to chase chain pickerel in the winter.

The truth is, I can catch

bigger chains more consistently closer to home in the stereotypical part of the state I grew up in. But then I’m just catching fish in a suburban park. The Barrens provides an escape—albeit for just a few hours—during a time of year when fishy options are limited.

The meandering, dark, tannic rivers that braid through the pines don’t freeze easily. It is exceptionally rare to see another angler—or person—out there. The pickerel may be smaller, but they’ll track and smash a lure or fly with the same vigor as their larger pike and muskie cousins. Most important, chasing them in the Pine Barrens makes me feel like I “got out there”—even if by someone else’s standards, I’ve gotten nowhere at all.

Winter is a tough time for many fishermen, but it’s still possible to get “lost.” For some, the chilly ocean offers a vastness greater than any woods. For others, the promise of bigger fish drives them to remote frozen lakes. Even those who may not feel a tug until spring can easily lose themselves in preparation for the coming season. No matter where you stand, or where you like to fish, we’ve got ideas on how to catch the wild side of winter.

O UTDO O RLI FE.C OM

25

HIGH-STAKES HARD WATER

Fishing Lake Trout

Drop giant laker baits for your wildest fight of the year

WHEN I LOOKED DOWN the hole, I was shocked.

There was the gravelly bottom of Lake Granby barely 3 feet below the bottom edge of the ice. As if I wasn’t skeptical enough about targeting lake trout in such shallow water, veteran Colorado guide Bernie Keefe didn’t make me feel any more confident when he tied on a 10-inch Hogy soft-plastic finesse bait. It was a popular lure for bluefin tuna on the East Coast, where I live, and something I never thought I’d see in the Rockies. But in less than five minutes of jigging, I was kneeling at the hole watching line drain off the spool. Keefe had said we weren’t going to catch numbers that day but that we’d catch big fish—and he’d made good on his promise. If you adopt a little of Keefe’s outside-the-box thinking on the hard water, you’ll notice that your average lake trout gains weight fast.

by JOE CERMELE

26

THE GOODS It wasn’t until years after my trip with Keefe that I learned the truth: I was his guinea pig. Until that day in 2011, he’d never sent a 10-inch Hogy down a hole on Lake Granby, where for years tubes had been considered the top trophy-laker lure. Keefe might not have been certain that fish would eat that monster softplastic as quickly as the 44-incher I ended up landing did, but he knew they would eat it. It was a perfect match for the rainbow trout that also live in Granby, and the lure’s effectiveness was a testament to a theory that many anglers disregard come ice season.

It’s common to see lures and baits scaled down in the winter

OUT D OO R LI F E • WINTER 2020

months. The idea makes sense because with slower metabolisms and a generally more sluggish attitude in cold water, even a trophy walleye, bass, lake trout, or pike will be likely to snap at a smaller, more manageable target. That day on Granby, had we preferred to catch a pile of lakers in the 15- to 20-inch range, Keefe could have made it happen by tying on smaller jigs and hunting down suspended fish. But we were looking for the “right” fish, and even in the dead of winter, the big players won’t hesitate to eat a big meal if you know exactly where to serve it.

THE GAMBLE Where I dropped that Hogy was too shallow to even bother with electronics. According to Keefe, not only would the signal from a flasher hurt more than help in only 3 feet of water, but also the bite would happen so fast, the machine wouldn’t even have time to register the fish. We were fishing such skinny water because the idea of finding the bait to find the giant fish holds true 365 days a year. The smaller lake trout in deeper areas were on schools of little bait, but

Keefe knew that the rainbow trout would remain in the shallows even under the ice. The key element of our location wasn’t the depth directly below us but its proximity to an edge that sloped away quickly to deep water.

“Big lake trout aren’t going to hang out in these shallows,” Keefe told me. “The only reason they’d move onto this flat is to grab a rainbow trout and then split. If there’s a laker here, it’s here to eat.”

The 44-inch trout I hooked not 10 minutes after Keefe explained this did exactly what he said it would do; with my rod plunged into the hole almost to the cork grip, I could feel the tip bending back toward my feet as the drag screamed. “The deep water is behind us,” Keefe said.

“That’s where it’s going.”

You can call Keefe’s play in the shallows a gamble, and in many respects it was. That day, we dropped another fish and landed another 42-incher in the same area less than 50 feet from the hole that produced the first taker. Keefe had put us in an area not where the fish are, but where he anticipated they were going to be, even if for only a short window within the day.

TIM ROMANO

The author with a heavy lake trout from Lake Granby in Colorado.

Fishing Tautog

BLACK OPS

How to fool a salty oddball that bites on the coldest days WE CALL IT “SCRATCHING.” It’s a delicate nibbling of the bait, as if the fish is gently chipping away at the edges of a potato chip without ingesting the spud in one bite. It’s a green crab that’s being “scratched,” though, and in the ideal scenario, a scratch turns into a thump as the tautog—aka ’tog or blackfish—finally commits to inhaling the crustacean. But many times, that crab gets scratched right off the hook as if by magic. So, you start swinging on the scratch. And you just keep coming up empty. It can be insanely frustrating.

If you don’t live near the coast between Maine and North Carolina, there’s a good possibility you’ve never even heard of blackfish. They’re part of the wrasse family, and they live in hard structure, such as rocks, reefs, and wrecks. With a bulbous head and big, conical buckteeth, blackfish might not be the prettiest gamefish in the Atlantic, but they fight like demons, chew on the coldest days, and are one of the most delicious fish you can put on the table, thanks to their strict diet of clams, mussels, shrimp, and crabs. If you’re willing to give these weirdos a shot, the pointers below will help you secure a winter dinner you won’t forget.

JOE CERM ELE (2)

by JOE CERMELE

A winter haul of blackfish from the New Jersey coast.

SCRATCHED OUT

QUICK DRAW

▶ What’s actually happening when you feel a scratch is that the fish is sort of preparing your crab—or chunk of crab— for swallowing. It crunches the bait a few times, then inhales the mashedup meal. The problem is that the process often works the bait right off the hook, so you’re waiting to feel a solid jolt, and it never comes. Though it takes some practice to dial in exactly when to swing, your skill will improve faster if you have good contact with the bait at all times. Typical blackfish rigs have the hook on a short dropper leader just inches above the weight because you want your bait lying directly on the rocks or wreck. In choppy conditions, however, the rocking of the boat can cause that rig to lift and lower. To counteract this and keep your rig as still as possible, move your rod tip up and down in rhythm with the swells, and pay out or take in line as needed to stay tight.

▶ Blackfish live in hard-to-reach places.

They’ll worm into crevices between rocks or tuck into the sharpest, snaggiest piece of a wreck. When they feed, they often dart out, snatch their meal, and quickly retreat to their hole. This makes it critical that you keep them coming toward the surface the second you plant the hook. These fish can top the 20-pound mark, and their initial bursts of energy when you connect make it necessary to use heavy-action rods to avoid getting “rocked,” wherein a hooked fish retreats to its hole and you get hopelessly hung up. The secret

is reeling through the set. As you sweep up to sting a blackfish, you should already be winding.

JIGS UP ▶ In the last five years, using jigs for blackfish has grown in popularity, with many arguing that the method is more effective than dropping a traditional rig.

Specialty ’tog jigheads weighing up to 3 ounces take a crab chunk to the bottom, and because there is no dangling weight or dropper leader involved, the idea is that you can keep an even tighter connection and detect the take much faster. When using a ’tog jig, you’ll often feel the fish “walking away” with the bait, theoretically helping you determine exactly when to strike. While the jury is still out on whether jigs outfish rigs, many anglers who jig agree that lighter rods and braided line make it easier to keep contact with your bait, especially in deeper water.

OUT DO ORLI FE.C OM

27

Fishing

1

2

Trout

FORGOTTEN TROUT FLIES

3

Stock your box this winter with some overlooked old-school ringers EVOLUTION IS A slow process. We tend to believe that the trout swimming in our rivers now are smarter than the ones that were swimming there 25 or even 100 years ago, but the truth is they’ll eat the same flies they did back then. Thanks to modern synthetic materials and flashy new patterns, a lot of the old stuff has lost its rightful place in fly boxes. But sometimes those forgotten gems save the day, or crush more fish than the latest and greatest bug. So, this winter, when you’ve topped off your scotch after shoveling snow and you sit down at the vise, consider spinning up these five old-school

by JOHN FEDORKA killers. You’ll be happy you did come spring.

1. WHITLOCK’S NEAR NUFF SCULPIN Legend has it that Dave Whitlock once told Lefty Kreh, “You can use this fly, but you can never write about it.” Fortunately, the secret is long out, so I’m safe giving it some ink. Large streamers delivered on sinking lines are all the rage these days, and some in the meatstripping crowd may find it hard to believe that sometimes smaller is much more potent.

The Near Nuff doesn’t have a lot of body, and it’s weighted with small lead eyes, so it gets down fast with little resistance. Whether you’re on a big Western river or meandering spring creek, if fishing gets slow, give this morsel a dredge. No, you don’t need a sinking line, and yes, it will cast just fine on your 5-weight.

28

2. GODDARD CADDIS John Goddard and Clive Henry developed the G&H Sedge pattern in England in the early 1960s. Here in the States, we simply call it the Goddard Caddis. And in its heyday, many even referred to it as the “Godlike Caddis.” There was a good reason for that. You can tie or buy the Goddard in a wide range of sizes, and it’ll match everything from small terrestrials to caddisflies to midsize golden stoneflies. One of my favorite attributes of this pattern is that its spundeer-hair body makes it float like a cork. You can drift smaller Goddards in heavy chop without them sinking, and you can even use them as the indicator in a drydropper rig. Tied in all black, they are absolutely deadly.

OUTD OO R LI FE • W IN TER 2020

4

5

These “old dog” trout flies don’t need new tricks to crush big fish.

3. BRASSIE The Brassie was developed by accident. Anglers Gene Lynch, Ken Chandler, and Tug Davenport were fishing the South Platte and noticed they were catching more trout on nymphs that had been chewed so badly, all the brass wire used to weight the core was exposed. While the brassie is an extremely simple pattern, it resembles some of the most abundant trout food sources across the country—namely midge larvae, caddis larvae, and caddis pupa. For a tiny fly, the Brassie also gets down quickly, and its flash helps make it visible to trout, even in deeper runs. You can tie a Brassie with a bead head or in a plethora of colors, but the classic combo of brass wire and peacock hurl has long proven its lethality.

4. PARTRIDGE AND YELLOW The Partridge and Yellow was popular in England well before it ended up on American trout streams. What put it here was Sylvester Nemes’ book, The SoftHackled Fly, published in the 1970s. Of all the fly styles on the market, soft hackles arguably remain the most underutilized in the States. With a yellow silk body, small thorax of beaver dubbing, and sparse Hungarian partridge hackle, the Partridge and Yellow is easy to whip up on the vise.

Fish one by itself on the swing, letting it ride just below the surface through feeding lanes, and hang on tight. You can also fish one in tandem with a nymph to get it deeper, or try dropping one behind a dry fly during a sulphur hatch.

P HOTO GR APH BY

5. CLOUSER CRAYFISH Bob Clouser’s minnow is easily one of the most used and recognized flies ever tied for freshand saltwater, but don’t forget about his crayfish.

Though it was originally designed for smallmouths on his home water—the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania— the Clouser Crayfish is a secret weapon for some sneaky trout guides across the country. You can fish it on the bottom of a tandem nymph rig, or strip it through deep holes just as you would a sculpin pattern. Crayfish are often overlooked as a trout food source, but big browns and rainbows munch them. Clouser’s version has a soft back and smaller profile, which are ideal for trout, whereas some bass-oriented crayfish patterns are bigger and bulkier.

Cliff Gardiner & John Keller

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WI N T E R 2 0 2 0 EDITED BY JOHN B. SNOW shooting@outdoorlife.com

Robinson puts Boss shotshells to the test in a Wisconsin goose field.

SHOTGUNNING

CUSTOM SHOTSHELLS

These boutique ammomakers are producing more effective waterfowl loads

by ALEX ROBINSON

P HOTOG RA PH S BY

Stephen Maturen

I POPPED OUT of my layout blind shooting, dropping the lead goose and then moving back to the second bird in the flock, which was now quartering away hard with the wind at his back. I dropped that goose too, beyond the edge of our decoy spread—not winged, but stone-cold dead.

“Just what the heck are you shooting?” my buddy asked.

Nope, not a 10-gauge. Not 3.5-inch BBs. I was hunting with the deadliest goose load available: tungsten No. 7s. There’s a new crew of custom shotshell-makers who are pushing the trend in using smaller pellets made of heavier metals. The best thing about these little guys is they offer the exact type of load you’re looking for—whether it’s for your 10-gauge or .410.

I rounded up shells from five of the top contenders and piled up ducks and geese with them all fall. When the gun smoke settled, here’s what I found.

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OUTD OO R L I FE • WIN TER 2 020

Shooting Shotgunning

3

1. HEVI-SHOT HEVI-X Load: 3-inch, No. 2 Hevi-X • 50-yard pattern: 59 of 115 (51.3 percent) Velocity: 1386 fps • Price per shell: $1.90 • hevishot.com

Hevi-Shot is one of the OGs in the better-than-steel game, and the company has increased the density of its Hevi-X load by upping the percentage of tungsten. On the

downside, I found the pellets were unevenly formed—some looked like Nerds candy, others were globbed together—likely leading to a lower patterning score.

