Sports A Field

High Adventure Birds

In search of the world’s most exotic wild turkeys.

The wild turkey is probably the second-most popular game in the United States, following deer. I tend to think of all turkeys as “big-game birds.” We call them, not much different from rattling in a buck or bugling in an elk; and we pattern them, and sometimes stalk them. Usually we take them on the ground, so we deliberately aim at them, focusing on shot placement (head and neck), which is different from all other bird hunting.

Part of the popularity is the spring season, the most exciting time to hunt gobblers and a time when most seasons are closed. Part, too, is the availability. In my lifetime turkeys have increased from remnants into millions, now returned to all former range, and found in many areas that never had them. As with deer, most turkey hunters hunt close to home, but there is a growing group of traveling turkey fanatics who set goals to hunt different varieties in different areas.

There are four distinct subspecies of turkeys in the United States, with distinct plumage. In the days when turkeys were scarce, game managers weren’t always careful about which turkeys were introduced where—California, for example, had no turkeys but now has three varieties (and a lot of hybrids). The Eastern wild turkey is the probably the most widespread, native to the eastern half of the country. Merriam’s turkey is the bird of the Rockies, now spilling over on both sides. When turkeys were nearly gone Rio Grande turkeys remained primarily in Texas, but now are widespread from the Gulf Coast up through much of the Great Plains.

Within the U.S. the rare bird is the Osceola gobbler, found only from central Florida southward. For Florida hunters this is their bird, but for turkey hunters elsewhere getting an Osceola gobbler can be tough. I concede that I’m not a very good turkey hunter: The Osceola gobbler gave me fits! It’s a tropical bird with an early mating season. I found them much less vocal than the others, and thus the very Devil to hunt. Of course, the Osceola isn’t “my bird,” so I had to travel across the continent to hunt them. This made failures extra-painful.

The Osceola turkey of Florida proved Boddington’s most difficult. The climate is very tropical, and he found these birds to be less vocal than other varieties. For him it’s a long trip to Florida to hunt them and he had multiple failures before being successful.

Hunting your own backyard birds is one thing, but most of us have only type of turkey within easy striking distance. Hunting somebody else’s turkeys, the “other” turkeys, usually takes planning, effort, and travel.

For quite some time many hunters have focused on taking one each of all four U.S. turkeys—but in fact there are two more native North American turkeys. The colorful ocellated turkey, quite different from all the rest, is found in southernmost Mexico and on into Central America. The tall, rangy Gould’s turkey is concentrated in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Mountains, now with a small population established on the U.S. side. Recognizing there is a growing group of avid, adventurous, and traveling turkey hunters, the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) has compiled listings of fully six different “turkey slams.” Their Grand Slam is one each of the four U.S. turkeys. The Royal Slam adds a Gould’s turkey. The Canadian Slam is Merriam’s and Eastern in southern Canada only, and the Mexican Slam, similarly, is Rio Grande, Gould’s, and ocellated taken in Mexico only. Then there’s the World Slam, one each of all races of wild turkeys.

You can check out these listings by going to www.nwtf.org/hunt/records/slams, where links will lead you to their listings of registered slams. I was shocked to learn that more than three hundred hunters have registered World Slams with NWTF. Quite a few of these avid turkey hunters have registered multiple World Slams—the highest number I saw was eight, credited to bowhunter Michael Jefferson. Oh, one more slam: The U.S. Super Slam requires taking one turkey in every U.S. state except Alaska (our only state that has no turkeys). Six hunters are known to have accomplished this amazing feat!

This last lies far beyond my wildest aspirations and, honestly, sounds like work. But at least one each of all six is a worthy goal that will take you to some interesting places—even if, like me, you’re not a particularly avid turkey hunter. In the course of a long hunting career the four U.S. birds sort of came along although, having been beaten pretty badly twice, I admit the Osceola turkey became a mission. The two Mexican birds, however, require specific expeditions for almost everyone.

The ocellated turkey is hunted primarily in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, with some opportunity in adjacent Guatemala and Belize. The ocellated turkey is smaller and brightly colored, so different that it was once thought a separate genus, now considered a separate species of the turkey’s Meleagris genus. This is jungle hunting, hot and thick. These birds don’t exactly gobble; down there they call it singing, primarily done on the roost in mornings and evenings. Although occasionally taken by ambush or stalking, the primary hunting technique is to roost birds by sound in the evening, then stalk just at first light. Interestingly, this is exactly the way the big capercaillie grouse is hunted in Europe!

They are not easy; in four hunts in Mexico’s Yucatan I’ve shot exactly one! However, hunting ocellated turkeys in good country isn’t as unsuccessful as that sounds. Most of the time I was also hunting other jungle game such as brocket deer, devoting only part of the time to turkey hunting. My own interests aside, the turkey hunting market is avid and active; down there the ocellated turkey is the outfitters’ big draw. Success is not assured, but the local guides know how and where to look for turkeys; most hunters who really concentrate on the ocellated turkey will be successful.

While all the other races are subspecies the ocellated turkey of the Yucatan Peninsula is a unique species, smaller and more brightly colored. Hunting this turkey in its jungle habitat is a real adventure.

Until the spring of 2017 the one turkey I’d never hunted was the Gould’s turkey. Gould’s isn’t the heaviest, probably because of diet…but they are definitely the tallest, big birds with large heads and a huge tail fan. Some permits are now available in Arizona, but the Gould’s turkey is readily hunted in Sonora’s Sierra Madres.

