Sports Afield back issues from November 1996:
The great Alaskan wolf debate: the state is still looking for a sane way to balance predators with prey. (includes related article on wildlife management)(Column)
Nov 01, 1996; ... The sun skidded over the southern horizon, casting orange light across the great snowy peaks of the Alaska Range. The beeps in my headset were growing louder, and Pat Valkenberg, a research biologist with the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation, eased the plane into a long, turn. ...
Where the pheasants are: how to successfully find and hunt birds from opening to closing day. (includes related articles on ring-necked pheasants in South Dakota and reauthorization of the Conservation Reserve Program)
Nov 01, 1996; ... The key to successful pheasant hunting is to divide each season into three distinct periods: early, middle and late. Because birds change their habits as the season progresses, knowing which type of habitat is likely to hold birds during each period will put you into pheasants all year. ...
The shattering truth: fish don't break fishing rods - people do.
Nov 01, 1996; ... We were up near the northern border of Saskatchewan, having great fun catching large pike on flies. My partner, Chris, was casting from the stern. A pike in the 12-pound range slammed his fly and he lifted the rod sharply overhead, straight up, to set the hook. The fish surged and the rod ...
All choked up: how to make your shotgun throw the best patterns possible. (includes related articles on finger-tightening the choke tube and nominal choke constriction)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Choke is a critical but vastly misunderstood aspect of shotgunning that's crucial to successful wingshooting. The advent of sporting clays shooting, in which targets are shot from 10 to 50 yards away, has brought about numerous improvements in choke design and use. If you're not familiar ...
Cold wars: the lowdown on finding fish as fall waters get chilled and forage grows scarce. (bass fishing)(includes related article on vertical-drop casting)
Nov 01, 1996; ... As rivers and lakes rapidly chill with the approach of winter, bass can become tough to find and catch for a number of reasons. They've been gorging to store up fat for the long, cold season ahead, so their urge to feed has diminished, they tend to secrete themselves into heavy cover; and ...
Backroads to nowhere: lifesaving strategies for stranded sportsmen.
Nov 01, 1996; ... In early December 1992, three young men attempted to traverse a remote logging road in their 4x4 pickup. The unmaintained road was, theoretically, a shortcut between two small Montana towns. At 8 p.m., high in the mountains, surrounded by blackness and in subzero temperatures, the truck ...
ASA crowd-pleasers: a sneak preview of what's new for 1997. (American Sportfishing Association, fishing lures)
Nov 01, 1996; ... The American Sportfishing Association (ASA) Show in New Orleans this past summer lacked major tackle innovations, but a number of excellent lures were introduced by leading manufacturers. Here are my top micks among the new offerings.Hot'N Tot Flash: On the 25th anniversary of ...
Four and twenty rabbits and ducks? Wild-game pies are rich in flavor and history. (includes recipe and related information on Colonial Williamsburg)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Those infamous blackbirds baked in a pie do not make for savory eating, but the well-known nursery rhyme only hints at the kinds of things our English ancestors put under a mantle of pastry dough. Back in the Elizabethan era meat pies were created to be the most impressive and lavish of ...
Weatherby lite: a new Mark V makes extra weight a burden of the past. (Weatherby's Mark V Standard lightweight bolt-action rifle)(Evaluation)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Over the last few decades I have become an unapologetic fan of big-game rifles that weigh less than a boxcar. I've made more than a few treks up near-vertical peaks toting a heavyweight tackdriver, which gives me a strong appreciation of rifles that are both effective and lightweight. Two ...
The still-hunting advantage: sometimes it's the only way you'll see a buck. (deer hunting)(includes related information on Danner's Dri-Foot 600 hunting boot)
Nov 01, 1996; ... The buck never knew I was there. I had been pussyfooting down an old logging trail, pausing every five yards or so, stopping every 20. I was standing next to a large hemlock, my body partially obscured by branches, watching the road in front of me, when I saw movement off to the right. A ...
The well-outfitted ATV: how to turn your machine into a true hunting rig. (all-terrain vehicle)(includes related article on Kawasaki Prairie 400 4x4)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Whether you are buying a new all-terrain vehicle to get around the woods or are considering upgrading your current one, a few dedicated accessories can make life on the trail a lot more convenient. Some are available as options on the machine while others are aftermarket products that you ...
A sheltered life: how to choose and use the perfect home away from it all. (tents)(includes related article on tent-keeping)
Nov 01, 1996; ... No piece of equipment is as crucial to the success of a backcountry trip as the tent. If the stove malfunctions, you can build a fire. If your sleeping bag isn't warm enough, you can sleep with extra clothes. If your headlamp's battery goes dead, you can use your companion's or simply go ...
The other woodcock: no fooling, go out and hunt some snipe. (includes related information on breeding and wintering range)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Come on, Harrison, we're going on a snipe hunt tonight, and you get to hold the gunnysack," a counselor at Camp Waukenatina instructed as we headed into the dark and foggy woods. For two hours, I beat the brush, calling "snipe, snipe, snip," without turning up a single bird. ...
Shooting pains: avoid debilitating aches and strains by easing into fall sport.
Nov 01, 1996; ... This is the time of year when traffic increases on the dirt road next to my house in the Catskills. It means my friend Alex, who owns a pheasant arm and sporting clays range at the top of the mountain, is starting to get busy as hunters from all over, as far away as New York City, start ...