2. BOSS Load: 3-inch, No. 2 plated bismuth • 50-yard pattern: 79 of 150 (52.6 percent) Velocity: 1318 fps • Price per shell: $1.35 • bossshotshells.com

Boss improved its loads this year by plating its bismuth pellets with about 1 mm of copper. “The plating process made the pellets harder, leading to denser patterns, and we also saw better penetration in our ballistic gel testing,” says Brandon Cerecke, company founder and third-

generation plater. What I saw in field testing was excellent performance.

The No. 2s absolutely crushed geese, and the No. 5s were killer on ducks— for a relatively affordable price. For that sweet spot of better-than-steel ammo that also won’t break the bank, Boss can't be beat.

3. APEX WS Load: 3-inch, No. 2 steel/No. 9 TSS • 50-yard pattern: 113 of 216 (52.3 percent) Velocity: 1450 fps • Price per shell: $1.75 • apexmunition.com

Apex makes a straight TSS load (like the Federal Custom Shop), but it also produces a 3-inch 12-gauge mixed load of No. 2 steel (about 126 pellets) and No. 9 TSS (about 90 pellets) that is more affordable. The most impres5

sive thing about this shell was the beautifully even patterns at 50 yards.

At close ranges, the steel really does the bird killing. But at 50 yards and beyond, the TSS fills in the holes of the pattern—and knocks birds down.

4. FEDERAL CUSTOM SHOP TSS Load: 3-inch, No. 7 TSS • 50-yard pattern: 159 of 235 (67.6 percent) Velocity: 1358 fps Price per shell: $10.30 • federalpremium.com/custom-shop

OK, let’s get the astronomical price of these loads out of the way. Federal knows the shells are too expensive for most waterfowlers. But the company wanted to make highperformance shotgun and rifle loads that you can't find on store shelves, and it did exactly that through its new Custom Shop in Anoka, Minnesota.

First you jump on the shop’s website and order your rounds, then the loaders get to work, making the ammo HOW WE TEST I patterned all the loads at 50 yards through a Benelli SBE3, and Patternmaster Classic Long Range choke, counting the number of hits inside a 30-inch circle. Muzzle-velocity testing was done at Federal’s factory through a coil of inductance sensors under SAAMI specifications.

by hand—I watched them tap home wads with a wooden mallet. As for the shells, TSS has a super-high density that allows you to use smaller pellets. Obviously, this means more pellets in each shell, but also, the smaller surface area of each pellet means they retain velocity better and penetrate birds better. In a 12-gauge, TSS is ridiculously effective, but it’s also turning 28s and .410s into bona fide goose slayers.

5. BACKRIDGE Load: 3-inch, No. 2 ITX13 • 50-yard pattern: 54 of 90 (60 percent) Velocity: 1364 fps Price per shell: $1.60 • backridgeammunition.com

Backridge is a little vague about the makeup of its proprietary ITX13, but the military-veteran-run company out of Clarksville, Tennessee, did tell me it’s a blend of tungsten and iron that’s 16 percent denser than lead—and it’s

softer than steel. The pellets were perfectly formed little balls of death. The cool thing about Backridge is that it's focusing on obscure loads. Its 10-gauge No. 2s are a hot seller, but its new .410 loads should be just as popular.

Shooting

SPUHR

Precision Rifle

A Spuhr mount on the author's 6mm Creed comp rifle.

UNIMOUNTS

A stronger way to attach a scope to a rifle

by JOHN B. SNOW

34

UNLIKE TRADITIONAL SCOPE RINGS, which attach independently to the tube of a riflescope, a unimount creates a bridge between the rings that increases the rigidity and reliability of one of the most failure-prone elements on a long gun.

There are other benefits to these systems as well. Some offer additional mounting points for accessories. Among the more useful I've employed are hangers for dope cards, mounts for red-dot sights, and shot-angle indicators. The reddots are handy for getting on hard-to-find targets quickly, and the angle indicators work great when you're shooting in steep terrain. I’ve put all four of these mounts through hard use in competition and while hunting, and they all performed admirably. Whether the extra bulk (and often cost) of these systems is worthwhile is up to you to decide, but for peace of mind, they can’t be beat.

OU TD OOR L IF E • WINTER 2020

This Swedish mount is built like a tank and is packed with innovative features that help make the price tag easier to swallow. Using 12 T-20 Torx fasteners on its wide (1.26-inch) rings, the Spuhr holds the scope in place with a grizzly-strength bear hug. The clamping mechanism is numbered 1 through 5 so you know which order to tighten down the screws. It comes with a built-in bubble level so the shooter can correct rifle cant. Multiple attachment points allow for the mounting of accessories.

Perhaps the coolest feature is the Weight: 8.57 oz.

Price: $410 ramped slot machined into the bridge.

During scope installation, you slide a milehighshooting.com wedge into the slot that pushes up against Sizes (mm): 30, 34, 35, 36, 40 the flat underside of the scope tube, autoCant (mil): 0, 3, 6, 9, 13, 16, 18 matically leveling the scope in the mount.

MAXIMIZE YOUR POTENTIAL

This mount is the definition of over-engineered. It has the longest clamping surface (nearly 5 ½ inches) of any of the unimounts I tested and is secured to the rifle by cranking down on the four cross-bolt half-inch nuts, which are helpfully numbered so you know which order to tighten them in. Each of the scope rings clamps down with six T-25-size Torx fasteners.

Like the other mounts in this review, the MDT is machined from aluminum, but because it has no weight-reducing contour cuts, it is the largest and heaviest of the lot. MDT says that extra material provides extra strength and rigidity, and Weight: 11.36 oz.

Price: $329 with many competitors adding weight to mdttac.com their rifles, the 11.36-ounce weight can be Sizes (mm): 34, 35 viewed as a feature rather than a bug.

The MDT also has an integral recoil lug Cant (mil): 0 on the underside of the mount.

This mount has a couple of features that set it apart from the rest of the field. Most notable is the way the scope rings function. Rather than have two separate pieces that clamp together with multiple fasteners, like two clamshells coming together, the top portion of the ring is split in half. When the single fastener that holds the split halves together is removed, those pieces splay apart like wings to allow the scope to be set in place. This system provides even clamping pressure on the scope tube and prevents the scope from rotating as the rings are tightened.

The rail clamps are also different. The spring-loaded rail clamps have a high pivot Weight: 8.64 oz.

Price: $300 point that places more of the clamping force on the rail and less on the ring itself. americanrifle.com All told, this mount has just four fastenSizes (mm): 30, 34, 35 ers total—the fewest by far, making it the Cant (mil): 0, 20, 30 simplest to use and install.

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The MPA unimount keeps the clutter to a minimum. The two mounting fasteners sit flush in the base when the clamps are tightened down, giving the sides a clean look. The MPA’s two clamps each have two pins that serve as recoil lugs to align the base within the recesses on a Picatinny rail. The lugs help keep the mount from slipping under recoil and assist with returning the scope to zero should the shooter remove and then reattach the mount.

At 6.8 ounces, this is the lightest of the unimounts I tested, and it would be Weight: 6.8 oz.

Price: $250 a good choice for use on a hunting rifle, where keeping the overall weight down masterpiecearms.com is a priority. To trim ounces, MPA maSizes (mm): 30, 34, 35, and 36, chined multiple recesses into the unit and 1 inch and employed four Torx T-25 fasteners Cant (mil): 0, 20 on each ring rather than six.

P HOTOG R APHS BY

Bill Buckley

MANUFACTURERS COUPON

Consumer: Redeemable at retail locations only. Not valid for online or mail-order purchases. Retailer: Irwin Naturals will reimburse you for the face value plus 8 (cents) handling provided it is redeemed by a consumer at the time of purchase on the brand specified. Coupons not properly redeemed will be void and held. Reproduction by any party by any means is expressly prohibited. Any other use constitutes fraud. Irwin Naturals reserves the right to deny reimbursement (due to misredemption activity) and/or request proof of purchase for coupon(s) submitted. Mail to: CMS Dept. 10363, Irwin Naturals, 1 Fawcett Drive, Del Rio, TX 78840. Cash value: .001 (cents). Void where taxed or restricted. ONE COUPON PER PURCHASE. Not valid for mail order/websites. Retail only.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration.

This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

GUN TEST

ARCHON TYPE B NOT JUST ANOTHER PLASTIC 9MM

by JOHN B. SNOW

The company that makes this pistol takes its name from the rulers of ancient Greece—the chief magistrates of Athens and other city-states were known as Archons. That name strikes a romantic chord, though the effect is somewhat dulled by the pedestrian moniker Type B. Instead, this pistol should have been called the Phoenix. This would have been in keeping with both Greek history and mythology, as well as an apt description of this 9mm’s history.

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OU TD OOR LIF E • WINTER 2 020

The origins of the Type B go back to 2012, when Russian armed forces announced they were adopting a new pistol called the Strizh, which was being built by Arsenal Firearms.

That pistol was also referred to as the Strike One back then, but it first appeared in the U.S. market at the 2016 SHOT Show, where it had been rebranded as the PMG Stryk.

It garnered a lot of initial interest but didn’t get off the ground, which was too bad

because in a world awash with polymer-framed, striker-fired pistols, this one has some distinctive features that separate it from the crowd.

Thankfully, it’s reappeared, reborn from the ashes as it were, as the Type B you see here.

EXCELLENT CONTROL Looking at this German-made pistol, the first thing that pops out is the low bore-axis height, which is the distance between the top of the grip and the cen-

ter line of the barrel.

Primary benefits of this are improved recoil management and reduced muzzle flip, because the force of the recoil is driven more directly rearward into the hand. And indeed, when shooting rapid-fire shot strings, the pistol’s front fiber-optic bead sight snaps back into view quickly.

A couple of key innovations make the low bore-axis height possible. When the gun is fieldstripped, you’ll note the striker system is oriented horizontally rather than vertically, trimming critical millimeters from the thickness of the mechanism.

Just compare it to a Glock or other striker-fired pistol, and you’ll see the difference.

More interesting, however, is the pistol’s locking system.

The Archon Type B has an appealing Cyberpunk design aesthetic.

Shooting

NOTABLE FEATURES Compared to most other strikerfired systems, the sear on the Type B lies flat within the slide, which is one of the ways the pistol achieves its low bore-axis height.

Underneath the high beavertail on the grip is a narrow ridge that is designed to put pressure on the tendon between the thumb and index finger, improving the shooter's grip.

Caliber: 9mm Capacity:15+1 Weight: 1 lb. 12 oz.

Archon has a line of ammunition with two 124grain loads: an FMJ and a JHP. They are designed to shoot to the same point of impact—the FMJ is for training, the JHP for duty use.

Trigger Pull: 5 lb. 12 oz.

Barrel Length: 4 in.

Overall Length: 7 ¾ in.

Price: $892 Web: archonfirearms.us

Rather than a traditional Browning-type tilt-barrel lockup, the Archon uses what the company calls the AF-Speedlock. It is a Y-shaped piece of metal that cradles the barrel just in front of the chamber. Small wings on both sides of the Y lock the barrel and slide together when the pistol is in battery. When the pistol is fired, the Y drops ever so slightly (about 0.1 inch), which unlocks the little wings that then ride in slots machined into the slide, allowing the slide to move rearward under recoil and cycle the action.

This compact 0.1-inch vertical movement of the AF-Speedlock is the other thing that allows for the low bore-axis height.

This locking mechanism also keeps the barrel lined up nearly straight in the frame, which the company says enhances accuracy. For my part, I found the pistol to be quite accurate for a compact-size carry gun and had no issues engaging 6- and 8-inch plates quickly at 25 yards.

SUPER RELIABLE I put several hundred rounds through the pistol during my

evaluation and never had any failures to fire, feed, or eject.

All told, I tested the pistol with 10 different types of ammo, ranging from 65-grain ARX Inceptors to 147-grain Federal HSTs. Everything from premium JHP personal-protection rounds to cheap range ammo ran flawlessly.

I think two things in particular helped the pistol achieve this level of reliability. One is that the barrel hardly has any feed ramp to speak of. When loaded, the top round in the magazine is nearly in line with the chamber,

Gun Test

making for easy feeding. Also, although the Type B is polymerframed, it has full-length steel rails that the slide rides on, rather than the short metal pieces fore and aft that are common on other plastic guns. This extra steel adds rigidity to the system, which is important for reliable functioning.

The Type B has an aggressive grip texture on the frame that creates a solid connection between the pistol and the shooter’s hands. The pattern works well, except on the front of the grip, where a smaller stippling pattern would do a better job of keeping the pistol from moving around.

The pistol comes with four 15-round magazines, which is something other pistol-makers should emulate. Having two just isn’t enough.

Other standard features include a Picatinny-style accessory rail in front of the trigger guard, which is oversize to accommodate gloved hands.

The magazine well is flared for smoother reloads.

With pistols of this type, we tend to focus so much on their utility and reliability that their aesthetics don’t get much attention. At the risk of appearing shallow, however, I have to compliment Archon on the pistol’s looks. Its futuristic lines and design elements, such as the angled flat-face trigger, impart a cool factor to the Type B that enhances its appeal and will help as it tries to make a second first impression on American shooters.

THE SCORE Handling

Accuracy

Workmanship

Aesthetics

Ergonomics

Meets Purpose

Versatility

Reliability

Value

Very Good

Very Good

Very Good

Very Good

Excellent

Excellent

Good

Excellent

Very Good

P HOTOG RA PH S BY

Bill Buckley

O UT DO ORLI FE. CO M

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by Andrew McKean

THE

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HUNTING MUSK OX AND CARIBOU ON THE SCOURED ROCK AND ICE OF GREENL AND REQUIRES A KNOWLEDGEABLE GUIDE AND A GOOD BOAT

• PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUKE RENARD

Successful caribou hunters return from the uplands to their guide’s boat.