In years gone by I’ve done a number of Coues deer hunts in Gould’s turkey range. I saw turkeys only once or twice, so I had the impression that hunting them might be extremely difficult, sort of a post-graduate turkey hunt. In the right place definitely not! I hunted with the Mossberg folks with Tall Tine Outfitters, not much more than an hour south of Nogales on Mababi Ranch. This was a very special place, where wildlife had clearly been looked after. It wasn’t just a great hunt for Gould’s turkeys…it was one of my very best turkey hunts! The only times I’ve ever seen more turkeys were Rio Grande turkeys on carefully-managed Texas ranches.

I had no idea what to anticipate, but I suppose I was expecting non-vocal birds, not like ocellated turkeys, but more like Osceola turkeys. Not so! These Gould’s turkeys acted like plain old wild turkeys caught at the peak of their springtime ritual. They gobbled, they strutted, they came to calls…and there were lots of them!

We had a full five days to hunt, but by the end of the third day four of us had seven nice gobblers between us, astonishing. Mossberg’s Linda Powell was the only holdout, and she opted to not take a second bird—her gobbler completed her fourth world slam! This is another feat beyond my wildest aspirations, but I’m glad that I now have at least passing experience with all six of our big-game birds. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll become a real turkey hunter!

This Gould’s turkey is about to give a decoy a drubbing. Although mature this gobbler had a scraggly beard so the hunters didn’t shoot him…but they eventually had to chase him away to keep him from ruining the decoy!

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Lions At The Picnic

Increase your awareness of your surroundings by consciously training yourself to see what you’re missing.

Elspeth Huxley, author of The Flame Trees of Thika and other worthy books on Africa, once recalled a family picnic in Kenya, an hour of eating and children playing in an open area bordered by a circle of brush. Only after photos of the outing were developed did the picnickers see two lions hunkered rather plainly in the thicket, watching from no more than thirty yards away. Huxley, who grew up in rural Kenya, thought this a good lesson on the need for more rigorous awareness, especially in Africa, where potential dangers can abound.

Psychologists call not seeing what’s in front of us “inattentional blindness,” and warn that it is more common than most people realize. Sometimes the extent of perceptive failure can almost defy belief, as in the famous Gorilla Experiment at Harvard. Here student subjects were divided into two teams—white shirts and black shirts—and told to toss two orange basketballs back and forth. Forty-five seconds into the game, a woman in full gorilla costume walks directly through the scene. Amazingly, 56 percent of the players, intent on their basketball tosses, failed to see the gorilla. In another version, the gorilla comes in, pounds her chest and walks off, in view for a full nine seconds. Yet—again, hard to believe—only 50 percent of the players noticed the intruding ape.

The experiment is a startling example of how blind to our environment we can be at times, especially when we are focused on specific tasks, or when we have a lapse in general attentiveness. Perceptual limitation tends to worsen even more during emergencies, when narrowed vision is a common reaction. We sometimes literally cannot see (or hear) anything other than the immediate threat or focus of our attention. Countless people have died or become gravely injured when a simple and easy escape from danger was obvious to onlookers but went unnoticed by the oblivious victims.

This can occur in non-emergency situations, as well. A common problem for hunters is tunnel vision—being so focused on a game animal or a track line that we can’t or don’t see anything else but the target of our desire. My bear-biologist friends often complain about hunters who simply don’t see obvious tracks, rubs, scats, and other signs of nearby grizzlies because they are so locked in and focused on the elk, deer, or moose they are after. Worse still are the (thankfully uncommon) hunters who are so hyped for game they “see” an antlered animal where one doesn’t exist. Horses, people, and even vehicles have been shot by hunters who swore they shooting at a buck or bull. Some of these cases defy plausibility, yet they do occur.

The antidote to all of these perceptual failures, and a good way to become both a better hunter and a more effective survivor, is to first become aware of your awareness by making it a subject of mindful concern. How well and fully are you paying attention in a given moment? How well have you been paying attention in the last few minutes or quarter-hour? Asking yourself these questions on a periodic basis can be educational, and can also help you tune back in to the present with renewed and sharpened clarity.

Situational awareness. Military, law enforcement, and an increasing number of wilderness survival schools now emphasize this concept as primary and essential. Situational awareness is a conscious taking in and evaluating of the immediate environment, with an eye both for what’s actually there, and also what might ensue, good or bad. Some people assume that such a view must entail a negative or even paranoiac view of life, but that’s a misunderstanding. The idea is to do what is usually termed a “situation scan” or “environmental survey” that (again, consciously and intentionally) looks at more than just the central claim on ordinary attention. One simple technique is the survival sweep, a usually brief but focused scanning from side to side, bottom to top, while looking for potential trouble, or ways out of trouble should something go wrong. Do this periodically as you move along, and especially when entering a new or changed environment, whether it is a narrow, rocky canyon or a jetliner taking you to Africa. As you get on the jet (or into any confined space, for that matter) scan for the nearest exit or way out in case of an emergency.

Inferential awareness. Last year while hunting elk in remote western Montana backcountry I suddenly caught a whiff of something unpleasant. I was on a narrow game trail, approaching a stand of thick timber, with a slight breeze in my face. The smell deepened and intensified into the heavy stink of carrion. I didn’t investigate, but turned around and quickly got out of there. This was prime grizzly country, and I wasn’t about to risk walking into a griz bedded down atop a cached elk or mule deer. I hadn’t seen much bear sign in the last two days, but there was no point in taking a risk. The smell was enough of a warning in that situation. Similarly, the alarm calls of a gray jay or Clark’s nutcracker, or raven, or the chattering hysteria of a spooked pine squirrel, can tell the aware hunter that something is up. Sometimes you can follow the alarm noises to track whatever is on the move—maybe a bear or a mountain lion or an elk, or another hunter. Other times, the lack or sudden cessation of a sound— birds stop chirping, frogs quit croaking—can be of equal inferential value.

