Starting Out Young
February 15, 2010
by Mac Moad
Tanner Colten Moad, 5 years old, is one of the coolest kids I know. The youngest of 4 children of mine, Tanner never stops moving.
Before gun season in central eastern Oklahoma, the traditional bow season usually takes priority. I had taken the first week of bow season off from work in an attempt to tag out early at the request of my wife Lori. In her mind, if I was to tag out early, my deer season would then be “dear” season, with lots of additional chores getting done that get overlooked during each year’s deer season.
Picture This
January 21, 2010
Mac The Dog
Mac enjoys duck hunting in the Midwest.
Bow Hunting Grand Slam 2007
January 8, 2010
By Mac Moad
The first week of October was finally here. The first three days were spent in my favorite stand watching 3 raccoons in which I had named Larry, Curly, and Moe. The mother raccoon was slightly bigger than the two younger ones, and seemed curious to every movement surrounding them. The days here in eastern Oklahoma in October were still in the 80’s with mosquitoes buzzing everywhere. I was wondering if it were still to hot to hunt and questioned myself again over and over. Each day so far, I had hunted morning and evening with only a few does showing up. Read more
A Warning To Outdoor Users About Echinococcus, From Worms
December 14, 2009
This is a warning to outdoor users about a potentially deadly biological event that could result from one’s curiosity to poke at and kick through scat from wolves, coyotes and foxes. Of course not everyone knowingly does this but many hunters, trappers and simply the curious, want to know what these animals have been eating.
Calling Elk Bow Close
December 5, 2009
Whether hunting public or privateland, the fundamentals of calling elk remain the same.
By Michael Waddell
We heard the bull bugle at first light and snuck into his core area. When I hit a lick on my bugle, the bull simply came unglued and stormed our position like a tank, crashing through brush and small lodgepole pines like they were atchsticks. Before we could react he was in our lap and we were pinned down, myself hiding behind a camera, too afraid to even touch the tripod for fear of my shaking hands would run the footage. All I could see of my partner edged against a stunted pine was the tip of his undrawn arrow shaking uncontrollably on the rest. Before a shot presented itself, the bull smelled a rat and disappeared as quickly as he arrived.
Picture This!
November 18, 2009
With all the great stories, equipment, adventures and people out there I thought it would be great to get some pictures. If you have any pictures from a hunt, your gear or best of all you geared up that would be great. If you send in pictures I will post on our site as well as putting some of the best pictures on all our sites.
New Revelations about Reintroduced Wolves
July 14, 2009
Republished with permission by George Dovel, author.
In the early 1980s the 197-page unpublished research report, “Wolves of Central Idaho,” surfaced. In it, co-authors Timm Kaminski and Jerome Hansen estimated that elk and deer populations in six of the nine national forests in the proposed Central Idaho Wolf Recovery Area could support a total of 219 wolves without decreasing existing deer and elk populations in those forests.
They based this on an estimated 16.6 deer or elk killed by each wolf annually, and on estimated increases in elk and/or deer populations from 1981-1985 in the two-thirds of forests where they had increased.
But even if their estimated prey numbers and calculations were accurate, their report said only 17 wolves could be maintained in the Salmon National Forest, five in the Challis NF, and none in the Panhandle, Sawtooth and Bitterroot Forests. Yet the obvious question of what to do when the number of wolves in any National Forest or game management unit exceeded the ability of the prey base to support them was not adequately addressed. Read more
The Peasant Wars
January 31, 2009
(Republished by permission)
Opinion by George Dovel
George Dovel is Editor and Publisher of The Outdoorsman.
In 2003, North America’s foremost wildlife scientist, Dr. Valerius Geist, made the following observations:
“The miracle of North American conservation is that it is basically a blue-collar system, grounded in the political and financial support and the active participation of large numbers of middle-class citizens who bring their basic honesty and decency to bear on important issues. This is just the opposite of the elitist system that has existed throughout Europe for centuries and is spreading like cancer around the world today, even right here at home. Read more
Does Trophy Hunting Spoil The Gene Pool?
January 14, 2009
Yesterday I posted a rebuttal to a Newsweek article that supported the theory that trophy hunting was creating “weak and scrawny” game animals. The Newsweek article used information from a study done on big horn sheep on Ram Mountain in Alberta, Canada, that made the claim by some involved in that study that in 30 years it was trophy hunting that had caused a reduction in body size and horn length and mass. Since that posting, my mailbox has filled up with information.
Trophy hunting, as used in this post and related articles, can be best described as the effort of hunters to select an animal for harvesting that has large antlers/horns in combination with big body mass. The theory is that this type of harvesting selection is creating weaker and smaller species because hunters are culling out the best of the litters to hang on their walls. This simply is not true. Read more
Large Predators: Them And Us!
December 31, 2008
Reprinted by permission from the author.
Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada.
We pay close attention to large predators. We do so because we evolved as prey. It was our ancient fate to be killed and eaten, and our primary goal to escape such. Our instincts are still shaped that way.
There is thus a reason why the bloody carnage on our highways is a mere statistic, but the mauling of a person by a grizzly is news. It’s not only that so many fossilized remains of our ancient ancestors are meals consumed by large predators in secluded caves or rock niches, but also that we speciated like large herbivores. That is, our pattern and timing of forming species, of adapting to landscapes, mimics and coincides with that of deer, antelope or cattle, but not that of large carnivores. And that despite our fondness for meat, despite “man the hunter”, and despite the fact that at least on species of humans, Neanderthal man, grew into a super predator. Read more