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THE MUSK OX LOOKS LIKE HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN CHISELED OUT OF THE VEINED R O C K O F T H I S FJ O R D .

THE ONLY MOVEMENT IS HIS COAT, A TANGLE OF TAWNY DREADLOCKS THAT ripples and waves in the stiff wind. Then his head slowly pans, following the passage of our little boat through the electric-blue water.

We’ve apparently gotten too close for his comfort, because as we motor within rifle range of the bull, he breaks his gaze and trots parallel to the shore, a goofy hoof-flailing canter as he gathers the cows around him in a defensive circle. They all stand, rumps together and a dozen shaggy heads forming a perimeter of hooking horns and watchful bovine eyes.

Frank Feldmann cuts the boat’s throttle and peers through his binocular.

“He’s a young bull,” Feldmann says. His Scandinavian accent sharpens the first word into “Heeze.”

“You see how his boss is a little weak and his horns don’t drop down. We can do better.”

Then we’re off, motoring

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to the very back of this bay, where the towering headwall of a glacier fractures into a field of house-size boulders and a snowmelt stream that threads its way to the bay. We’re still a mile from a grassy bench between water and ice, but already I can make out maybe a hundred musk oxen grazing in herds of a dozen or so.

And I can see how we can ambush them by following the stream. Feldmann notices my gaze.

“We’ll work in on the biggest bunch and look for an old bull,” he says. “There are a couple in this vall ey, 8 - ye a r - o l d s , m ay b e 9-year-olds.”

Maybe Feldmann also notices my slight disappointment. When my buddies Rafe Nielsen, who runs the marketing department for Browning firearms, Shane Meisel of Leupold optics, and I planned this hunt

a couple of years ago, I had imagined that we’d make the final stalk for musk oxen on snowshoes or wobbly skis—or maybe on a dog sled, mushing across treacherous sea ice. I never imagined we’d troll into range on the power of a 300 hp diesel inboard.

We aren’t done with boats just yet. As Feldmann unstraps an inflatable kayak from the gunwale of his 26-foot motorboat, I think back on all of the conveyances that delivered me to this place, a deep, narrow fjord stabbing into Greenland’s southwestern coastline. Two days earlier, commercial flights took our hunting party from the United States to Copenhagen, Denmark, the imperial capital of Greenland, which is considered an autonomous province. Then another jet back west across the North Atlantic to Greenland’s international airport, the stepping-off outpost of Kangerlussuaq. Then a prop plane to the village of Narsarsuaq, where we boarded a 10-seat cabin cruiser locals call a “water taxi” for the five-hour boat ride to camp. Our fellow travelers on the water taxi are Danish soldiers headed to a decommissioned American military base to conduct environmental testing at the World War II–era facility. Feldmann’s boat, and finally this flimsy kayak, deliver us to the rocky shore of Greenland and the musk oxen that don’t care about our long, circuitous approach.

I’d love to tell you the final stalk was full of

Clockwise from upper left: A musk ox bull squares off with an approaching hunter; caribou hunters Shane Meisel, the author, and Rafe Nielsen take a break from packing heads and horns from the highlands down to the bay and the outfitter’s waiting boat; the Greenlandic town of Narsarsuaq.

buffalo, with thick batterdrama and doubt, but once we find a bull worth ing helmets that drop into our attention, we set up on a ridge and wait for him graceful hooks with ivory to separate from the cows. I’m worried about a stiff tips. Their meat is sweet and crosswind sailing my bullet, but the bull’s hair is mild, not heavy like beef. so luxuriously long that it serves as a wind flag. I Native Inuits call musk make the windage correction, dial my scope to the oxen “the bearded ones,” distance, and send the bullet. and while they look like The whole hunt takes maybe a half-hour, and modern mastodons, they’re I’m neither wet nor cold when it’s over. Meisel’s more closely related to wild hunt follows in much the same way. The next day, Nielsen is treated to a little more suspense when he has to make a mile-long stalk on an old and solitary bull feeding in the most WE’RE STILL A MILE FROM A GRASSY BENCH, profuse vegetation I saw on BUT ALREADY I CAN MAKE OUT MAYBE A Greenland—a thicket of waist- HUNDRED MUSK OXEN GRAZING IN HERDS. high willows stunted by what might have been a thousand winters. The way the bull moves sheep and goats than to catthrough the cover, head down and heaving from tle, or to mammoths. After side to side, reminds me of a honey-haired grizzly posing for photos with each scrounging for berries. of our bulls, I find myself linIn each of these hunts, the anticlimax of the gering beside the dead anistalk is tempered by awe at the animal’s anatmal, my hands burrowing omy. Above the impressively broad shoulders is deep in the warming wool. a hump resembling that of a Plains bison, but the The herds we hunt are hair of a musk ox is more like a mountain goat’s, t r a n s p l a n t s , b ro u g h t t o long and corded, with a woolly underlayer to insusouthern Greenland from late it from the arctic cold. The hooves are splayed the northern part of the islike a cow’s, but the horns look like those of Cape

land 40 years ago to provide meat for local Inuit villagers.

Feldmann, a native Dane who had guided hunts in Lapland for decades, recognized that Greenland’s musk oxen could also sustain a sport-hunting economy, and gained permission from the provincial government to guide international hunters, mainly bowhunters. He has since acquired an additional hunting concession farther north, where transportation is by helicopter instead of boat—and, he says, the bulls are a little older and a lot bigger.

AN ELEMENTAL LAND If you imagine Greenland, as I did, as one continentalsize sheet of ice, you’re not far off. The world’s largest island is depicted on maps as uniformly white for a good reason. Something like 90 percent of it is covered by an ice cap a thousand feet

OUT DOORLIF E.CO M

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thick, which is why I anticipated hunting in arctic conditions. Where the ice meets the edge of the island, towering glacial headwalls calve icebergs into the bays, requiring boats to dodge and dart around the floating obstacles, some of them as shockingly blue as antifreeze, some as big as Kentucky courthouses.

But the coasts, especially along the southern shore where we are hunting, are surprisingly hospitable, with anywhere from a mile to a dozen miles of ice-free vegetation squeezed by the North Atlantic and the ice cap. The coastline is where humans live, in little clusters of brightly colored houses clinging to slopes above bays that are iced over for half the year. It’s where Feldmann’s cabin is located, on a little jut of granite that he found by studying satellite photos for a year, identifying a place protected from the wind and the waves but with easy access to the bay. He doesn’t own the land—no one in Greenland really does—but the cabin is his as long as he uses it. When he’s gone, it’s a refuge for a boater blown off the water or for a hunter lost and alone.

It’s a comfortable base for a weeklong hunt, a hardsided cabin with a gas stove, bunk beds, and a breakwater moorage for the boat that took us to hunting spots along the coast.

Feldmann likes hunting where we are because it’s convenient to his home in a village of 40 mostly Inuit families just around the corner from Arsuk Fjord. It’s handsome country, a mix of tight glacial valleys and relatively gentle uplands that step up to alpine basins and jagged peaks that contain the interior ice cap. All the ridges and bays tame

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OUT D O OR L IF E • W INTER 20 20

the temper of the North Atlantic, but during a couple of days, the wind blows so hard that we have to hug the shoreline in Feldmann’s boat; even going slowly, we’re drenched by spray that blows the tops off the strafing waves.

Just a few more fjords to the east is Cape Farewell, where Erik the Red, banished from Iceland, estab-

North America, seemed abstract until I arrived here and realized it’s twice as close to Montreal than it is to Copenhagen. Its size and remoteness— there are no roads linking any of the island’s dozens of coastal communities—gives Greenland strong notes of the Last Frontier of rural Alaska.

Greenlanders’ self-reliance and make-do adaptation in its unforgiving climate further cement the comparison.

Feldmann, 57 and as vigorous as a man half that age, is something of a modern-day Erik the Red. Weary of what he described as crowding in Scandinavia, he gravitated to Greenland for its desolation and untapped opportunity.

But he says it’s the communal mentality of Greenlanders, not escapism by rogue loners, that WITH ITS STRESS ON SELF-RELIANCE AND allows him to operate here, 100 MAKE-DO ADAPTATION, GREENLAND HAS miles from the nearest cell signal STRONG NOTES OF THE LAST FRONTIER. or power line.

“People here rely on each other to get by,” says Feldmann, who lished the first nonnative hires local families to skin our animals in exsettlement on Greenland change for the meat, which they share with fellow a thousand years ago. It’s villagers or sell in stores in the larger towns. “It’s a from this first frontier that culture of sharing. Musk ox are the same. A herd Erik’s son, Leif, sailed west relies on all its members to defend against poto discover the next fronlar bears or wolves or any other threat. They may tier, what Europeans called seem stupid or aloof to you. That’s not it. They are the New World. The gegathering because they know that they’re stronger ography of the place, and together than alone.”

Greenland’s position as the Feldmann tells me this as he snacks on the only northeasternmost chunk of rations he packs for a day in the field: a fillet of

Clockwise from top left: Feldmann’s boat leaves the sound where his cabin is located; an ice field spills down toward a Greenlandic bay and the cabin used by the hunters; the hunting party poses with Shane Meisel’s musk ox; photographer Luke Renard, Rafe Nielsen, the author, and Meisel gather at the Kangerlussuaq airport.

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F I RS T FR ON TI ER

dried cod, obtained from a native neighbor— unsalted, chewy as attic insulation, with all the briny funk of a tide pool limpet. He tells me he can survive on nothing but dried cod for a week.

I try a plug, and then spend the rest of the day picking fishy shreds out of my teeth.

Later, I ask Feldmann to speculate on the future of Greenland. The entire island is occupied by fewer than 60,000 people, about 10,000 of them European and the rest native Greenlanders. It has abundant natural resources: fresh water, minerals, fish, and stunningly beautiful landscapes.

The logistics of visitation stymie tourism, and the lack of infrastructure slows investment, but he says that’s fine with him and with many of his neighbors.

“We look across the water at Iceland, which has become a Disneyland for tourists,” Feldmann says.

“We don’t want to become Iceland, so we put up with long distances and what you see as difficulties of travel.

We see those as assets.”

Ice-melt from a glacier pours into a plunge pool before spilling into the North Atlantic.

In a lull between hunts, we had our own chance to gather bounty from the water, first by jigging hefty cod out of the ice-cold fjords, and later by casting bright spinners in the plunge pools of waterfalls for arctic char.

The latter have mostly finished spawning and moved back to the salt water for the winter, but the few hangerson in the streams are ravenous and hit my hardware like fish twice their size.

I hike up an ice-melt torrent that has carved a deep, narrow trench in the rock, casting into any pool that looks like it might hold fish.

One after another, hand-size char, as orange as apricots,

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CRED IT

HARD-FIGHTING FISH

CRED IT

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F I RS T FR ON TI ER

Left to right: The author with an arctic char, which hit a spinner in an icemelt stream; outfitter Frank Feldmann chews on a hank of dried cod; musk ox wool; the author with his “Norwegian” caribou; and the heavy boss and curving horn of Rafe Nielsen’s musk ox.

Gear For Tundra Hunting We hunted with Frank Feldmann, whose outfit specializes in both musk oxen and caribou (greenlandoutfitters.com).

While the weather on our hunt was mostly good—warmer on the Greenland coast while we were there than it was back at my home in Montana—conditions can turn cold, wet, and miserable overnight, then sock in for the next week or longer. We opted for double-tough rifles and optics built for mountain hunting and the longish shots that are sometimes required for open-country animals such as caribou and musk ox. We shot Browning’s X-Bolt Pro Tungsten rifles, chambered in .300 WSM. Weighing just under 6 1⁄2 pounds, the short-action rifle has a carbon-fiber stock built around rigid vibration-dampening foam. A Cerakote finish protects the stainless-steel action from the elements, and the threaded muzzle brake reduces recoil. The rifle retails for $2,270 (browning.com).

My Browning was topped with Leupold’s VX–5HD riflescope in 3–15x44. The scope has all the range I needed for both close-in musk ox and out-there caribou. Long shots are further enabled by Leupold’s CDS dial, which is tuned to the specific bal-

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OU TDOO R LIF E • WINTER 202 0

Frank Feldmann and the author set up for a long shot at grazing musk ox.

listics of the 185-grain Browning BXC Big-Game bullet. I was able to dial the scope for hold-on shots out to 600 yards, but the scope’s lockable zero meant I didn’t have to worry about the elevation dial straying as the rifle slipped in and out of scabbards, boats, and backpacks. The VX–5HD with CDS dial retails for $1,235 (leupold.com).

We all used Leupold’s new RBX-3000 HD 10x42 range-finding binocular. The

incline-adjusting unit features 1-yard accuracy out to 1,000 yards, a dimmable LED readout, and a fast and precise operating system that delivers angle-adjusted ranges in the blink of an eye. I tuned the rangefinder to the specific ballistics of my .300 WSM load.

The binocular’s best attribute, though, is its tack-sharp image, even in low-light conditions. The RBX-3000 retails for $3,900 (leupold.com).—A.M.

throw themselves at my Vibrax spinner. I wrangle the treble hook out of their mouths and slip them back into the frothing water.

INTO THE ALPINE FOR CARIBOU

when a band of two dozen caribou trot out of a draw.