Awareness tips and tricks. One key to “seeing” better outdoors (more fully, with less inattentional blindness) is to recognize visual patterns such as the predominant verticality of a forest or swath of tall grass and then scan and inspect for anything that breaks or alters that pattern, which in this example would mean anything approximately horizontal. In a mostly still habitat, look for motion, however small. Many times I’ve spotted a bedded animal because a slight ear flicker gave it away. Tail flicks and twitches are another common giveaway. It’s also helpful to note color and shade contrasts. A glistening black eyeball might be all you see (at first) of a bear in the brush or a snake blending with fallen leaves on a trail. Here’s a counterintuitive tactic that can make it easier to pick up motion, however small, within a larger setting: Relax your eyes and let them unfocus slightly so that you are taking in the larger view as though through a soft wide-angle lens. By not focusing on any particular area, your eyes are more able to pick up movement in the entire field of vision. Once movement is detected, you can zero in on it with renewed focus. Most people don’t use their peripheral vision to its full ability and range. For instance, in dim light or at night it’s often easier to make out objects by shifting from a straight-on stare to peripheral scanning.

In many advanced martial arts systems a standard posture for multiple-attacker encounters (with attackers coming from both sides) is standing sideways to the assailants while looking slightly downward and ahead, maintaining soft, open focus (that is, not focusing on the ground or any other object). This expands your peripheral-vision range, letting you pick up any motion that occurs on either side, in front and well behind (though not directly in back of) your position. In effect it allows you to see in several directions at once. The same technique can be used in many danger, emergency, and survival situations and is worth experimenting with and practicing until you can use it at will.

Awareness training: The best survival schools these days include both conceptual and practical teaching in “awareness expansion” and ability. Most hunters probably aren’t going to put themselves through formal training, but there are a number of fairly simple tips that can help anyone develop better awareness. Step one is to become aware of your awareness. This means also becoming aware of your unaware lapses and tendencies. It’s very easy for the modern technologized human mind to drop into daydreams, frettings, distractions, and other semi-trancelike states. Catching yourself and shifting back into awareness mode is an essential training exercise. Another is consciously observing, which means timed periods of looking at small, even minute details that would be overlooked in normal unaware mode. An aid to this exercise is framing, wherein you impose an artificial (or actual) limiting frame on a section of reality and then examine it with slow and deliberate care, noticing things usually neglected such as textures, shade contrasts, color variations, patterns within patterns, and so on. Also try changing points-of-view periodically. Outdoors, we tend to mainly view the world from standing head-height, so alterations in physical perspective, such as getting lower and closer to the ground, or changing angles relative to the light source, can be surprisingly revealing (especially when tracking or trailing game, for instance), allowing you to see important details that might otherwise be missed.

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Trade Them To Save Them?

The fate of the rhino may rest on the decision of whether or not to allow commercial trade in rhino horn.

In the early twentieth century, there were an estimated half million rhinos on Earth. By 1970, there were approximately 70,000 and, today, only about 28,000 rhinos survive in the wild. All five species of rhinoceros are listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Redlist, with three out of five species listed as “critically endangered.” Although these animals have roamed the earth for 40 million years, their fate is now inextricably tied to global trade decisions, one more indication of how much their world and the world of wildlife conservation itself have changed.

Humans, for medicinal and aesthetic reasons, have coveted rhinoceros horn for thousands of years; a lust for rhino horn is nothing new. In Greek mythology, rhino horn was believed to facilitate water purification. In the fifth century AD, ancient Persians believed the horn could be used to detect poisoned drinks. This belief found favor in the royal courts of Europe and persisted among Europe’s elite into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In China, the ornamental use of rhino horn dates back to at least the seventh century. In the sixteenth century, Chinese pharmacists prescribed dissolved rhino horn powder for snake bites, hallucinations, typhoid, headaches, vomiting, and “devil possession.” Of course, we now know these claims of medicinal powers for rhino horn are completely false. Currently, it is illegal to trade in rhino horn, though it remains more valuable per ounce than gold. According to IUCN’s African Rhino Specialist Group, since 2008, poachers have killed at least 5,940 African rhinos for their horns—nearly two animals per day on average. Despite intensified enforcement efforts, public awareness campaigns, global petitions, celebrity advocacy, increasing media attention, and political pressure, the situation with rhino poaching has reached a crisis point. It is likely that somewhere, as you read this, a dead or dying rhino is being defaced with a chainsaw for its horn.

Rhino horns are made of keratin, the same material found in human hair and fingernails. The center consists of dense calcium deposits and melanin that strengthen and protect the horn against sun exposure. While extensive testing has determined there is no medicinal value associated with its consumption, rhino horn remains a common and prized ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is now practiced in seventy countries outside China and Southeast Asia. In TCM, rhino horn is used in combination with Chinese herbs to reduce “hot blood,” balance body temperature, eliminate toxins, and reduce fevers. In 1993, the Chinese government banned trade in rhino horn as part of an ongoing effort to end the use of endangered species in traditional Chinese medicine. Taiwan and South Korea followed suit and also implemented bans. Despite this, many traditionalists continue to use rhino horn because their ancestors used it and reported success.