Small-town spin: a hundred ways to get a hunter's vote: where Bob Dole and Bill Clinton stand on issues that affect sportsmen. (environmental policy)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Last summer, a magazine published a comparison of Russell, Kansas, and Hope, Arkansas. The stats were remarkably similar. Hope had a few more bars, a few more churches; Russell more car dealerships and grain elevators. But they were practically the same size and, if read the life stories ...
Cold duck: you have to make the tough conditions part of your strategy. (duck hunting)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Behold the late-season duck hunter, keeper of the waterfowling flame. To him, the best thing about deer season is that it keeps the part-timers the hell out of the marshes in November and December. In his blind, waiting for the next flight of ducks, the late-season hunter hears ...
Just as dangerous as a grizzly. (black bear)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Almost my first hunting story - not the written kind but the kind, nearly 30 years later, you find yourself settling in behind a tin cup of whisky beside a campfire and starting to tell - comes from the heart of grizzly country, but it's about a black bear. The story's elements: ...
Cold in the extreme. (white-tailed deer hunting)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... On a late-November hunt in the Allagash region of Maine a few years ago, five of us paddled canoes far into the wilderness an set up camp near the West Branch of the Penobscot. The temperatures plummeted on our first night there, going from the 40s down to 0 [degrees] F. The ...
Life on the edge. (mountain-goat hunting)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... On the coast of Washington, don't climb the perpendicular rain forests they call mountains. You wrestle them. You go after them on all fours. Which is exactly what I was doing one gloomy, drizzly October day, trying to get within 100 yards of a big billy goat on a granite scarp with a ...
The fowlest weather. (hunting for waterfowl)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Novelist Robert F. Jones once described the Cape buffalo as "mean as a half-ton hemorrhoid." Another writer summed up the grizzly - an animal that has inspired more fear than any other in North America - by calling it "death in the shadows." Such labels aren't without some justification ...
Armed to the teeth. (hunting for wild boar)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Sometimes wild boar hunting can be as gentle as stalking a group of hogs in a lush, green oat field; scanning them for a broad-shoulder trophy boar; and making a clean 100-yard shot. Safe, orderly fun. In other situations, you might be still-hunting through jungle-thick vegetation along a ...
Deep trouble in the Northern Rockies. (elk hunting)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... I was hunting with a college friend deep in Montana's Bitterroot Mountains, a dozen miles from the nearest logging road. It was late October, and there was snow on the ground above 6000 feet marked with fresh elk tracks. The trail entered a jungle of lodgepole pine, too thick to penetrate ...
Hunting without fear. (brown-bear hunting)(includes related information on hunting safety)(Dangerous Hunts)(Cover Story)
Nov 01, 1996; ... The ultimate game of chance is not in some casino in Las Vegas: It's played in the alder jungles of Alaska's Kodiak Island archipelago, home to roughly 3000 brown bear. It was there I sat crouched in a raindrenched poncho, listening nervously as a 900-plus-pound Kodiak brown bear crunched ...
Hunting for fall trout. (includes related information on fishing lures and flies)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Hunting pheasants in a field close to home, I keep swerving toward its middle reaches, where a deep-banked stream meandering through the tall grass gives off irresistible pulsations of trout. That one small piece of land supports both pheasants and an excellent but little-known brown ...
The making of a bowhunter. (includes related article on bowhunting school and list of schools)
Nov 01, 1996; ... I'm a bird hunter, I used to tell people, not a deer hunter, an implied superiority in the claim. Wingshooting involved walking in the woods and kicking up grouse and woodcock, not inert subterfuge practiced on a platform 10 feet above the ground. From time to time I even used the ...
The troubled shooter: how to determine the problems - and fix them - when your sighting-in session goes sour.
Nov 01, 1996; ... A scoped big-game rifle is an integrated system of many different parts and materials. All of them must work together for successful sighting-in and reliable accuracy. But even if your deer rifle hasn't shifted its zero since the Nixon administration, things happen to change that: Scopes ...
The way home. (bird hunting)
Nov 01, 1996; ... I had a setback in my hunting. I used to hunt everything - big game waterfowl and upland birds. In a 10-year period it had shrunk to upland birds, which is the only kind of hunting I'd done from the beginning. I'd had a number of dogs, all pointers: one heartthrob of middling achievement ...
Snow geese 101. (includes related information on hunting gear and list of manufacturers)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Prevailing wisdom has it that shooting snow geese is the waterfowler's equivalent to whacking fish in a barrel. But after four days of hunting in North Dakota last fall, I can firmly attest that that notion has as much validity as those so-called "brush-cutting deer slugs" or a $3 bill. ...
The outfitter. (hunting boots, other hunting supplies)(Buyers Guide)
Nov 01, 1996; ... Your license, your gun and good boots are all you really need to hunt. Everything else can usually be wangled, borrowed, or bought en route. But just as you can't hunt without proof or legality or your most trusted gun, you'll get nowhere if your footwear isn't warm, waterproof and ...
Hunting with Ted Nugent. (includes related information on Nugent's Kamp for Kids)(Interview)
Nov 01, 1996; ... I keep it up! I keep it up-it-y!" Ted Nugent shouts at me across his French toast on a December morning at the Silver Spoon Cafe in Concord, Michigan. The "Tedquarters" of Ted Nugent World Bowhunters - store fan club, hunting organization and subculture rolled into one - is just up the ...