Meisel props his rifle on a rock, and I call the shot as the caribou file up and out of the drainage: “Cow. Cow. Young bull. Cow. Calf. Third one after the spike bull. No. Not him. Yes! Him!” He shoots, and we all help fielddress and cape a spectacular native bull.

After posing for pictures and cheering our good luck, we again start hiking toward the main herd when a pair of bulls emerge from a boulder field along the drainage

Our musk-ox tags filled and our interest in fishing satisfied, we turn our attention to caribou.

Because southern Greenland’s caribou are nonmigratory, finding a herd is the second-hardest part of hunting them. It’s like wild-sheep hunting, Feldmann says. You must cover miles of similarlooking rocks and hanging valleys before finding a herd, and then you must solve the hardest part: figuring out how to get into rifle range in an open, featureless landscape with vegetation no taller than a coffee can.

There’s another consideration: deciding between native caribou, which are a variation of the Quebec-Labrador barren-ground species, or what Feldmann derisively calls the “Norwegians.”

These are descendants of domes- ONE IS WIDE, WITH A CRAZY MAIN BEAM tic reindeer that were introduced THAT BENDS BACK ALONG HIS SPINE. THE to Greenland a century ago from OTHER HAS A GREAT FRAME AND MASS. Scandinavia. A few escaped and joined the native caribou; their offspring are generally smaller in below us. We’ve interrupted stature and headgear than the natives. their nap, and they’re millWe’re either lucky or good because in our first ing and nervous. We have prospecting hike, we find a herd. The caribou are only a few seconds to assess 3 miles up a gorgeous valley full of musk oxen, and the bulls before they run out cheerful waterfalls. We walk through ankle-high of rifle range. As I pan from blueberry bushes loaded with glossy purple orbs one to the other in my riflesweetened by frost and so ripe, they fall into your scope, each gives me more hands when you shake the bush. reason to shoot than to We’re strategizing an approach on the main herd

wait, but I can’t decide. One is wide, with a crazy main beam that reaches back along his spine. The other is smaller but has a great frame and mass. Then he turns slightly, and I see a profusion of toffee-brown points.

I throw my pack down and get behind my rifle. Almost as soon as I shoot, Nielsen is at my shoulder, nudging me aside so he can shoot off my pack. Within seconds, he has the wide bull in his scope, and just like that, we have two more bulls down, within 100 yards and 20 seconds of each other.

As we break down each of our three caribou, Meisel’s native and the two Norwegians that Nielsen and I shot, we pluck blueberries from the low-slung bushes and fill our canteens with water from the sluicing stream nearby. We lash the capes and antlers onto our packs and turn toward the coast, a couple of miles down the valley. We can just see Feldmann’s boat, which will take us to his warm cabin perched on a cold rock in a lonely bay.

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L a nc e Cl in to n w i th a b ig r oo st er c a ug ht i n hi s h o me w at er s of J a co , Co st a Ri ca .

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PAG E 4 9 OUTDOOR LIFE WINTER 2020

BY MICHAEL R. SHEA PHOTOGRAPHS BY AGUSTIN MUÑOZ

H O O K E D FISHING SAVED LANCE CLINTON FROM A LIFE OF DRUGS AN D D ESPA IR . NOW ONE O F T H E TOP B I G- GA M E KAYA K AN GL E RS I N TH E WORL D I S P RE AC H I NG TH E G O SP EL O F THE S U RF FR OM HI S HI DEAWAY I N C OSTA R I C A

Left: Clinton waits for the next bite. He’s up at 3:30 every morning and on the water by sunrise. Right: Pedaling through a squall with the mountains of Nacascolo in the backdrop.

“TUNA!”

LANCE CLINTON’S ROD IS DOUBLED

The rip of his drag sounds like a kicked hornets’ nest as I pedal my kayak toward him. The sun breaks over the cloud-ringed mountains and casts a sapphire light across the bay—an Instagram sunrise, for sure. And in the center of it all is Clinton, an American expat and recovering drug addict, on his dirty 12-foot kayak, rod bent in half, a boss yellowfin taking line.

Lance Clinton is the happiest man alive.

At 50 years old and 17 years sober, with a growing name in the elite world of big-game kayak fishing and a new turn in his career as a top-flight knife designer, Clinton’s insane, drug-crazed past feels like a different lifetime now. His only present concerns are the fish he’s tied to and me getting my line in the water.

“Bro, cast that popper!” he hollers as I get close.

“Cast!” So I fire the plug, and as soon as it hits water, the rod behind me that I’m trolling with Clinton’s all-time favorite bait, a Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow, lights up with that heart-thumping sound of 45-pound braid smoking off the reel.

“Set it! Set it!” he howls, still fighting his fish. I set the hook with everything I’ve got, and despite the light drag and the give of the kayak, the yellowfin pulls me guitar-string-tight and spins the nose of my boat. Then we see Clinton’s fish thrashing to the surface between us. The exhausted yellowfin comes up sideways, floating like a lost lifeguard float. It’s every bit of 30 pounds, maybe more.

“Duuude,” I say in a reverent tone.

“Dude is f—king right, buddy!” he says with a laugh. Then he looks up at me. “Reel!”

OVER AND HE’S SHOUTING TO ME ACROSS THE MOUTH OF CULEBRA BAY IN COSTA RICA. AFTER TWO DAYS OF FISHING HIS HOME WATERS SOUTHWEST OF SAN JOSE, WE TOOK A ROAD TRIP OVER MOUNTAINS, THROUGH THE JUNGLE, TO THIS SHELTERED STRETCH OF THE PACIFIC. THE SUN HAS BEEN UP 30 MINUTES, AND IT’S ALREADY BEEN WORTH THE DRIVE. 50

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A PLACE TO DISAPPEAR Expats like to call Costa Rica “Home of America’s Most Wanted and Least Wanted.” It feels like what I imagine Hemingway’s Key West was like—but with surfers and yoga pants. Going all the way back to Billy the Kid, there’s a history of Americans hiding out in Central America. Clinton, who moved here 21 years ago, says that more than once, he’s made an acquaintance who has eventually disappeared. Inevitably, someone will say, “Hey, remember Larry? Interpol picked him up. And his name’s not Larry.”

Clinton’s beginnings in-country were less criminal but still drug-fueled. He hit rock-bottom at the Hotel Talamanaca in 2002, covered in his own feces and vomit, writhing on the bathroom floor.

That was the last time he used drugs or drank alcohol. But when I ask him about that story and the trajectory that led him to bottom out in Costa Rica, he starts at an unlikely place: football practice in

HO O KE D

Friday. On Tuesday, Thursnorth Louisiana when he was 13 years old. day, and Saturday, he goes “The very first drill, the coach asked, ‘Who wants surfing at sunrise, then to to run the ball?’ Silence. ‘I do, Coach,’ ” Clinton a local recovery meeting in remembers saying. He absorbed the first hit and town. “I believe in routine kept moving, but the second kid nailed him. When now,” he tells me. he pulled himself up off the field, his arm was broIt’s 4 o’clock in the mornken at the forearm and bent in a full U-turn. ing, and I stumble through The doctors gave him a shot of Demerol in the the front door of his condo butt. The relief was instant—in his arm and his painfully in need of coffee. mind. “You’ve got to understand,” he tells me, “I As soon as his door opens, was a fearful little kid. I had this sense of insecurity, this sense of unreality, for a year or two at that point. For the first time in my life, everyEXPATS LIKE TO CALL COSTA thing was A-OK. I was comRICA “HOME OF AMERICA’S MOST pletely at peace.”

AND LEAST WANTED.” IT’S LIKE From the very beginning, he says, he wasn’t addicted to the HEMINGWAY’S KEY WEST—BUT feeling of being high, but to the WITH SURFERS AND YOGA PANTS. absence of fear and insecurity.

HOME WATERS Before the ridiculous tuna action up north, I spent two days fishing with Clinton near his home in Jaco, about two hours southwest of San Jose. Clinton has designed his life here around the water, like some kind of sober fishing monk.

He wakes up at 3:30 a.m. every day, prays, writes a graduated list, meditates, then goes fishing at first light on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and

I’m overwhelmed by the stink of fish. The whole condo reeks of it. Inside, the kitchen counter is covered in tackle. Broken rods are piled in the corner. There are dishes in the sink, and his bull terrier, Sandy, is pacing around like she needs to go out. Conditions are spartan.

Some furniture. Guitars on the wall. Mostly, it’s fishing gear and knives.

“The look on your face says I’m doing life wrong,” he says with a wry smile. He reads me right. At the moment, Clinton’s life feels a little adolescent. “Well, my potential is, I’ve learned how to go fishing and surf every day with the least amount of effort possible.” He takes a deep breath and offers me some coffee. “This life is not for everyone.”

PILL HUNTING A few months after 13-yearold Clinton’s arm healed, he found a shoebox of pain pills in his parents’ bathroom.

He’d pocket a pill here and a pill there. Soon he was robbing friends’ medicine cabinets. “I wasn’t a hell-raiser out skipping school and shooting cats with BB guns. I was just a kid, hooked.”

He made it out of high

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school and went to Louisiana State University, becoming a classic collegiate binge drinker. After graduating, he worked for the family’s insurance business and soon was pulling in more than $100,000 a year in commissions. He started doctor shopping with a roll of cash in his pocket. This was the early 1990s, and prescription medicine wasn’t available on the street like it is today. He’d talk his way into a pill for a backache, for a twisted ankle, for an imaginary flu. That chronic sense of not belonging, “the unreality,” as he likes to call it, never left him. The problem, he soon came to believe, wasn’t him or the pain pills, but the place—north

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Louisiana. After a brief stint in rehab, where he met an investment banker, he studied up and quickly passed the Series 7 exam—to this day he can do math in his head faster than most people can run a calculator. He became a licensed stockbroker at 25 and moved to Seattle.

Soon he was living like the Wolf of Wall Street. He had an apartment on First Avenue, between Battery and Wall. He owned a BMW 725i and a Harley motorcyle.

But the lessons he learned in rehab didn’t stick. Eventually he got the flu, and the doctor gave him hydrocodone, and it was right back to his old habits. That window of “functional” that he had op-

Above: Clinton shows off a keeper yellowfin tuna that fell for a Yo-Zuri Hydro Minnow. The biggest fish of the trip, it was diced up into sushi. Opposite: Clinton’s dog, Sandy.

erated in for most of his life got smaller and smaller.

Soon he found himself either too stoned to work or too dope-sick to do anything but lie around. Then, back in the days when email was a new thing, he got a spam message from an offshore sportsbook.

He called the number and talked to a guy he’ll never forget: Mark in Marketing—an American guy from Texarkana living in Central America and making his living off the commissions of sportsbook accounts. Down here, Mark in Marketing told Clinton, booze flows in the streets, the women are beautiful, you can surf every morning, and drugs aren’t illegal. Clinton asked where exactly the sportsbook was located.

“Costa Rica,” Mark in Marketing said.

HO O KE D

PLAYING FOR KEEPS “Reel!” Clinton barks at me in Culebra Bay. While I crank in my first tuna, he pops the 30-pound giant with a custom-made gaff—the point slant tweaked for a better connection from the low attack angle of a kayak. My 20-pound fish is in the boat now.

I stick it in the gills with a knife Clinton designed, the first of two he worked on this year with Spyderco.

Big mistake.

Blood runs over my lap, feet, the pedals, and the controls. While I make a mess of things, Clinton is already hooked up to a second yellowfin. “Get that Crystal Minnow in the water!” he hollers. Past him, I see a school of porpoises a few dozen yards off running parallel to his kayak. I cast the lure behind me, and the porpoises are there again. They’re circling us.

The water under and around our kayaks starts to boil with baitfish.

With a few cranks of the handle, the whole rod vibrates, the tip shakes, and then the hornets are back with that sweet sound of ripping drag—zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I’m hooked up again. Clinton points to the porpoises flashing below us.

“They’re herding tuna,” he says. We happen to be right on top of it. Before long, three more yellowfins meet the gaff.

Later, we catch an amberjack, which we’ll also take to town to trade for meals at the Thai restaurant.

“I don’t want to skull-drag fish out here just for kicks,” Clinton says. He catches enough fish to eat seafood twice a day, every day, or to barter with in town. “Eating them is the reason to be out here dude.”

BACK TO REALITY

tal in Ecuador that had a payto-play policy on Oxy. He flew there under the guise of a surfing trip and loaded up.

Just 35 days later, he found himself on that hotel bathroom floor.

He had tried to get sober before but never really took it seriously. This time, though, he thought that he was dying. In his wallet, he had the number of a guy he had met at a recovery convention in San Jose during a weeklong attempt to get clean months before. Oscar—a Costa Rican man who barely spoke English, a total stranger really— drove to the hotel, cleaned up Clinton, and then drove him out to the mountain town of Cartago, east of San Jose.

Clinton lived with Oscar and his family in a small guest room with nothing but a twin mattress on the floor for three months.

Clinton’s Spanish was sloppy back then. In the recovery meetings he attended,

don’t have to suffer for the rest of my life. And it also showed me that, holy shit, I’m the problem. Surrounded

by God and beauty and nature—not the four walls of an elevator going up to a job I hated. I was in something beautiful, and I was the broken piece of that puzzle.”

He relates this new approach to life with what it takes to be successful at kayak fishing. “It’s about the harmony, dude—a deep immersion in the environment, in the present. There’s a larger spiritual connection that happens for me out there. I look up and see whales breaching or the mountains ringed with clouds, and I feel the reality of God’s creation. For just

HE HAD TRIED TO GET SOBER BEFORE BUT NEVER REALLY TOOK IT SERIOUSLY. THIS TIME, THOUGH, HE THOUGHT THAT HE WAS DYING.