Cultural practices die hard, don’t they? However, even ancient Chinese medical texts suggest botanical substitutes for rhino horn in the manufacture of traditional remedies. To leverage this cultural alternative, partnerships between TCM practitioners and international conservation communities have grown in recent years. Many representatives are now working together to educate practitioners and consumers about the availability of acceptable substitutes for rhino horn. At the same time, they work to inform people of the conservation impacts of poaching and illegal trafficking of endangered animals.

While this strategy offers some hope for a decline in the use of rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine, two new markets have recently emerged to reinvigorate demand, and both are concentrated in Vietnam. Just ten years ago, there was no evidence of rhino horn use in that country. However, in the last decade, the nation has experienced rapid economic growth, an increase in disposable income, and a rapid increase in cancer rates. Vietnam now appears to be the leading destination for illegal rhino horn, which is being promoted in that country as a cure for cancer. IUCN’s Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, TRAFFIC, refers to this as a “sensational urban myth.” Rhino horn has also been popularized in Vietnam as a “hangover cure” for the nouveau riche, increasing its value as a status-conferring gift or bribe among Vietnam’s elite. While TRAFFIC does report arrests of Vietnamese nationals involved in illegal trade and pseudo-hunting of rhino in South Africa, no seizures of illegal rhino horn have been made in Vietnam itself since 2008, suggesting the country is doing little to police the illegal trade within its own borders. To emphasize this point, in 2010, the Javan rhino became extinct in Vietnam, the last known animal having been shot and its horn removed presumably to feed the illegal market flourishing there.

With a great international demand fueling a thriving black market, many have asked the question, “Why not make rhino horn trade legal? Regulate it, and render poachers and their illegal trade irrelevant.” After all, you don’t actually have to kill or even harm a rhinoceros to harvest its horn. It typically takes less than ten minutes to safely dehorn a tranquilized rhino and the horn grows back and can then be trimmed or harvested regularly, typically every twelve to twenty-four months. Furthermore, dehorning is, in itself, an effective disincentive to poachers. So, legal horn trade and rhino conservation would seem to make perfect partners.

International trade in rhino horn was a hot topic at this year’s CITES Convention of the Parties (CoP). CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. Established in 1975, it represents a binding international agreement established between 175 countries whose aim is to ensure that international trade in wild animals and plants remains sustainable and does not threaten their survival. CITES imposed its first global ban on international trade in rhino horn in 1977.

In October this year, at CITES CoP17, Swaziland, a small and financially strapped African nation, proposed reopening its trade in rhino horn. The country presented a plan that included the immediate sale of 700 pounds of its stockpiled rhino horn, which would generate an estimated income of $10 million USD, followed by subsequent sales of 44 pounds per year during each year to follow. According to the plan, 44 pounds per year could easily be harvested from live rhinoceroses as part of ongoing antipoaching (dehorning) efforts. Without monetizing its rhino horn stocks, Swaziland pointed out, it might soon be unable to continue its antipoaching measures.

Despite the fact that most rhino range countries, like South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe were in support, many wildlife advocates condemned the idea and a strong majority rejected Swaziland’s proposal. Moreover, CITES members voted to reject all proposals to sell rhino horn (and elephant ivory), whether seized from poachers, obtained through natural deaths, euthanasia of problem animals, or harvesting from live animals. Why? Because many conservation groups share the view that any legal trade would stimulate demand, allow legal trade in horn to provide cover for illicit trade and thus complicate law enforcement efforts. They further point to well-known political corruption in a number of selling and buying countries, and express strong doubts that legal regulation is even possible.
Advocates for legal trade argue differently, insisting that rhino horn is a renewable resource. They believe legalizing international trade would entirely undermine the black market, establish legitimate use and trade, promote economic growth, and positively impact human livelihoods in some of the world’s poorest countries, and do all this without negative conservation consequences. If the sale of horn were legal, advocates argue, rhino ranching would yield more profit per hectare than any other form of agriculture, thus safeguarding wildlife habitat, while simultaneously producing incentives and funding for conservation efforts. Those who are pro-trade also cite advances in DNA technology, which now make it possible to track a horn or its parts from rhino to consumer, thus increasing the likelihood of effective monitoring and trade regulation.

Both sides make compelling arguments.  And while both sides also agree that more law enforcement is needed, both agree that enforcement alone is not enough. We need something more and that something is an incentive to keep living rhinos with us; not incentives to poach them. Sustainable use and legal trade have proven manageable and effective incentives globally for conserving many wildlife species. Why not for rhinos?  Trading their horn legally may be a tough choice for some, but may well be our only hope. Losing our fight to save rhinos is no choice of all.

The .270 Vs. the .30-06

It’s hard to go wrong when you choose between America’s most beloved cartridges.

Yes, it’s absolutely true that I’m a magnum sort of guy, what you might call a “magniac”—at least in certain applications. In the big, open mountains of Asia you will frequently find me carrying a fast .30-caliber. In open country I might make the same choice for the full run of African plains game. On the other hand, for most whitetail hunting you’ll probably find me carrying a 7×57, and recommending its modern equivalent, the mild-mannered 7mm-08 Remington, to my kids and yours.

Among American deer hunters the 6mms and .25s have strong followings, and thanks to the 6.5mm Creedmoor’s sudden popularity, the 6.5mms (.264-caliber) are gaining ground. But if you wrap together the dozens of deer-size game animals and include the occasional elk and black bear, then the most sensible cartridge spectrum probably lies between the 7mm-08 and the magnum .30s. Within that broad range there are two time-honored cartridges that remain among our most popular. This is not just tradition: It’s because they work. They are, of course, the .270 Winchester and the .30-06 Springfield.

