Tabla de contenidos para August 2022 en Game & Fish West

My first Western big-game hunt was for mule deer, and what I remember most about the experience was the preparation leading up to it. Like many whitetail hunters, I was intrigued by the “other” deer species and knew I had some work to do. I believe my longest shot at a deer up to that point was something around 120 yards, and I wanted to have the confidence to shoot three times that far. By the fortune that only a grandson can have, I happened to be in possession of my grandfather’s Winchester Model 70. It was an oldie, made in 1954, but a goodie that just needed a bit of attention. In the months leading up to the hunt, I disassembled the rifle and gave it a thorough cleaning.…

It is routine for me to travel to three or four states each year to hunt. With a couple decades of whitetail road tripping under my belt, I have learned that no plan is infallible. When preparing for a trip I naturally make every effort to be as successful as possible. That means doing my best to be prepared. Whether that’s hours spent staring at digital maps and marking locations of interest or making multiple checklists to ensure I have everything for the journey. But experience has shown me, all of that planning can only take me so far. The rest will be reactionary because it’s not a matter of “if” something will go awry, it’s a matter of “when.” There was a time when these unexpected turns would derail…

I was hunting mule deer in an aspen forest when I heard strange, bird-like sounds off in the distance. Something about it wasn’t right, though; these were unlike any birds I’d heard before. I eased up to a ridge and looked down the other side to try and identify the source of the sounds. To my surprise it wasn’t birds at all, but a herd of elk. That incident took place many years ago. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, other than to acknowledge that elk make sounds that resemble a bird’s chirp or a cat’s meow. Years later, in 1985, I was chatting with Don Laubach about elk hunting in a Gardiner, Mont., saloon. Don lives in Gardiner, a small town next to Yellowstone Park’s North…

My daughter Mikayla built her blackpowder gun last July and took a record-book pronghorn with it in late August. It took about a month to finish the kit, which left enough time for two sessions at the range to develop a load of 80 grains of blackpowder to drive a 275-grain lubed conical bullet. We developed ballistics data for shots at 50, 75 and 100 yards. On the second day of the hunt, we gathered the bones of a wild horse to build a sagebrush blind. Four hours into the sit, a big buck led a herd of does into range. Mikayla dropped the book she was reading, scooped up the gun and killed a buck that will make the muzzleloader record book.…

I shot my first public-land bull elk in September 1978 after riding on horseback 22 miles from Victor, Mont., into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness area of Idaho. Back then, you could hunt with a rifle during the rut, and my old college roommate and I bugled up a pair of bulls in two days, mine a big 6x6 that scored almost 330 Boone and Crockett points. I was young and dumb and thought killing a big bull on public turf was easy. How wrong I was. I arrowed my most recent public-land bull in September 2021 in an area of western Montana where tags are virtually guaranteed in the draw and hunting pressure is stiff from both locals and nonresidents. Fortunately, Rick Wemple, a good friend and a local outfitter from…

Mule deer country starts in the Great Plains, continues over the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, and eventually bumps into the territory of the smaller blacktail along the Pacific Coast. There are also whitetails in much of the mule deer’s range today, plus Coues deer in desert mule deer country. However, the muley is the primary quarry for most Western hunters, pursued annually and avidly. It stands to reason, then, that Westerners know their deer, just as Eastern deer hunters are the real experts on whitetails. Many whitetail hunters journey to mule deer country every fall, and others dream of a trip out West. With millions of acres of public land, hunting mule deer is a doable deal, but hunters from elsewhere are going into new country after unfamiliar deer. Research…

In 2015, when I heard Mercedes-Benz was set to release the 4x4 version of its popular Sprinter van in the U.S., I said: This is it, I’ve found it, and I can’t live without it. I researched and made lists to justify the choice and proposed upgrades, but in the end, the decision was easy. With a family of four, it needed to perform at soccer tournaments and ski trips, then convert into a solo or two-person, expedition-grade fishing and hunting rig, while being able to cruise in comfort on family road trips. The first of which was a cross-country trip from Oregon to Louisiana to visit my wife’s parents, whom I included in my sales pitch. VEHICLE CHOICE These demands leave two realistic vehicle choices in my opinion: the…

My buddy Mark is what I’d call a lazy hunter. It’s not that he’s hesitant to bomb off a rimrock ledge into the canyon below, or that he’ll balk at packing 100 pounds of meat and cape across the steepest terrain. I call him lazy because he only finds mule deer where he expects to. I’m betting you know folks like Mark. When they post up behind their binoculars or a spotting scope, they look in only the most obvious places, those sun-splashed grassy slopes where you could see a buck with your naked eyes. They don’t spend the time “digging out” animals from the hard spots—the dark shadows of a steep canyon or the shade of doghair timber—despite the fact that old and wary mule deer lurk in just…