Thanks to Mark in Marketing, Clinton opened a sportsbook account, then bought a plane ticket to Costa Rica. He told his parents he was going to Central America and watched them deflate. He had just moved home from Seattle and bought a house, and they thought he was straightening out. He liquidated everything he couldn’t fit in a backpack and cleared $30,000. In Costa Rica, he felt like a king.

Narcotics were easy to get. In 1995, OxyContin hit the U.S. market, and it slowly came to Central America, but by the late 1990s, it was on.

“That shit is pharmaceutical-grade heroin,” he says. “It shouldn’t even exist. It’s way more psychologically addictive than morphine. You can trust me. Think about this: In 2008, if you told someone you took morphine on a daily basis for pain, people would jump out of their skin. Morphine! Oh my god!

OxyContin is way more addictive than morphine.”

He pissed away $10,000 in the first few months.

Out of fear he’d lose it all, he parked the remaining $20,000 in an investment fund that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. But until that fell apart, he scraped by on the $600 dividend it paid a month. Three years into living the Costa Rican life and partying like Nikki Sixx, Clinton heard about a cancer hospi-

he understood maybe 50 percent of what was said, but he sat there and listened and stopped asking questions.

“There’s a saying: ‘Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth,’ ” he tells me. “That’s what I did.” They told him to get on his knees and pray every morning. He did. To make his bed. He did.

To make phone calls and go to meetings if he had the desire to use.

Surfing and fishing became conduits for selfimprovement. They were things he did to get his mind right, and they were things he enjoyed because his mind was right. “What moving here did was put me in touch with the idea that maybe I

one second, I’m aware of that, and I know I’ll be OK. It’s not the whale, or the mountains, or the fish I’m catching—it’s my ability to connect to that larger reality. It’s seeing, for just one second, that that is reality. A small mackerel can open up the universe if you let it.”

THE PURE LIFE After Clinton got clean, he’d wake up early and surf at first light. He always saw this other American, Joel, out there too, zipping through the waves on a tiny Zodiac that looked like a pool toy in the surf. One day, on the beach, Clinton asked him what he was up to, and Joel pulled

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The author fights a bull dorado to his kayak.

back a tarp over the dinghy and showed off eight or so mackerel and a couple of small roosters. “Want one?” he asked Clinton.

Walking home from the beach while carrying his small gifted fish, a bunch of Ticos—the term for native Costa Ricans—hollered out at him. “Que bueno! Pura vida!” “‘Pura vida’ is the Costa Rican national saying,” Clinton tells me. “It translates to ‘pure life,’ which is pretty cool if you ask me, and it’s used like ‘all good’ or even ‘thank you,’ like ‘pura vida, bro.’”

Walking home with that fish and getting shout-outs on the street, something about that resonated with Clinton.

“It’s so embarrassing to admit that,” he says. “But it’s true.”

“That you wanted to be cool?” I asked him.

“Yes, but also deeper than that. I felt like Ugg the Hunter, bringing my fish, which wasn’t even my fish, back to the cave. It was pri-

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mal. It connected to something deep inside.”

Soon he got his own rod and reel. Then he bought a used Hobie for $800.

For those first few months he caught nothing. Finally, he asked another fisherman what to do, and the guy said, “Get some Crystal Minnows.”

So he did, and his fishing strategy for the first year was just to pedal fast with a line in the water. He started catching baitfish—mackerel and jacks.

He ate them all.

“The thing you have to understand about Lance is, once his mind is on something, anything, he’ll rise to the top,” says Paxton Marrs, a lifelong friend who Clinton helped overcome a painkiller addiction of his own. “In college, or as a stockbroker, when he puts his mind to something, he’s able to crush it. His determination, his perseverance, his focus is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

With no money for elec-

tronics, Clinton looked for patterns in the water, his eyes honed from decades of surfing. Current eddies, trash lines, seams in otherwise open sea. He got into jigging at those spots, which kicked off his cubera obsession—those 30-, 40-, and 50-pound snappers with a head straight out of the Jurassic period. Giant cubera are reluctant to take a bait, and when they do hit, they usually dive sharply for their rock hides on the bottom, where they break off the line.

Clinton focuses intensely on his lure presentation.

“I’m of the opinion that in the fishing world, at least the saltwater fishing world, far too much importance is given to lure design, and especially color. I think about this all the time. It’s a parallel to life. People always ask the wrong questions. They’re like, ‘You have a good life in Costa Rica,’ then jump right to, ‘How much does it cost to live there?’ That’s not about why or how I have this life. I’ll consistently post pictures of good fish on Instagram, and the questions are always the same. ‘What color lure were you using?’ It just doesn’t make a difference. The lure’s action matters. The presentation matters.”

Depth finders are a new addition. Last year, before taking third at the Worlds in Panama (an elite kayak fishing tournament that draws big-game anglers from all across the globe), Clinton realized he needed electronics to be competitive on new water.

“Lance is about the plan, the method, and perfecting it,” Marrs says. “Even the knots he ties. They’re perfect. The fishing knife he wanted didn’t exist, so he designed it.”

HO O KE D

TIGHT LINES After our tuna blitz dried up in the bay, we pedaled closer to shore to try a different game. Casting close to the rocks, I can hear distant howler monkeys way up high in the jungle, barking above, and the chop, chop, chop of our poppers breaking water, skipping the surface. The clouds mingle with fog that rolls down to the waterline like white gauze. The ceiling of the world feels low today, like there’s more space below our kayaks than in the sky above. We’re calling sea monsters. Chop, chop, chop.

“See that point,” Clinton says, throwing his arm west to a rocky cliff over the sea, “to that point,” he marks a dimple in the coastline to the right of a white-sand beach, “to this bottom spot—it makes a triangle. Middle of the triangle is where we hit all those tuna.”

He sets off in that direction to work the edge of our imagined isosceles. Soon I hear a whistle. “Fish on!” he yells across the water as a big dorado is tailwalking on the end of his line.

Clinton’s friend and kayak fishing guide, Gary Sálazar, who came out with us this morning but vanished early to find bait, appears on the horizon.

Sálazar rigs me up with a live skipjack and sends me toward the apex of our tuna triangle. When I’m 60 yards out, I hear him holler: “Count to five, throw lever.” He means that on a strike, to give the fish five seconds to down the bait, then throw the lever on the baitcaster that tightens the drag.

I pedal away, and I hear him yell again. “Slower!”

He’s standing up in his kayak and pumping his arms like bicycle pedals. “Pedal slower!”

I do, and like magic, I get a strike. Line rips off the reel for five seconds, then I flip the lever. The line pulls tight, and a big dorado goes aerial.

“Fish on!” Clinton yells, 100 yards away. He’s on his second mahi now. We fight them in side by side.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spot another bull dorado jumping 40 yards out. He’s flying across the water, down and out, down and out, after baitfish. I twist around in my kayak seat and cast the popper to where I think he’ll be. The big Nomad plug splashes down,

Clockwise from left: Clinton wheels the kayak to the surf; celebrates in the water; rides the waves.

and the dorado is airborne again, this time with my lure.

I set the hook, and the fish starts ripping drag. “Did you see that?” I yell. I can hardly believe it, but Sálazar and Clinton have their own fish to fight.

The big bull dorado arcs against the fog-ringed mountains and low morning sun.

It jumps again and again, flashes of green and blue on the jungle sky. Every time I get him close to the kayak, he runs again, then jumps.

I’m not a religious person, or even a believer. But right now, on this water, in this place, I understand what Clinton means about feeling a connection to something universal, something larger.

After 15 minutes, I get the big bull to my lap. He’s longer than my leg. We’re both exhausted.

Clinton pedals over, beaming. “Pretty sick,” he says.

In a way, since he’s gotten sober, he’s maximized his life for these kinds of days. He’s worked odd jobs, bought and sold Land Rovers, brokered a few real estate deals, and managed to cobble together enough money into a small market account that keeps him afloat. But, like he says, that stuff doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he went for it. In his 17 years sober, he’s divorced himself from the rat race. Still, I wonder, even in the beauty of all this, if he feels like he’s missing something.

“I guess if I’d had kids, things would be different,” he says as we pedal back toward the beach. “I got sober in my 30s. That really wasn’t in the cards for me. But I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone.”

We had listened to sports radio in the truck on the way to the beach that morning, so I ask him, “What about Tom Brady?” The GOAT. More money than God. Fame. Supermodel wife.

“Dude,” he says, “Tom don’t get to fish every day.”

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The bugle surprises both of us.

It’s the second one we’ve heard from the bull—the first sounded far away among the falling snow and muffling pines. But he’s close now. We look at each other, then Aram looks around our narrow meadow.

“We should sit down,” he says. There’s a rise of timber behind us, and we tuck into it, sitting side by side and propping our rifles on our packs. We’re aiming across 60 yards of meadow at a treeline. Aram cow-calls. This time, the bull cuts him off.

“He’s coming,” Aram says, bending to his scope.

For a full minute we strain our ears and hear nothing but settling snowflakes. Then branches begin to snap as the bull closes the distance, shouldering his way through the pines. I see a flash of tawny hide, and dark forelegs. There’s one tree left between us when I glimpse his antlers. He’s a good bull. I already know the answer, but I ask Aram anyway.

“Do you want him?”

INTO THE WILD: Natalie Krebs Two days before Utah’s general elk season opened, I met Aram at the trailhead. It’s a place he told me about—one I can’t tell anyone else about. He had trailered six horses from his home in Boulder, Utah, plus most of camp, and brought all the intel and expertise we would need to try to fill three over-thecounter bull tags in one week.

His buddy Serge Karanov would be hunting with us, albeit packing in alone. Serge is a big man. None of Aram’s horses could carry his enormous frame all 13 miles up the mountain, so he planned to hike partway. An affable restaurateur and Soviet defector, Serge served homemade borscht at the trailhead and had packed enough food to last until the spring thaw.

After enduring a rainy night under a tarp, Serge set off while Aram and I set to work sorting gear and loading horses in the parking lot. I was clumsy with the tack, and it was late morning by the time we got on the trail, which wound from sodden, aspencovered valleys to steep canyons and scraggly pines.

Halfway up we collected Serge, who had been enjoying the view and a cigarette. We crossed the snow line next, where the rain had turned to flurries. Aram was like a horse smelling the barn: The closer we got to camp, the more eager he became to start hunting.

When the trail ended in a peak-rimmed basin at

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11,000 feet, Aram found his old campsite easily. It had been three years since he’d hunted here, though, and in the intervening seasons, pine beetles had killed the trees beside it. We settled on a new site near a lake full of hungry trout, hobbled the horses, and hurried to make camp in time to scout for the next day’s opener. At dusk, we heard a cow chirping in a nearby meadow and returned to our tent at dark, the temperature in the teens. As we ate rehydrated stroganoff in our sleeping bags, Aram walked us through the week ahead. The hunting would be tough and shot opportunities fleeting. He advised us to shoot any bull we saw, even if it was a spike. We would likely get only one shot, if that.

“My only request,” he added, “is that if we get on a bull, I would like the first right of refusal.”

At first, this struck me as selfish. No hunting partner had ever asked me this before, nor been so direct about wanting priority. I’d been on elk hunts, but I had never held a tag myself. Serge had killed only one, a spike. Aram, meanwhile, had killed many elk, including a bull that scored more than 400 inches. But the request made sense too. Serge and I were relying on Aram for everything. His horses had carried us up the mountain, he was the only one who could call worth a damn, and he knew where the elk were. And, after all, this was his spot. His request was a small thing to trade for all that.

We both agreed, of course, and turned in. As we lay in our sleeping bags, fighting the altitude for sleep, the high-pitched scream of a bull cut the silence.

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P RE VIOUS SPRE AD: NATALIE KRE BS (LEFT) ; DONALD M. JONES; TH IS SPREAD : NATALIE KREBS (LEFT); ARAM VO N B ENE DKIT

THIS LAND IS MY LAND: Aram von Benedikt I sat my horse 11,000 feet above sea level in Utah’s wilderness, surrounded by stunted black timber. A gigantic canyon opened before me like the maw of a monster; the wind shrieked in my ears. But in the distance above, a high-country basin shone emerald, interlaced with meandering creeks and ponds.

Now that, I thought to myself, looks like elk country.

It would be 12 years before I worked deep enough into that rugged hellhole to find out if my hunch was correct. My home state is a hard place to kill a bull in any general unit, let alone a branch-antlered bull with a bit of size to him. Hunter success with a rifle hovers around 9 percent, and good hunting areas are guarded like the Holy Grail. I ranged far and wide for a few years, finding a few elk here and there but never seeing a good bull, let alone killing one.

Then one day I received a phone call from an old mountain man. He was known for taking big wilderness bulls, and he invited me to hunt with him—on the condition that I would never divulge the whereabouts of his territory, nor return without his permission. I agreed and found myself on one of the coldest hunts I’ve ever experienced. Alone and half frozen, I killed a giant 6x6 bull miles from the nearest road.

“Good,” the mountain man said. “Now you know what to look for. Go find your own hunting grounds.”

It took several more years of searching, but along the way I harvested a few elk and saw beautiful country. Finally, I loaded my panniers, shoved my rifle

into its scabbard, and pointed my horses up the long trail toward that emerald basin I’d seen years before.