Lasting popularity has its benefits. Everybody loads both .270 Winchester and .30-06 ammo, so there is a wide selection of bullets and loads, available in most retail outlets.

Introduced in 1925, the .270 is 92 years old; the ’06 is 111. Despite the many cartridges that have come (and gone) both remain among our most popular sporting cartridges. Sheer popularity is an asset: All manufacturers load both cartridges, any outlet that sells ammo will have them on the shelves, and both are offered in a wide array of bullet weights and designs. But which one should you have? Legendary gunwriter Jack O’Connor was the great champion of the .270, to such an extent that it’s widely believed today that it was the only cartridge he used. That’s far from the truth; he used a lot of cartridges—and he was also a fan of the .30-06. From 1925 until the end of his life he generally had both. He loved his sheep hunting and the .270 became his personal talisman. He would never admit it in print, but in a letter to Ken Elliott he conceded that the .30-06 was a more versatile cartridge. I agree with that. Since 1976 I’ve usually had at least one of each, and although the .270 is only a .30-06 case necked down to take a .277-inch bullet, I see them as having distinct differences and applications.

Both are excellent deer cartridges. The .270 has adequate power for any deer that walks, and the .30-06 probably carries some overkill. The .270 shoots flatter and has quite a bit less recoil. The .30-06 carries heavier bullets of greater frontal area, and packs significantly greater punch. So, much as I hate to admit it, the older I get the more I think Professor O’Connor was right all along: The .270 is an ideal cartridge for sheep hunting. Wild sheep are not extremely tough creatures; the .270 is plenty powerful, shoots flat, and because its lighter bullets develop less recoil, it can be built into a lighter rifle without punishing its owner. We can all agree the .270 is a great cartridge for deer and mountain game. When I was much younger I questioned its suitability for elk, but that was silly. Of course you can take elk with a .270. O’Connor did, and my wife, Donna, and I both have. You can also take moose with a .270, and in a pinch, good-size bears. In his heart of hearts I don’t think even O’Connor considered the .270 an ideal choice for grizzlies, but over the years he took several grizzlies with his .270s because they were incidental to sheep hunting and that’s what he was carrying. I was hunting with my buddy Mike Satran in Yukon in 1999. He was hunting sheep with his .270 and used it to take a fine grizzly. It charged the horses and he stopped it. Elk, moose, bears: The .30-06 with heavier bullets is an even better tool.

Jack O’Connor with one of his rams, taken with his pet “Number Two” .270. While it’s true he used a .270 for most of his wild sheep, it’s also true that most of his early rams were taken with a .30-06. He owned and used several .30-06s throughout his career.

In Africa the .270 isn’t nearly as popular as it is over here. It is an excellent cartridge for, let’s say, “medium plains game” up to perhaps zebra. Donna has used hers quite a bit, and I’ve carried a .270 as the “light rifle” on several safaris. It accounted for one of my sitatungas in Zambia, and it’s been useful on open plains and floodplains where a bit of reach is handy. However, because of Africa’s great variety the .30-06 is a better plains game cartridge. It made its bones on the Roosevelt safari with 220-grain round-nose bullets. It was Hemingway’s preference in 1933, and was Ruark’s light rifle on the Horn of the Hunter safari in 1952. Today we have much better bullets. The 220-grain load is almost obsolete, and there isn’t much one can’t do with a .30-06 and a good 180-grain bullet.

In the 1950s Grancel Fitz became the first person to take all North American species. A generation later my friend J.Y. Jones accomplished the feat, documented in One Man, One Rifle, One Land. Both used .30-06 rifles across the board. This means not only the big bears and bison, but our four North American wild sheep and the Rocky Mountain goat are also included. The .270 shoots flatter, but in these days of fast magnums it’s important to point out that the .30-06 is not just a powerful cartridge; with the right bullets and loads it shoots flat enough for most hunting applications. With carefully developed handloads or “extra-fast” loads like Hornady’s Superformance, the .30-06 can exceed 3,000 feet per second (fps) with 150-grain bullets; 2,900 fps with 165-grain bullets; and 2,800 fps with 180-grain bullets. These speeds almost reach the territory of the .30-caliber short magnums (RCM, RSAUM, WSM), and aren’t all that far behind the .300 Winchester Magnum. As our second magnum era progresses—along with the current fascination for long-range shooting—these are facts we (including me) need to remember.

I will go along with O’Connor’s private summation that the .30-06 is more versatile than the .270: Better for larger North American game and better for the full run of African plains game. On the other hand, the .270 is probably a better all-round deer cartridge, better for sheep and goats, and probably the most perfect pronghorn cartridge. So it depends on your needs; for my purposes I can’t imagine not having at least one of each on hand.

 

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Blast From The Past

Sports Afield once had an official “Liar’s Club!”

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Sports Afield “Liar’s Club” was an enormously popular part of the magazine. On the back page of every issue, readers would share the most outlandish tall tales they could come up with. The readers whose stories were chosen received an official “membership” in the Liar’s Club, complete with membership card and official letter. This official member of the Liar’s Club was inducted in 1942, according to the postmark on the envelope.

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When The Hunters Are Gone

A rural African community struggles to maintain its wildlife in the wake of a hunting ban.

