Petersen's Hunting March 2019

Coyotes have an incredible ability to survive. Consider the campaign to eradicate wild canines—both coyotes and wolves—from the landscape in the early 1900s. While it was more than effective at nearly making the wolf extinct from the Lower 48, coyotes survived. And thrived. Once their main competition was removed, coyote populations climbed. And they continue to do so today. A number of factors are at play here. In addition to reducing pressure from other predators, the removal of wolves from the West and Midwest led to an increase in populations of deer, rabbits, and other prey. More food sources combined with less competition gave coyotes room to expand, and when conditions are ideal, the size of a coyote litter increases to as many as 10 pups. Naturally, humans have a large effect…

Congratulations to Jim Shockey on winning the 2018 Weatherby Award. Shockey joins the ranks of an exclusive list of acclaimed hunters, including Petersen’s Hunting’s own Craig Boddington, whose name was engraved on the trophy in 2017. The two internationally known hunters represent the unprecedented honor of having back-to-back Weatherby recipients as valued members of the Outdoor Sportsman Group team. Boddington serves as Executive Field Editor here at Petersen’s Hunting, as well as at a number of our sister publications, and also joins us as a co-host of Petersen’s Hunting Adventures TV. Shockey is the producer and host of several programs airing on both the Outdoor Channel and the Sportsman Channel, including Jim Shockey’s Hunting Adventures, Uncharted, and The Professionals.…

Thank you for a great editorial on “Measuring Madness” (November 2018)! I have killed some big whitetails with a gun, but not yet with a bow. I understand and appreciate the challenge of “score worry” and this affliction we have with record book deer. But I do know this takes some fun out of my own hunting, and I ask myself why? I’m down to a quarter tank of gas now, and when they put me in a coffee can, score isn’t going to matter much, is it? My lifetime buck, maybe, but the stories that go with every deer harvest are what’s important. May we all seek our own dreams and harvests, leaving the measuring tape at home. KENNY MYERS Mt. Sidney, Virginia Thank you so much for your email—and for being a…

Lee Livingston was nine years old when he first visited the hunting camp on Jones Creek, a tributary of Wyoming’s South Fork Shoshone River. That was in 1975, the year grizzly bears outside Yellowstone National Park were given federal endangered-species protection and hunting was halted. “That was a major grizzly hunting camp,” said Livingston, who is both a Wyoming hunting outfitter and a Park County commissioner. “Hunters were taking bears out of that area right up until grizzlies were listed. I now own that camp.” In the 44 years since Yellowstone ecosystem grizzlies were federally protected, Livingston has seen their numbers increase from rare to nuisance levels. “I’ve watched them recover from a point when it was memorable if you even saw a bear,” he said. “Now the number of days I…

BULLET BASICS Featuring a flat base and a round nose, this bullet is a classic copper cup-and-lead-core design. There’s nothing aerodynamic about it, but it’s known for immediate and dramatic expansion and is noteworthy for visually impressive impact results on big game. Plus, it tends to be almost absurdly accurate. TESTING GROUND The mushroomed bullet shown was used to take a big, old free-range nyala bull in the Umkomaas Valley of South Africa. Hunting with Crusader Safaris, I shot the 350-pound animal from a distance of 290 yards. The heavy roundnose bullet took the bull through both shoulders and dropped it on the spot. It was dead almost instantly. FIELD PERFORMANCE My .300 H&H handload reaches 2,742 fps muzzle velocity. Because the roundnose design sheds velocity quickly, it impacted the nyala at just 2,010 fps.…

The statutory cap on recouping attorneys’ fees is set at $125 an hour, but courts routinely find that“environmental law is a recognized specialty for which enhanced rates are appropriate”under the federal Equal Access to Justice Act. How appropriate? Natural-resource cases routinely exceed the cap of $125. Here are some examples: • In Natural Resources Defense Council v. Locke (2011) the Natural Resources Defense Council averaged $312.35 an hour, with a high of $470 per hour. The high hourly rate reflects the work of senior attorneys in a firm. • In Citizens for Better Forestry v. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture(2009),plaintiff’s attorneys averaged $375.77 per hour, but the Defenders of Wildlife, in the same case, averaged $537.01 per hour, with a high payment of $625 per hour. • In Wilderness Watch v. Iwamoto (2012),plaintiff’s attorneys…