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Clean Bores. And Certainty.

Lead, copper, water and time conspire to sabotage accuracy. You can save it. But first….

.30-06 Springfield -- Still America’s Best?

It’s a matter of history that one of the first sporting uses of the .30-06 Springfield cartridge was by Boone and Crockett Club founder, Theodore Roosevelt, on his epic 1909-1910 safari. Except Roosevelt’s famous Springfield wasn’t actually a .30-06! Some time back I actually held that rifle at the Springfield Armory Museum, and the truth is it was chambered to the original 1903 version and never modified; thus, was actually a .30-03!

Love Affair With .30s

It may not be true that if you haven’t hunted with a .30-30 rifle, or a .30-06 or a .300 Winchester Magnum, you’re still learning to tie your shoes. Some souls so deprived reach adulthood, though mothers have long known .30s are good for you. Hunters born before there were .30s have all died.

Build Your House

Building your house doesn’t have to be a large or fancy house, but what this means is use what you have to get as steady as possible—in the time available.

Fur Trapping and the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation

By John Organ — Recently, there has been a resurgence of legislative action that would ban or greatly restrict fur trapping in certain jurisdictions in the United States. The protagonists of these initiatives claim that trapping is inconsistent with the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (NAM) and violates principles of wildlife governance. Are these claims valid? No, and I’ll explain why.

Bears on an Edge

Imagine a 300-pound male bear at the edge of a hardwood forest that borders a crop field bursting with ripe corn. Does he take a detour to avoid venturing into this exposed area, or does he walk in and enjoy the abundance of food? Would it matter if this was the only crop field in the area or adjacent to five other fields? Or if there were many bears in the area? Or if there were people nearby? What if this bear was a sow with two cubs in tow?

Sex and the Deer Family

By John Organ — Polygamous species include those we are quite familiar with: whitetail and mule deer, elk, and moose, where one male may breed several females. Polygamous cervid species display what biologists term sexual dimorphism, meaning the two sexes exhibit differences in some physical features. In the case of cervids, this is represented by males typically having larger body size than females. This is true of many species of mammals that are polygamous.

Find a Rest...Or Carry One

I was pronghorn hunting, walking through rolling sage, when a coyote came out of a little draw and trotted across my view. I flopped down to shoot prone...

Tricks of Light

By Craig Boddington — Under certain conditions, I enjoy hunting with iron sights, which parallels using archery tackle, handguns, and muzzleloaders: You’re consciously surrendering range and losing critical first- and last-light capability. If you can’t see, you definitely can’t shoot.

The Harvestable Surplus Concept Revisited

By John Organ — Nearly 100 years ago Aldo Leopold, the father of game management, coined the term “harvestable surplus.” The intended meaning of the term is that some wildlife species and populations may produce more young in a given year than can survive to the following year. Those individuals doomed to die over the winter, for example, represent the “surplus” in the population. Leopold observed that those surplus animals could be killed by hunters during the fall, instead of succumbing to winter mortality, and there would be little impact on the population. So, in theory, hunting would be sustainable because the population would not change.