What happens to rural African communities, and the wildlife that surrounds them, when safari hunting goes away? For many years, the hunting sector has supported wildlife initiatives in rural Africa with anti poaching efforts, schools, clinics, and village development programs. Without this support, communities often flounder and resort to poaching wildlife to supply their nutritional needs and sell for income.

One example of a community struggling with such a transition is the Xhauxhwatubi Development Trust (XDT), based in Phuduhudu Village in Botswana. For years, this community has held the lease for the Phuduhudu Concession, an area of more than 1,000 square kilometers, which has a small hunting quota. Through this, they were able to generate revenue from the sale of the hunting quota, providing funds for community and village development.

But in 2013, the Botswana government imposed a hunting moratorium on state land, which is still effective in 2017, and the main source of income to Phuduhudu Village was cut off. The community, along with many like it, continues to lobby the Botswana government to bring back a hunting quota for key species, including elephants. Human/elephant conflict in the region has reached an all-time high, with many rural communities calling on the government to reintroduce elephant hunting to provide compensation for crop damage and loss of human life, to provide protein for the village, and to generate funds for the community.

So far, this hasn’t happened, so the communities are working on ways to initiate their own commitment to managing their concession areas and implement small-scale conservation efforts. Funding for the efforts isn’t coming from the government, so the communities are looking to outside sources. If funds can be found relatively quickly, the community hopes to be able to continue its conservation efforts and maintain the wildlife diversity in the area. The most crucial part of this is the need to develop and maintain water sources for wildlife–something that the hunting operators used to do and that has been neglected since hunting was stopped.

The elephants in the Phuduhudu concession are part of the migratory system between key elephant habitats in the Chobe, the Okavango, and Zimbabwe. Development of water sources would not only help wildlife, it would help validate the communities’ future role in conservation and management in the coming years. Without these infrastructure developments, communities are more likely to lose their concessions to private tourism-sector developments, or, worse, resort to other land uses, such as mining and cattle farming, which will displace the wildlife entirely.

The villager of Phuduhudu are appealing to the international hunting community, especially the many clients who were fortunate enough to have hunted elephants in Botswana when it was still open. They’re asking for emergency funding to provide water and other management infrastructure such as road networks and anti poaching camps within the concession to maintain wildlife diversity, restore habitat, and ensure continued community ownership of concessions where safari hunting was, and still is, an appropriate conservation practice.

The donations needed range from $1,800, which buys a water tank and stand, to $2,000, which buys a solar panel and submersible pump. Well-known Botswana trophy expeditor Debbie Peake is working with the Xhauxhwatubi Development Trust to help facilitate this initiative. Hunters who would like to help should contact her at [email protected] for information.

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Making History

Famous female hunters have long walked the game trails of the world.

Surveys by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the National Sporting Goods Association show that 3.3 million women hunted in 2012, compared to just over 3 million in 2008. That growth of nearly 300,000 represents a 10 percent increase in just four years. This continues a decade-long trend–from 2006 to 2011, the percentage of female hunters jumped from 9.6 percent of all hunters to 11 percent. Programs to introduce women to hunting and shooting deserve part of the credit, as do more and more manufacturers who are designing products especially for women.

This is great news, but the fact is women hunters are not a new phenomenon. There is a long and proud tradition of female hunters and shooters, both in the United States and elsewhere, who have held their own and often exceeded the accomplishments of their male counterparts.

Most of us know the story of the great sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Born into poverty in 1860 in western Ohio, Annie began trapping before the age of seven, and she was shooting and hunting by age eight to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the game she killed to local shopkeepers and to restaurants and hotels in Cincinnati and northern Ohio. At age fifteen, the revenues from her shooting skills paid off the mortgage on her mother’s farm.

Her prowess was well known in the region, and in 1875 a local hotelier arranged a shooting match between Annie and the traveling show marksman Frank Butler when Butler bet him $100 ($2,155 in today’s dollars) that he could beat any local shooter. Butler lost the match and the bet, married Annie, and the rest is history.

Paulina Brandreth, a deer hunter, naturalist, and photographer from the Adirondacks, held her own with the finest deer hunters and outdoor writers of the late 1800s and early 1900s. She began writing for Forest and Stream magazine in 1894, at the tender age of nine. Her articles were credited to “Camp Good Enough, Brandreth Lake,” which was a deer camp owned by her grandfather. Later, she wrote under the pen name Paul Brandreth, and in 1930 published one of the first major books on white-tailed deer hunting, Trails of Enchantment. Paulina was a passionate and skilled still-hunter of whitetail bucks, and she often went afield with other well-known nimrods of the day, including Roy Chapman Andrews, General “Black Jack” Pershing, and Reuben Cary.

Across the Atlantic, a number of adventurous and well-heeled women of the Edwardian period were pursuing the most exotic of worldwide hunting adventures. An amazing Englishwoman named Lady Catherine Minna Jenkins, who was married to a judge in Bombay, had already taken five tigers in India and a variety of game in Somalia when she decided to hunt in Tibet in 1906. Her husband was too busy to accompany her, so she went alone. During her solo shaker in some of the most difficult mountains in the world, she shot seventeen game animals, including blue sheep, Tibetan argali, gazelles, urial, barasingha, ibex, and marcher. She recounted her adventures in Sport and Travel in Both Tibets, published in 1909.