Bulls bugled, my meat pole sagged from the weight of elk quarters, and I never saw another hunter nor heard another’s shot. I’d found my own honey hole.

Now, “sacred” may be too strong a word, especially for public land where every license-holder has a right to hunt. But battles have been fought and wars waged over hunting grounds across the contested trails of history, and I can understand why. If I found another hunter stalking elk in my spot, no, I wouldn’t shove a stone knife through his belly. In fact, I’d respect him for getting back here. But neither would I tell him where the elk like to feed, which cliffside bench they travel, nor where their favorite wallows lie. That knowledge belongs to me. I earned it through the miles I’ve ridden, the elk trails I’ve discovered, and the frozen nights I’ve camped in the snow.

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V on Be n e d ik t a nd hi s p ai n t , C om a nc h e , t ak e a b r ea k m id - cl i m b .

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K re b s a dm i re s h er b ul l b e f o re g et t in g t o w or k .

FIRST BLOOD: Natalie Krebs The heavy flakes that had covered our tent in the night blocked the dawn of opening day, and when Aram pokes his head out, he gives a little yelp.

“We’re late,” he whispers. “Hurry up.”

Serge and I tug on our frozen boots and hustle after Aram toward the meadow. We pile into a tree well at the top of a rise, and Aram hits his cow call.

Serge and I are still getting settled when a lone cow walks into range. She searches for the cow she heard, then wanders away. Once she is gone, Aram looks at us reproachfully.

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“If that had been a bull,” he says, “neither of you would’ve been ready.”

I wonder if he’s regretting having invited us.

Then a thin bugle sounds in the distance and decides our morning. Serge will ease through the timber south of camp. Aram and I will go after the bugle. Sooner than we expect, the bull is busting through the trees toward us.

“Do you want him?” I ask, and Aram is already saying, “I’ll take him.”

And he does. I watch through my scope as the bull absorbs Aram’s bullet square in the front of his chest, rearing like a bronco and tumbling backward.

The moment the bull is still, Aram’s focus melts into euphoria. His face splits into a wide smile.

“You know,” he says, getting to his feet, “I think that’s the first bull I’ve ever called in and killed. I’ve called plenty for other hunters, but never for myself.”

If I wasn’t already glad Aram had taken the shot, I certainly am now. I’d contributed nothing to this hunt so far besides company, and Aram had earned his elk in every way. The bull is a handsome 5x6, and we set to quartering him. It feels as if we have all the time in the world: It’s barely an hour into opening day, and there’s already an elk on the ground. I fillet meat from the neck as Aram skins the skull, the brim of his hat gathering snow. As we work, we talk of everything, and nothing at all.

DOUBLE DOWN: Aram von Benedikt After we pack my bull back to camp and finish our chores, I consider our options for the afternoon.

Serge was disappointed to have missed the morning’s fun, and so he, Natalie, and I shoulder our packs and slog through the still-falling snow. Our destination is a big cliff-top bench where I had killed a bull years before; it’s also a good spot to glass for elk in the basin below. We pause at a lake to cow-call, and keep moving when there’s no response. But 500 yards

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A s pen t . 2 8 0 A ck ley I m p rov ed s h e ll be sid e v o n B ene di kt’ s h o m ema de r i f le sl ing .

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beyond it, Serge realizes he left his phone by the shore. Not wanting to derail our plan, he tells me and Natalie to go ahead as he hunts his way back.

It’s growing late as the two of us clamber up a steep boulder field. The snow has stopped, and Natalie wears an unabashed grin as we scramble the last few yards. I’m impressed. I never would have invited her if I didn’t think she could handle the hardship of this hunt, but I’m still pleased to be proven right.

My thoughts turn back to the task at hand when I step off the last boulder and onto fresh elk tracks.

Snow had fallen less than an hour ago, and this spoor is on top of it. A cow, it looks like, and a bull. No—two bulls. I wave Natalie into step behind me, and we follow their trail. The tracks weave across the bench and through broken clumps of high-elevation evergreens. The cover thins as we work toward the basin rim, a sheer wall of mountain stretching skyward.

These prints can be only minutes old and are growing fresher with every step.

“Get ready,” I say softly. “This could happen fast.”

Natalie nods, eyes bright, her rifle in hand. I wonder if she knows how incredible this is, to have found another bull in this wilderness. We’ve just begun crossing a meadow when it happens. I have my binocular pressed to my eyes, scanning our left side.

“There, right there!” Natalie whispers, pointing to 12 o’clock. “There’s a bull running. Behind the trees.”

“Lie down!” I hiss, throwing my pack to the ground. She dives into the snow just as the bull—a good one—breaks cover, running hard for the next timber patch and safety. No way is he going to stop. I blow my cow call in an insistent scream, then blow it again. The bull slides to a halt, quartering toward us.

Natalie’s bullet takes him perfectly on the point of the shoulder. He tears off again but only makes it 60 yards before tipping over, cleanly killed by Natalie’s first-ever shot at an elk. She watches through the scope until she’s satisfied the bull is down for good.

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Dusk falls, along with more snow, as we skin and quarter the bull. His rack is the mirror of my elk’s own antlers. Just a shred of light remains as we work our way down through the rocks and fallen timber, following the dancing beams of our headlamps back to camp.

PUBLIC LAND, PRIVATE PLACE: Natalie Krebs That night I sleep as soundly as any hunter who has tagged out, and wake to find the tent empty and the cloud-covered sun well above the horizon. As I feed the horses and filter water, I wonder, not for the first time, why Aram invited me here. He enjoys helping other hunters—it’s partly why he used to work as a guide—but this excursion is no walk in the woods.

He could have come alone, more easily and with better odds of success. He would not have wasted time teaching me to hobble a horse or call elk or lash saplings into a meat pole, nor worry about leading two friends to their own bulls.

The public-land perspectives in Aram’s home state might seem at odds with his own generous invitation to us non-residents. Utah has birthed some of the most anti-federal-land proposals in recent history. During the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, its legislators introduced a federal-land transfer bill that set the docket for the following decades. As recently as 2018, Rep. Mike Lee proposed bills that would transfer federal lands to the states and make it more difficult for the president to designate monuments. I know Aram disagrees with most of these sentiments. But he’s also fed up with country-wide opposition to downsizing Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which lies in his backyard and has turned his pristine, lifelong hometown into a well-trafficked tourist destination. I can understand why residents would want to claim the incredible land they call home.

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But I also understand why hunters who live east of here feel possessive of this wilderness. We own it too.

We too have protected these lands with our votes and invested in their future with our taxes. But that’s only part of my connection to a place all Americans can claim. Romance for the West is still very much alive.

Some lucky folks like Aram have carved out a piece of it. But a longing for open, untouched country remains among many who were born into crowded counties or work in cities where Rottweiler-size raccoons have replaced wild game and office buildings block the sky. The knowledge that I can hunt a place like this keeps me going when I’m stuck in traffic, and it revives me fully once I’m here. This particular place will always be Aram’s. Yet in a way, it belongs to me now too. I will never return without his permission. But neither will he return without remembering the bench where I killed my bull or the glade where we butchered his.

When Aram and Serge trudge into camp, the horses fed and a fire crackling, they tell me about their morning hunt. That afternoon, Aram and I hike back to my elk and load all four quarters and the skull onto his young paint, Comanche. We are quiet as we pick our way down steep slopes and over beetlekilled pines, trying not to pressure the elk more than we already have. Yesterday we talked freely over Aram’s bull, discussing things you only divulge when drunk or in the wild. We were, perhaps, drunk on the hunt, giddy from killing an elk in spite of the odds.

He had already shared the secret of this place. What were a few more secrets between friends?

As much as hunters value solitude, it’s hard to keep a perfect hunt in a perfect place to yourself. Aram’s mountain man had no reason to invite Aram into his own hunting grounds, but he shared them just the same. I could not have pulled this off without Aram; Aram didn’t need anyone to help him kill a bull. Yet without me or Serge to witness it, Aram’s spot exists

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R U L ES O F T H E WIL D only in his memory. He could tell the story of his hunt and show you photos, true. But to really know this place, to feel it? You have to have been here.

LAST, NOT LEAST: Aram von Benedikt The storm continues to lash against the mountain— sometimes calm, blanketing snow over us like flour from a sifter, sometimes ripping through the pines, tearing our kitchen tarp from its moorings and forcing its way into everything living and dead. It is so cold that Natalie and I carve the meat early from half-frozen quarters, knowing they will soon become impossible to bone out. Serge keeps hunting, and I go with him most of the time, but all we find is one lonely cow. The elk have left, and it’s time to saddle our ponies and follow them down the mountain.

Serge is reluctant to end his first deep-country elk hunt. I have a trick up my sleeve, but he seems unconvinced when I tell him not to give up. We break our frozen camp in the first sunshine we’ve seen in days, saddle our horses, and load them with packs, elk meat, and antlers. It takes us the whole morning, but the sun holds and the trail beckons. We swing into our saddles and I remind Serge to keep his rifle handy, just as I keep my cow call slung about my neck. Every time we pass a timber-wrapped meadow, I stop the pack train, blow my call, and listen to the vast silence. Once, on the edge of a big flat, we bump a dozen elk, but there isn’t a bull among them. We cross the snow line and descend back into the golden aspens, where it feels like fall instead of

winter. The day grows long, no bull answers, and I begin to fear Serge’s hunt really is over. One last meadow stands beside the trail, stretching several hundred yards through the canyon. I halt my horses, wait for them to settle, and blow my call. Nothing but silence answers, so I blow another plaintive chirp into the void. A slow, quavering bugle reaches us, followed by a single chuckle. I turn in my saddle, smirk at Serge, and step off my horse.

Natalie holds the pack train on the trail while Serge and I sidehill into the timber below. Cows feed on the meadow’s edge, but the bull is nowhere to be seen. As soon as Serge is behind his rifle, I call again, and the bull answers once more. He shows at the edge of the timber, dark antlers glistening in the damp. Serge shoots and the bull falls, struggles to his feet, and Serge shoots again. Then the bull is gone. We hurry to the spot, follow the spoor, and find Serge’s bull piled up in a hidden creek bottom. His elk is the biggest of the three.

The snow starts again as we load more quarters on the horses. The lazy snowflakes are bright against the dark timber, giving the scene an ethereal quality. Serge must walk again, this time with a skull strapped to his pack, and he falls behind as we hurry to get the horses to the trailhead before dark. There is more work yet ahead of us and a long, eye-drooping drive home. But none of that matters now. Our tags are all notched and the horses loaded to capacity. My wilderness is quiet, and the evening unspeakably beautiful as we ride into the night.

N ATALIE KREB S

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Tracking wary winter whitetails in the remote North Woods might be the most difficult of all hunting pursuits— unless you’re Hal Blood

By Gerry Bethge

IL LUSTR AT I ONS BY

Chris Malbon

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“Mister, if you aren’t in shape to dog a mountain buck and follow him for 15 miles, then walk out of the woods and be ready to do it the next day, and maybe the day after, and maybe for a week, then just be an armchair buck hunter. Don’t go out in the woods and kill yourself.”

—Larry Benoit How to Bag the Biggest Buck of Your Life, by Larry Benoit, was a seminal tome for a generation of deer hunters. Originally published in 1974, the book chronicled the hunting strategies and tactics of a hardcore North Woods deer tracker.

And just like its title, the contents are splendid in their simplicity. Benoit, who passed away in 2013, gained notoriety for his ability to snow-track huge Maine bucks.

“He was kind of like Babe Ruth for hunters,” said Boone and Crockett measurer and longtime friend Ron Boucher in a New York Times obituary.

“He was probably known by more hunters than any other person for his time.”

The Ruthian comparison was apt. Now, meet Lou Gehrig.

Big Leagues For the uninitiated, 62-year-old Hal Blood of Jackman, Maine, is a straight-talking Marine Corps veteran, former lobsterman, and deerdogging savant who essentially picked up where Benoit left off.

He began hunting whitetails with his dad when he was just 10 years old and will admit—albeit

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grudgingly—to having taken north of 100 mature whitetail bucks in his life. Many, if not most, weighed more than 200 pounds, the iconic yardstick of Maine deer hunting.

But for Blood, the experience of taking a big- bodied buck in its element, tracked solo through the snow, is far more meaningful than any tally sheet could ever be. Although the lean and wiry hunter remains addicted to running down big bucks and is remarkably capable of outdistancing them (and many outdoorsmen half his age), he also relishes helping others these days.

“I like to teach hunters to track because I had to figure it out myself,” says Blood, who wants to pass on the tradition. “I hope to save people

some of that learning curve.”

With in-the-field tracking schools, he spends much of his time helping sportsmen better understand what it takes to follow big bucks through the North Woods. In addition to his role as a Master Maine Guide and seminar speaker, Blood holds offseason tracking clinics designed to provide hunters from open country or densely populated areas with insight into the big woods.

“These deer that live here, well, they don’t have a timetable,” Blood says. “They don’t move from crop fields to bedding areas at any specific times of day like deer might do in farm country or in more suburban areas. They’re trying to find does—that’s it, nothing more.

They might eat mushrooms, acorns, and beechnuts along the way, but they’re pretty much impossible to pattern. That’s why snow-tracking them is a very different strategy for most, but also the best tactic for shooting one.

The anticipation of where and when you catch up to a buck is the mystique.”

Blood is adept at hitting curveballs—and mature whitetails can throw many varieties—especially on parcels of public land he’s never set foot on before. Improvisation, persistence, and patience are his watchwords, and they came in handy on a lateseason hunt two years ago.