Fishing is a game of patience, but those with pro-level knowledge don’t need as much of it as an occasional angler or someone heading to a new body of water for the first time. That’s why I reached out to Randy Pringle, owner of The Fishing Instructor (thefishinginstructor.com) in northern California, and Rich Tauber of Rich Tauber Fishing (richtauberfishing.com), in southern California when I was planning a bass-fishing road trip to hit some of the best lakes in the West. These two are professional fishing guides who specialize in Western waters, and they know what it takes to catch fish in a variety of conditions. Here are things to know, remember and do. Harness the power of this advice, and you can catch more fish, boat bigger bass and set…

Before we could get out of the mountains, my dogs were asleep in the backseat of the truck. The potholes in the logging road didn’t seem to bother them, but when I stepped on the brakes they quickly awoke. A covey of valley quail flew across the road in front of me, and I grabbed the binocular to mark their landing. Thirty minutes later, following a hike, my dogs were on point in the middle of a logged unit overgrown with prime quail habitat. As the covey busted loose, I missed the first shot but connected on the next two. Echo and Kona each delivered birds to hand, marking the end to a perfect day in which we’d taken four species of upland birds in Oregon’s breathtaking Cascade Range. Blue…

Although I don’t have an exact number, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to claim that the first dozen or so deer I shot in my lifetime all fell to the Remington Core-Lokt. I started hunting when I was 12, and Core-Lokt loads were the only ammo I used for whitetails until well after I graduated from college. In fact, for all but four of those years, I used a single Core-Lokt load, the 150-grain .308 Win. Took a bear with it, too. (Not long ago I found an old empty box of .308 Core-Lokt that must have been from my high-school years. The price sticker was marked $8.99, which might buy six rounds today.) I’m not alone in my connection to the Core-Lokt. No doubt some of you reading this…

A guide and I were sitting in a pop-up blind, not far from the Texas coastline. I was helping with a culling operation for whitetail deer. It was my job to do the shooting and the guide’s job to tell me what to shoot. I’d already taken two deer at a little over 100 yards with a rifle when several came out of the brush closer to the blind. Pointing, the guide said, “That one.” I unholstered my 4 5/8-inch Ruger Single Seven revolver in .327 Fed. Mag. and said, “If you don’t care, I’ll use my handgun.” The guide kind of grimaced, “I’m not sure that thirty-two is enough gun.” Leveling the little revolver on the whitetail at about 30 yards, I whispered, “Watch.” The revolver bucked and so…

This month I’ll enter my third decade as a volunteer Hunter Education instructor for Montana’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department. Actually, I’m not doing this for the department. Because I’m a selfish muck, I do it mainly for myself, with the perennial hope that some stray comment or perspective might hit a student in the right way, and they’ll see my view of our shared obligation to the animals we hunt. There are maybe half a dozen instructors in my little town, and we’ve been teaching together so long we know which chapters of the coursebook each will lead, and who we can count on to come to Saturday’s field day. I generally teach the squishier parts of the course, the ones on situational ethics and how to tell your…

With some basic tools and woodworking skills, you can start building a muzzleloader now and complete it in time for most Western blackpowder seasons. For this build, I chose Traditions’ Kentucky Rifle Kit (.50-caliber flintlock), ordered from muzzle-loaders.com. I chose a flintlock so that it could be used in any state, and while purists might be quick to point out that it differs from true Kentucky rifles, in my mind it’s a great mountain rifle–light, short and nimble. With a 33 1/2-inch barrel, it weighs just 6 pounds 9 ounces. THE PRE-BUILD When the kit arrives, the first thing to do is open the box, remove all the parts and roughly pre-assemble the rifle. Most kits come with the wood 95 percent inlet, so the parts are not going to…

The hike to the first lake was only 9 miles. “We got this,” I told my wife. What I failed to tell her was that we were going to gain about 2,000 feet in elevation in the last 3 miles. Plus, I found no references about this lake online. I got the feeling no one went there, except perhaps to hunt mountain goats. It was going to be a perfect spot to reel in some high-mountain Montana trout—assuming we made it. Late August in western Montana is prime time for backpacking, fishing and scouting for elk in the high country. Spending some quality time with my wife for our anniversary in the middle of nowhere was a bonus. After dropping the kids with the grandparents, we drove to an empty…

Shane returned home from school one day to find his father cleaning the garage on his day off from the steel mill. “Learn anything today?” his father asked him. “Well yeah, actually,” Shane said as he grabbed a broom to help. “I learned Steven McDonald killed a 12-point buck last year.” “Twelve pointer, eh?!” crowed Shane’s father. “I didn’t even know they grew that big ’round here. That’s the trophy of a lifetime!” “Not really,” said Shane. “The year before that, he got a non-typical 14-pointer.” “Shane, I hate to say this because I don’t know Steven, but plenty of guys stretch the truth. You know, tell fish stories.” “That’s what I was thinking before I saw the pictures,” said Shane. “They’re legit.” “OK, I stand corrected. I guess I’m…