Two cousins, Englishwomen Agnes and Cecily Herbert, undertook fantastic hunting adventures that took them to Alaska, the Caucasus, and Africa in the years between 1906 and 1911. They formed and organized their own expeditions, some of them solo and others with companions, and Agnes, a journalist, wrote a book about each excursion. Agnes’s comment at the beginning of her book Two Dianas in Alaska is classic: “My friend shudders at my slaying a rhinoceros, but manages to eat part of an unfortunate sheep immediately afterwards. I wonder if the good lady’s words ring true. She may be right, and books on sport and adventure are only for men and boys, the sterner sex. If, therefore, you, reader o’ mine, should regard all forms of taking life as unwomanly, read no more… We went to Alaska to shoot, and–we shot.”

When it comes to guts, though, it’s hard to match the famous Osa Johnson. As she and her husband, Martin, filmed groundbreaking footage of Africa’s wildlife in the 1920s and 1930s, essentially inventing the wildlife documentary, it often fell to Osa to fearlessly stop charging lions and elephants with her 9.3×62 Mauser. Her autobiography, I Married Adventure, was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1940, and three-quarters of a century later, it’s still an exciting read.

Women have a long and proud tradition in the world of hunting, and there’s no doubt all of these adventurous women would be pleased to know that it continues today.

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Incidents from an Elephant Hunter’s Diary

Brand new, never-before-published stories from famed elephant hunter Walter “Karamojo” Bell!

Those who have read Walter D.M. Bell’s previously published books, which include Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter, Karamojo Safari, and Bell of Africa, will be excited to learn that a treasure trove of new, previously unpublished material written by Bell has been discovered and is now in print for the first time, in a new book called Incidents From An Elephant Hunter’s Diary.

The new stories were owned by a private collector who has had them for years. He contacted Safari Press and provided the materials in hopes that a book might be published from them. They consisted of ten bound school-type notebooks in which both handwritten and typed manuscripts were found. There were also two ring binders with folders full of handwritten notes and drawings by Bell, as well as photos. These have now been collected into this fascinating new book.

Incidents from an Elephant Hunter’s Diary is a must-have for all Bell enthusiasts and anyone interested in Africana. Order it now from Safari Press.

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Livin’ La Vida Locavore

As more people take up hunting in order to eat healthier, a new study is exploring the importance of wild game as a food source.

In today’s world, our food mostly comes to us purged, processed, and packaged. We acquire it not by growing it from a seed or raising it from a calf, but by swiping a card or clicking a mouse. Burgers sizzle on our grills, but we’ve never been to a feedlot or slaughterhouse. We crunch an ear of corn, but the machinery that planted and harvested it remains only a vague impression gleaned from a drive down a Midwestern interstate. It’s incredible, really, how separated most of us have become from the basic elements that keep us alive.

That’s one of the many reasons we are so lucky to be hunters. Like traditional farmers and ranchers, we are some of the few in the modern era who have not entirely lost the connection to our origins, the understanding of the personal
responsibility we have toward the ecosystems and the animals that nourish us.

Thanks to a push toward healthier lifestyles and the popularity of books such as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a larger segment of society is starting to think beyond packaged and processed food and wonder what, exactly, we’ve been eating all this time, where it came from, and whether we can do better. As people around us begin to explore this in their own way—whether by shopping at a neighborhood farmer’s market or cautiously sampling the elk steak we share with them—we hunters have a lot to teach and talk about.

Shane Mahoney examined this topic in detail in a recent article for Sports Afield called “Hunters: The Original Locavores.” In it he suggested that much of the increased interest in hunting in recent years is coming from people who are focused primarily on the health and environmental benefits hunting can provide. And these, he contends, may be key to preserving our hunting traditions long into the future.

Shane, who holds a Masters of Science degree in Zoology from Memorial Institute of Newfoundland and has worked as a scientist, wildlife manager, and policy innovator for more than thirty years, understands the importance of solid scientific facts and quantifiable information in making the case for hunting’s future. Accordingly he is taking our understanding of wild game as food to an entirely new level with his Wild Harvest Initiative, a multi-year study designed to measure and analyze the biomass of wild animal protein eaten by citizens of the United States and Canada, and determine its nutritional and economic value.

Amazingly, this is the first time the amount of food taken by hunters has ever been examined on a large scale. The project is expected to prove the importance of recreational hunting as a food source and economic benefit, providing another important reason to conserve habitat for game animals around the country. You can learn more about the Wild Harvest Initiative at www.conservationvisions.org/wild-harvest-initiative.

A lot of us who are fortunate to at least occasionally eat veggies from the garden and venison from the hill above the house may not think of ourselves as part of a lifestyle with the fancy name “locavore.” We just enjoy being part of the process of acquiring our own food. But that concept, simple as it may be, is a bridge that offers a way to connect with others who are interested in a more elemental lifestyle, even if they aren’t hunters—yet.

Photos courtesy Tweed Media

Feral Hogs

Opportunity or Plague?

I’m not very good at sitting on a stand. In fact, I hate it…but in a lot of areas it’s the only sensible way to hunt whitetails. So I deal with it. Most of the time I fidget, unable to sit still…but that last hour of daylight holds my full attention. For me that’s the most exciting time. In the morning dawn brings promise, but after the sun comes up chances get slimmer by the minute.
It’s the opposite in the evening…with every minute that passes chances improve. Until,suddenly, you realize it’s just too dark…depending on weather and vegetation, there may be minutes of “legal shooting time”…but if a buck shows up you can’t judge antlers.