It was mid-December, and his original plan was to drive to Massachusetts. When snow conditions deteriorated into a crusty mess, Blood went to Plan B.

New Ground, New Deer Indeed, during some seasons, perfect snow-tracking conditions never come to the North Woods. A lack of snow, of course, makes tracking nearly impossible. Too much snow—2 feet or more—leads to an energyzapping plod and indiscernible

tracks. Crusty snow is too noisy, resulting in spooked bucks and frustrated trackers, while dead-calm days and ultra-cold temperatures cause equally maddening outcomes. Conditions are everything, and they are almost never perfect. Tracking is a low-percentage strategy no matter how you look at it. But then there are days when everything comes together.

With a crusty snow in the southern Berkshires, Blood wanted to reroute to New York. But when he hit Exit 1 on the Massachusetts Turnpike, he started seeing fresh snow on tree limbs.

“I jumped out of the truck at a rest area and saw that there was nearly 4 inches of powder. I was thinking, This could work,” he says. “What I call a deer-killing day is when there’s fresh snow on the ground and a wind. It takes away a buck’s senses, and everything’s moving in the woods. That’s the highpercentage day we hope for. We wait all season for a chance to hunt that.”

When it comes to giant-whitetail potential, the Berkshires of western Massachusetts won’t ever be confused with Wisconsin, Iowa, or Kansas.

Blood stepped into that buck-poor terrain for the first time, after the bow and general-firearms seasons ended.

He had never been to Mount Greylock before, but he headed there anyway, got a motel room nearby, bought his license, and popped open his laptop to figure out a good way to go in the next morning. Using intel from the license agent at Dick’s and state maps on the internet, Blood’s hunt took shape. It started with his strategy for hunting any new ground: striking out on foot and making a 1- or 2-mile arc in an attempt to find a good track. A track qualifies if it’s big, ideally a splayed and rounded print left by a 7- or 8-year-old buck. They’re usually 8 or 12 inches apart, side to side. Big bucks will drag their feet, even in light snow, so he looks for that too.

“If I can’t find an old toe-dragger track, though, I might follow a smaller one in the hope that it’ll take me to a bigger one,” Blood says. “Bucks will often cross paths. Any time you follow a buck track, it’ll take you to more deer.”

When he walked into the woods the next day, Blood struck tracks.

He moved at a regular walking pace, trying to cover as much ground as

possible without missing any clues. There was no dawdling. He might follow a stream, or he might run a ridge, but he’s always moving. In addition to tracks, though, he ran into other hunters, stretches of private land he couldn’t access, and heavy snow higher up the mountain that obliterated the fresh sign of the good buck he had been trailing.

The buck was doing what many mature bucks do— following a doe track to see

if she was still in estrus. With 8 inches of snow on the ground and more coming, however, the tracks were filling in quickly. It was time to call it a day.

Classic Clues The next morning, Blood searched for more access points.

There was some activity at the gate where he parked, and human tracks heading up the trail.

So he decided to just go through the woods and not follow any trails. He found nothing promising at first, but after crossing a

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WISDOM FROM THE WOODS Prepping for a snow-tracking hunt bears little resemblance to getting ready for an all-day sit in a treestand. Blood doesn’t carry a backpack because it’s too noisy as he travels through the woods. Instead, he wears a waist pack that weighs 5 pounds when stocked and contains an extra compass, two fire starters, a flashlight, a dragging rope, a space blanket, chocolate bars, lunch, and a camera.

He wears green, checkered wool, without fail. (“It is, after all, the original camo.”) Wool is quiet, warm, breathable, and doesn’t absorb odors. But when you’re breaking snow, warmth isn’t much of a concern; Blood overheats in too many layers, so he opts for uninsulated pants and a

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jacket, and uninsulated rubber boots.

Once Blood cuts a good track, he pays attention to the deer’s pace.

“If a buck is straight-lining, put your head down and walk as fast as you can,” he advises. “Eight times out of 10, that buck is looking for estrous does, even in the late season.

It could be a mile, could be two. Stay on him.

If he starts to linger and feed, slow down and look ahead instead of at the ground.”

Keep in mind where the trail is going and where the buck might hole up. It will almost always be on top of a ridge. And if you mess up and jump him?

“Stop,” Blood says. “Sit down, have a sandwich, and give it half an hour before you pick up the track again.”

stream, he cut some sign—and the track of a really nice buck.

Mature whitetails that live in large tracts of roadless terrain can be enigmatic, even to the hunters who chase them. And this particular buck was no different. He was a roamer, which was just what Blood had been looking for.

“I’ve let a lot of bucks go either because it was too early in the season or I didn’t think they would weigh over 200 pounds dressed,” Blood says. “Also, I don’t want to shoot bucks anymore unless I’m tracking them.

I like the challenge.”

The buck’s winding trail was straightening out now, and Blood followed quickly to close the distance, hiking across a ravine and over a ridge. When bucks get ready to lie down, they’ll nip at browse and feed a bit, then often will climb to the top of a ridge where they can bed down and watch their backtrail—which is exactly what this buck did.

“I was easing along, trying to watch the cover carefully,” he says. “I was expecting that when he headed high, he was looking to bed. Then, just like that, I spotted the buck lying there in the snow. I don’t think that he ever knew I was there.”

Blood took the heavy-bodied 5-pointer with his front stuffer, a 5.5-pound Woodman Arms muzzleloader that he prefers for its ease of handling. It was his first Massachusetts whitetail, and he killed it just like he has many of his bucks: late in the season, after months of hunting pressure, in the heart of a vast woods.

“But it’s not about the kill— that’s just the end result,” Blood says. “These days, I don’t shoot bucks unless there’s a story or experience to go along with it. I guess it’s just the satisfaction of a good hunt.”

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WI N TER 2020

ULTIMATE OPEN-COUNTRY HUNTING RIFLE OL’s shooting editor designs his ideal rig for Western big game

By John B. Snow

P HOTOG RA PH S BY

Bill Buckley

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T he ri fl e ci nch es ti ght to t he S tone Gl acie r S ol o pack us ing a quick -de tach sl ing C ar ri e d thi s way, it is e asy to h aul all day l on g.

rifle maker out of Salmon, Idaho, for the final execution of the project.

This rifle has some serious competition features in its DNA. Considered individually, each of those elements has merit, but the bigger takeaway is that I wanted to design a rifle that integrates more effectively with the other gear that a serious open-country hunter carries and uses.

t’s a question that comes up a lot. What is the perfect hunting rifle? More specifically, what’s the perfect hunting rifle for the challenges that come with stalking game in mountains and the wide-open spaces of the West?

This is a topic I’ve pondered and one that my friends and I have kicked around plenty. We’ve discussed it while passing a flask back and forth in the Alaska Range. We’ve talked it over while glassing for mule deer in eastern Montana. Some of my most productive brainstorming sessions have occurred after rifle matches where my buddies and I compare notes on the newest gear and innovations and how they could be incorporated into our hunting kits.

Over the last decade, I’ve seen gun companies attempt to answer the

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question with firearms that combine elements of traditional hunting guns and long-range target rifles, often with mixed success. Adding a heavy barrel and an adjustable stock—two of the most common alterations—doesn’t get you there. Although accurate, these rifles often handle like a hippo in a wading pool. As much as I value tight groups, ergonomics still matter, as do portability and even aesthetics.

So, about a year ago, I set out to design my own hunting rifle that gave proper emphasis to these oftenoverlooked attributes. I worked with a number of companies to pull this together—some of which you probably know, like Defiance Machine, Proof Research, and Manners Composite Stocks, as well as others you might not be familiar with. I tapped the talented crew at Divide Gun Company, a small

Balanced Cartridge: Is there a better cartridge for long shots on big-game animals than the 6.5 PRC, a relative newcomer to the scene? I say no, but with the caveat that there are many excellent rounds that merit consideration. What the 6.5 PRC brings to the party is balance and a design that maximizes potential accuracy.

It is about 200 fps faster than a 6.5 Creedmoor, so it has a bit more horsepower than that fine round, but when compared with traditional magnums has less recoil and is more pleasant to shoot. The broad selection of excellent 6.5mm bullets for both hunting and target use gives a shooter a lot of latitude when picking a load, which sealed the deal for me.

Mid-Length Action: This rifle is built on a competition action that’s been modified for hunting. Made by Defiance Machine, the world’s foremost producer of precision rifle actions, it is an XM model, which puts it between a short-action (SA) and a long-action (LA) in length.

While the 6.5 PRC can function in an SA rifle, to take full advantage of the cartridge with handloads that seat the bullets out farther, you need more running room than an SA provides. The XM is about .25 inch longer than

OPEN-COUNTRY HUNTING RIFLE

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Key Features of the Build

From top left: 1) The rifle wears a Leupold VX-5HD 3–15x44 that has a turret with two revolutions (16 mils) of elevation on tap. An adapter from Ingenuity Gunworks forms the connection between the rifle stock and the tripod. 2) Handloaded ammo using ADG brass and 140-grain Berger Elite Hunter bullets produced groups as small as .124 inch. 3) The rifle has two QD flush cups for attaching a sling—one on the butt and the other on the fore-end. 4) The Silent Legion 6.5mm suppressor tames the rifle’s muzzle blast. 5) The Triggertech Diamond trigger’s flat lever gives the shooter excellent control. 6) A closer look at the Ingenuity Gunworks rail and the quick-release connector that hold the rifle’s bipod.

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an SA but is still .6 inch shorter than an LA, meaning it is lighter and has that much less bolt travel.

Rather than go with a detachable box magazine (DBM), I opted for a flush hinged floorplate made by Sunny Hill Enterprises. Though DBM rifles are all the rage, a flush magazine has cleaner lines and carries better in the field.

The action’s integral recoil lug and integral scope bases with 20 MOA of declination are typical of top-end competition actions. They add strength, improve accuracy, and reduce the number of potential failure points.

Carbon Barrel: To keep the rifle’s weight reasonable without compromising accuracy, I opted for a carbon-fiber-wrapped barrel from Proof Research. Its 24-inch length is ideal for the 6.5 PRC. It sacrifices very little velocity compared to a 26-inch barrel (the length commonly seen on competition rifles) yet is still handy in the field.

I’ve shot numerous Proof barrels over the years, and all have been tackdrivers. The one on this rifle is no exception. I shot groups smaller than .125 inch with it—but most five-shot groups are just under .5 MOA. Crossover Stock: Tom Manners developed the EH-1 stock specifically for long-range hunters. The nearly vertical pistol grip with palm swells, broad beavertail fore-end, and flat-angled surface on the bottom of the butt, which helps when using a rear bag, are pulled from tactical and competition shooting. Like the barrel, the stock is made from carbon fiber, which keeps the weight under 2 pounds with a recoil pad.

In keeping with the rifle’s clean aesthetic, I didn’t opt for an adjustable cheekpiece. The geometry of the stock is already so good that the additional weight (more than a pound) and bulk weren’t warranted.

Locking Rail: Ingenuity Gunworks isn’t a household name among shooters—not even with the competitors for whom its products are designed. But if there’s any element of this rifle that is game changing, it’s this rail embedded in the foreend of the stock.

You might have seen the systems used in precision rifle matches that clamp rifles to tripods. Typically, the tripod

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heads are grabbing on to either a segment of a Picatinny rail or an ARCA rail (a 1.5-inch dovetail) on the stock. These systems provide tremendous stability, allowing for long shots from standing, kneeling, and sitting positions.

I wanted to incorporate that capability in this rifle but didn’t want to add rails to the surface of the stock, which are not only unattractive, but also take away from the stock’s functionality and impair the rifle’s handling.

The Ingenuity Gunworks Adjustarail sits flush under the fore-end and comes with adapters with both Picatinny and ARCA profiles that slide in and out of the rail in a flash. Locked in place, these adapters create a solid connection between the rifle and the tripod or bipod.

Using factory Hornady 6.5 PRC ammo shooting the 143-grain ELD-X

hunting bullet, I shot fiveshot groups from a standing position that averaged .883 inch at 100 yards in a howling crosswind. Normally, I’d be thrilled to shoot that well off a bench, but the fact that it was done from a standing position speaks volumes about the Ingenuity Gunworks rail.

Dual-Purpose Tripod: Glassing is an integral part of hunting the West, and with few exceptions that means carrying a tripod and spotting scope. I could have gone with a smaller, flimsier tripod in order to shave weight, but to get the performance I wanted, I didn’t skimp.

The Really Right Stuff tripod

OPEN-COUNTRY HUNTING RIFLE

with the Anvil-30 Ballhead is designed for shooters and is among the best on the market.

I s h o t f i v e - s h o t g ro u p s f ro m a s t a n d i n g p o s i t i o n t h a t a v e ra g e d . 8 8 3 i n c h .

Ultralight Pack: Scoped and empty, my rifle came to 9 pounds 2 ounces. While it isn’t a featherweight rig, I can honestly say that every gram on that rifle contributes to its performance. To further justify its weight, I got a Stone Glacier Solo pack to haul it and the tripod around. Like all Stone Glacier gear, the Solo is made for the minimalist backcountry hunter. It can pack a moose quarter off the mountain as well as any meat-hauling frame but only weighs 4.6 pounds.

tions, I shoot first-focal-plane (FFP) scopes with milliradian adjustments and reticles that have ample reference marks for windage and elevation. But when you’re hunting, those reticles are often too faint to see well at lower magnifications, especially at first and last light. Plus, FFP target scopes are invariably heavier than their secondfocal-plane counterparts.