That’s a big let-down with a lot of my whitetail hunting, but those last few minutes of near-dark remain exciting at my friend Zack Aultman’s place down in Georgia. Too late for deer or, in the spring, the turkeys have gone to roost…so now it’s time for pigs! Folks who have hogs on their place generally don’t love them…but folks who hunt on places with hogs often do. Well, not always. On my last night in Georgia in December ‘16 I had a half-dozen does and a young buck on a food plot to my right, and it was a perfect evening, misty and cool. Then four hogs came out
to my left.

About 45 minutes of light remained, so although I was sorely tempted I didn’t shoot…but I might as well have. Deer don’t like hogs. Because of a slight roll to the terrain they couldn’t have seen these pigs, and with the breeze it’s impossible they smelled them…but even though I couldn’t hear them the deer could, because, a quarter-mile from the hogs, they ran like the hounds of hell were after them. The hogs left as well and I finished the hunt in solitary splendor.

Videographer Kelly Bertellotti with her first wild hog, taken while filming a spring turkey hunt in Georgia. After the turkeys roosted we went hog hunting, and she shot a nice
“eatin’ size” pig just after sunset.

Nearly 15 years ago gunmaking legend Kenny Jarrett took me down to hunt at Zack’s “Aultman Forest,” literally a pine plantation. There were hogs present back then, but only a few, and sightings were rare. I’ve been there a number of times since, and I’m shocked at how the hogs have increased. Zack declared war years ago—shoot on sight—but it’s like closing the barn door after the horses are gone. The pigs didn’t descend on Aultman Forest in a surprise porcine wave attack. There was no intelligence failure, no “Dugout Doug” MacArthur at a remote base ignoring reports. Their increase was noted, action was taken, and Zack’s troops haven’t run out of bullets…but the pigs are winning. From perhaps thirty pigs taken a year when I first hunted there, in recent years the take has climbed to 1200 pigs per year…and their numbers keep growing.

This is just a small microcosm of what is happening across much of the Southeast…and northward and westward from there. Feral hogs have been present since before the Civil War, so exactly why the current exponential expansion (in both numbers and range) is occurring is unclear…but for sure it’s happening. Current estimates place the feral hog population in the United States at about nine million…the second largest large wild mammal population in North
America after the whitetail. Feral hogs are well-established in various enclaves from Mexico to quite far up in Canada, with sightings in every U.S. State except Alaska. Agricultural damage now exceeds two billion per year.

Now, in Georgia I enjoy shooting hogs. That’s the right term, because it’s stand hunting, and when they appear we shoot them if the timing is right. Realistically, this doesn’t do much good; we take one or two out of a sounder, and the rest are educated, because pigs are smart. In California I enjoy hunting them, which is also a correct word, because we’ve lived with feral hogs for generations, and hunting them is business on the Central Coast. A small sounder can destroy a barley field in a night, but the pigs out there are self-limiting. Periodic drought gives
them up and down cycles, and they aren’t the plague they’ve become in the Southeast. In fact, they are a resource: Wild hogs have replaced deer as California’s top big-game animal, and in our Central Coast region hunting them, processing them, and housing and feeding the folks from our big cities who hunt them is a mini-industry.

Now, I’m from Kansas. When I was a kid I doubt there was a single feral hog in the state of Oklahoma, just to our south. Today the population is climbing toward a million, established in all counties. They’re a problem there, but also a business; hog outfitters have sprung up all over Oklahoma.
They’re definitely a problem in Texas, several million strong—but they’re also a resource, with hog hunting (including, now, from helicopters) an active business.

I’m a landowner in southeast Kansas, fifteen miles from Oklahoma. My neighbors and I keep watching for hog rootings, and indeed we have an ideal situation for hog movement: Wooded, interconnected river corridors, much of it public land; unlimited food; and lots of nonresident landowners. Hogs are known to have established themselves off to the west, and to the east along the Kansas-Missouri line. Once they’re in breeding populations they’re hard to get rid of…but we don’t have them…yet.

Recently I attended a local seminar for landowners on feral hogs, conducted by the government hunters for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Two years ago a farmer shot two hogs less than ten miles from my place. I assumed we’d see pigs in six months, but it hasn’t happened. In our area these guys are doing an awesome job holding the pigs at the Oklahoma line! As a hunter I’d be happy to see them…just at dark while I’m sitting on a deer stand. My neighbors, however, are farmers; they dread them, and we assume they’re on their way.

Because they are so smart, and because they are so prolific, once established it is almost impossible to get rid of them. Ask the folks in the Southeast, and in Texas, and in Oklahoma! In Kansas we’re not smug; we’re scared. The USDA boys showed how the progressive proliferation of hogs in Tennessee and Oklahoma could not have been altogether natural. The geographic jumps were too large, so it must have been aided by folks releasing truckloads of feral hogs so they could hunt pigs.

That genie can’t be put back in the bottle, but our position in Kansas is that landowners or designated agents can shoot hogs…but it is unlawful to possess or transport wild hogs, and there will be no selling of pig hunts. We don’t want to follow the Oklahoma example. Crop damage is just one issue, but hogs will hurt our deer herd and our deer hunting, along with our turkeys and everything else.

I support this position. I’ve seen the advance of the feral hogs in too many places. They don’t need help, and I know how destructive they can be. But, every night just at dusk, when I sit on a deer stand in Kansas, I imagine I’m in Georgia, waiting for hogs…and I wonder if this will be the first night when wild hogs make an appearance at my place. For sure they’re coming, and I’m pretty sure they can’t be stopped.


In most areas feral hogs occur in a wide range of colors and patterns, although black seems to be predominant for most mature boars.

 

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