With that in mind, I went with a Leupold VX-5HD 3–15x44 with a CDS elevation turret. While the scope’s bright glass, useful magnification Hybrid Scope: I agonized over the scope range, and light weight (19.7 ounces) for this rifle. In long-range competiare all appealing, what really convinced me was the milbased adjustments Leupold W i th t h i s s yst em , a hu n ter put into it for me. (As of this c a n s witc h f r om g las sin g writing, it is one of only two o ff a tri po d t o us i ng it a s a Leupold has made—I’m hops t e ad y sh o o ting su p po r t i n ing the company puts it into a m at t er o f se co nd s. full production.) Paired with the TMR milling reticle, the scope gave me most of what I want from a precision rifle optic. The only downside is having to set the scope at 15X in order to use the references in the milling reticle.

Flush Cups: I decided I’d had it with swivel studs during an elk hunt in the Bob Marshal Wilderness a few years back. While bushwhacking through hellish yew thickets, the sling kept twisting and finally unscrewed the swivel stud. It made me want to pinwheel my 7mm Rem. Mag. into the bushes.

QD cups are simply better. They are flush-mounted and allow for 360 degrees of rotation, so there’s nothing to come unscrewed.

Crisp Trigger: There are plenty of good triggers out there to choose from, but the Triggertech Diamond is at the head of the pack. This trigger adjusts to less than 16 ounces, though mine is

set at 2.25 pounds, and it breaks as clean and crisp as any singlestage trigger I’ve used.

Custom Ammo: Todd Walachi at Divide Gun Co. worked up loads using brass from Atlas Development Group. ADG is one of the new crop of U.S. boutique brass makers who are producing components that rival the best in the world. The consistency of the brass with respect to concentricity and case-to-case weight is superb and is part of the reason the rifle shoots so well. With 59 grains of Retumbo, the 140-grain Berger Elite Hunters have a muzzle velocity of 3026 fps.

Proving Ground: Before taking the rifle hunting, I shot it to 1,400 yards on steel. However, when it came time to use it in the field the first time, it was my son, Jack, who was behind the trigger. We spent a couple of hours stalking a whitetail that was bedded among some does that were feeding in an enormous ag field. We snuck in to about 300 yards using a brushy creekbottom for cover but couldn’t get any closer. I say about 300 yards, because a slight rise in the grassy ground made it impossible to range the buck accurately. We set up on the tripod, but since we couldn’t determine the exact correction for the shot, we backed out.

We circled around the field and got to a bluff above it at last light. Though the range to the deer was longer than before, Jack was solid in his prone position, and we could range the deer precisely. There was barely any wind, and after Jack dialed the elevation into the scope, he dropped the bullet right into the buck’s ribcage.

It was a perfect shot and the perfect end to my fall. I can also say that after spending a year on this project, I finally answered the question that had nagged me for so long. My perfect opencountry Western hunting rifle was no longer just an idea, but was now a reality.

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The author in his element—the desert mountains of Southern California.

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∕ OUTDOOR LIFE

• Bring extra ammo, run like hell, and never trust a mule. Plus other wisdom I’ve accrued as a sheep guide

By Ja ke Franklin

Photographs by Peter Bohler

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am 29 years old and have built my life around hunting bighorn sheep. This journey started when I was 17. I had gone to a wilderness guide school in Montana and decided it was far too cold there. So I returned to Southern California and called someone I thought was the only outfitter in this part of the state. That person was Terry Anderson, a legendary sheep guide. I worked under him for seven years before striking out on my own.

This year marked my 100th successful bighorn hunt. Here’s some of what I’ve experienced and learned along the way.

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Franklin takes a break while glassing for sheep in California’s Newberry Mountains.

No. 100: The Hunt That Almost Killed Me This was it, my 100th ram. It was the night before the opener and, with expectations of triumph and glory, I felt confident. I had two hunters in camp at 13,000 feet in the White Mountains of California.

Our pre-hunt preparations had gone exceptionally well, and we had spotted two fantastic desert bighorn rams. Now it was just a waiting game.

That night, I was tending the stock and went to gather Warren, a big dun mule that was feeding contentedly in a small, secluded alpine meadow.

My plan was to picket him for the night to keep him from wandering off, but when I got close to him, he fired out with both back legs, connect-

∕ OUTDOOR LIFE

FLASHES OF MY DAUGHTER, LUCILLE, CROSSED MY MIND AS I FELL TO THE GROUND, HELPLESS AND UNABLE TO BREATHE. least for me) hike over to the rams and shot the two impressive giants.

The celebration I had always imagined for reaching this milestone didn’t happen. Instead, I ended up in a hospital getting treated for internal bleeding from my lacerated liver.

No. 1: Total Shit Show Wet behind the ears and eager for knowledge, I set out with a crew to learn all about sheep hunting.

The hunter was a retired Forest Service firefighter, and it was his first sheep hunt too.

Early that morning, we were on a great wideflaring ram. As we set up for the shot, I saw clear signs that a major case of buck fever was setting in.

The hunter was shaking and sweating, and soon the silent desert morning was interrupted with one gunshot after another while the other guides and I attempted to call the misses and give corrections. The rams ran away, but we cut them off for a second attempt. More misses.

The hunter then turned to us and said he was down to the ninth and final round he’d brought on the hunt. Instead of shooting one last time, we called it a day and spent the next day retrieving more ammo. After several more days of hunting, we found a nice ram in a good spot—and this time sneaked in so close, we could smell the bighorn before making it happen.

DESERT SCENE Clockwise from top: The author posing with Mylon Filkins, who took a heavy-horned ram in 2018; an allpurpose camp axe; a ram’s head caped out and ready for the trip to the taxidermist.

No. 17: Making the Shot I wasn’t sure if the powder got wet or there was some other malfunction, but when the ram turned broadside and the shot was squeezed off, the primer popped. Then I heard a sizzle, followed by the thundering report. It was about a 1.5-second delay from the trigger pull to the bullet sailing through the air. The ram dropped, and I still don’t know how the muzzleloader hunter managed to hold steady through it all.

G EO FF ROWLEY (RAM, SKULL)

ing viciously to the center of my chest. I felt bones crack, and all the air left my lungs in an instant.

My first reaction was fear. I thought my time had come. Flashes of my daughter, Lucille, crossed my mind as I fell to the ground, helpless and unable to breathe.

Chris, a close friend and guide who was in camp, ran to my side and stayed with me until I regained my breath. I knew I was hurt, but due to the remoteness and elevation of our camp, rescue wasn’t an immediate option.

I monitored myself through the night. The next morning, before riding the stock off the mountain to get to the hospital, we did a slow and painful (at

No. 85: An Amazing Recovery My best friend and hunting companion, Geoff Rowley, had started a new knife company called Civilware. He produced these awesome little handmade knives, and I was ecstatic when he gave me one. My brother and I were in a remote area at 12,000 feet scouting for rams. After cutting some salami, I set the knife Geoff had given me on a rock and left it there. It wasn’t until a day later, driving in my truck, that I realized I had lost it, I assumed forever. I was embarrassed, so I kept my misfortune to myself.

Three years later, while stalking a ram in those same mountains, I sent Geoff up to a glassing

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From top: The author flanked by Jason Hairston and Hairston’s son, Cash, with Goliath; cowboy hat on, the author is ready to ride.

perch about a quarter-mile from where I had lost the knife. After crawling up to the point, he spotted the knife in its weathered sheath on some rocks. I came clean, and we laughed about the misplaced knife that a marmot must have carried to that rock pile. As a bonus, our hunter killed a nice ram that day.

No. 38: Learning to Improvise We wanted to enjoy the tenderloins after a successful sheep hunt. Since it was a backpack hunt, we had no pan, so we searched for a thin, flat rock.

I put the rock on top of my MSR Pocket Rocket and melted sheep fat on it to keep the meat from sticking. The tenderloins were amazing—and this has become a tradition on our high-elevation hunts ever since.

No. 92: Sliding Into a Grizzly It was one of the worst September storms I’d seen in the mountains of Alberta. We had about 3 ½ feet of fresh snow, and I had to hike up to a peak thousands of feet above me to see if there were ram tracks on the back side. I didn’t see any sign, and my legs were weak and shaky from a gigantic day. As I descended back to the snowmobile, I found I could slide downhill quickly if I kept to the spruces, where the grass was deep and the snow shallower.

Suddenly, the snow turned to blood, and I was on top of a fresh grizzly kill. Not a second after I realized this, I heard jaws popping and a deafening huffing from right over my shoulder. My only thought was to get away from its meal, so I jumped up and did what everyone says not to do: I ran from the grizzly. That turned out to be a lifesaving decision. It didn’t chase me.

No. 87: Going Down Goose down and mountain hunting don’t always mix, as I found out after taking a healthy tumble. When I stopped rolling, I was surrounded by a cloud of feathers. I was relieved to find myself uninjured, but that feeling was short-lived as my warmth blew away in the wind.

Jim Craig, 75 years old, is the toughest man I’ve ever met. While hunting sheep, he’s been ripped apart by a grizzly and had a horse flip over on him. On his way to hunt desert sheep with me one time, he even got sideswiped by a semi. He was in the hospital for a couple of days before they released him; when he showed up in camp, he was black and blue from head to toe.

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GEOFF ROWLE Y (RAM )

No. 51: The Toughest Hunter

∕ OUTDOOR LIFE

SO I JUMPED UP AND DID WHAT EVERYONE SAYS NOT TO DO: I RAN FROM THE GRIZZLY. IT DIDN’T CHASE ME. But that didn’t stop him from following an ambitious 24-year-old sheep guide on a difficult stalk up a steep mountain for his ram.

Crawling the last 20 yards, Jim whispered to me, “Do you have a pad I could kneel on? My bolts are popping through my knees.” The bolts were from old injuries, and he was bleeding through his pants. But I got him a pad, and got to watch a true sheep hunter do what he does best and shoot a great desert sheep.

about perfect. I have seen, however, one unlikely exception. At 300 yards, I watched a bullet hit below the ram. I had just gotten the hunter lined up for a second shot when the ram tipped over and rolled down the hill, stone dead. When we got to it, I saw that indeed my hunter had missed—but fragments of rock from the bullet strike penetrated the animal in several spots. So, if you’re going to shoot under a ram, I recommend a .300 Remington Ultra Mag.

No. 6: Discovering My Calling

No. 20: A Shocking Confession

I was 18, and it was my first time guiding a client on my own. It was a backpack hunt, and our bags were loaded down with everything we would need for 10 days in the mountains. I forgot sunscreen, and the sun was so intense, I ended up cutting parts of my socks off and tying them over my nose and ears. We shot a ram that turned out to be much bigger than I had initially thought, and I realized then that I could hunt these animals for the rest of my life.

My hunter said the 450-yard shot on the ram was no problem. His rifle was dialed in, and he knew his stuff. The first shot sailed 3 feet over the sheep’s back. The second shot did the same. On a hunch, I spun the turret on his scope back one full revolution—and his third shot found its mark, and the celebration of an incredible ram began.

My hunter and I were stalking a heavy-horned ram. As we got within rifle range of the ram, I laid my pack on the ground in preparation for a 275-yard shot, angling slightly uphill. The hunter looked at me like I was crazy and explained that he had never shot prone—he just shoots standing.

Yes, standing. Obviously, I was stunned to hear this. Shooting prone and getting quickly into position, whether off a pack, a rock pile, or a log, is by far the best shooting technique to master for sheep hunting.

We got a little closer, and I had him sit behind a boulder for the shot. It was a clean miss; the ram went over the hill.

We went back to camp, and the hunter went home for a few days. When he came back, he said he’d practiced shooting prone, and a couple days after that, that’s how he got his long- and goldenhorned ram of a lifetime.

No. 88: The World Record

No. 5: The Dream Hunt

Jason Hairston’s ram, Goliath, changed my life.

He was a ram I’d been chasing for years. I saw many stages of my life come and go in the pursuit of that amazing animal. His size set him apart from any other sheep, and his odd behavior made him the most challenging ram I’d ever hunted.

To have finally killed him with one of the most prominent men in the outdoor space, Jason, the founder of Kuiu, couldn’t have been more fitting. Tragically, Jason later passed away, and that hunt was the pinnacle of our time afield together, and I’m thankful I got to share it with my friend.

Goliath is still the largest Nelson bighorn on record and the California state-record desert sheep. Jason and Goliath are both legends that I will remember for the rest of my days.

Cody was a young man who worked in a mine in Nevada. He wasn’t a rich executive or business owner, but he did manage to draw a coveted tag for a California desert sheep. He depleted his savings and hired us to guide him. After getting his ram, a beautiful 174 B&C, he sent me a handwritten letter telling me what the hunt meant to him. That note sits above my desk and is one of my most prized possessions.

No. 22: A Wrong Turn

No. 75: A Lucky Miss It’s too common for hunters to arrive in camp with a rifle caliber bigger than necessary. I prefer smaller, flatter-shooting cartridges for sheep.

Something like a .270 WSM or 6.5 Creedmoor is

No. 0: My Ram I’m fortunate that I get to pursue wild sheep and hunt them in the prettiest places in the world yearround. I often get the question, “How many sheep have you personally killed?” To this day, I have never tagged a sheep of my own. I often wonder what would be going through my head if I was to shoot my own ram: Would it be different from the many I have helped others get? Some day I hope to answer that question. But for now, guiding others on these unique hunts and giving them memories of a lifetime is enough.

OUTDOO RLIFE .C OM

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OUTD OOR LIF E • WINTER 2020