Table of contents for No. 2 - 2020 in Field & Stream

Last time I wrote in this space, I mentioned some changes to F&S. Here I am again, one issue later, announcing more changes. But then, you probably already picked up on them the second you opened the cover. This issue is the first to feature our new redesign, which came together thanks to a ton of hard work from our brilliant art team. (Join me in raising a glass to design director Russ Smith, photography director John Toolan, and associate art director Robert Dominguez.) Along with the refreshed look, you’ll see some new sections and stories. Let me give you a quick tour. I wanted the magazine to follow the progression of a trip into the wild, which is why each issue will begin where so many adventures do:…

THE TOKYO RIG may be the hottest soft-plastic presentation in stateside bass fishing right now, but it’s not new. Leadered punch-shot rigs have been a thing in Japan for a while. It wasn’t until VMC debuted a commercial version at the 2018 ICAST show that the rig began to catch fire here. “There’s something about this rig—it just gets bit,” says Bassmaster Elite Series pro John Crews. “Plus, you can fish it in almost any cover, at any depth, any time.” Unlike a standard Texas rig, the Tokyo has a wire dropper that keeps the bait off the bottom and separates the weight from the hook, which gives your soft plastic total freedom of movement and makes for better hookups. Unlike a drop-shot rig, it attaches to the line…

Bergara’s first bolt-action rimfire rifle mirrors its excellent centerfire HMR rifle. It sits in the very same aluminum-infused, injection-molded stock. It takes modified 10-round ACIS magazines. The two-lug, floating-head bolt feels like it belongs on a big gun, and the Spanish-made barrel produces sub-MOA groups at 100 yards (and beyond). Built on a Remington Model 700 footprint, it is compatible with other Model 700 stocks, bases, and triggers. It’s easy to forget that this 9.25-pound beast is a humble .22LR, but that’s the point. It’s designed to be the perfect trainer for centerfire precision-shooting practice, but the B-14R will be a hit in the exploding world of precision rimfire matches too. $1,150 • BERGARAUSA.COM…

With interchangeable ribs that can be swapped in seconds, the Allsport XL is a do-it-all competition gun for trap, skeet, and sporting clays. The high rib gives a 65/35 POI for trap targets; the low rib delivers a 50/50 pattern for sporting clays and skeet. Recoil-pad options let you alter length of pull. Trigger weight and reach are tunable, and the comb is fully adjustable. It’s available with 30- or 32-inch barrels; left-handed versions cost an extra $125. $3,125 • FABARMUSA.COM…

Once upon a time, in what used to be the United States, most households had at least one axe, and everyone in that family knew how to use it. In Maine alone, between 1800 and 1960 there were more than 300 axe manufacturers. Those days are gone, but the axe remains, and we are now engaged in what The New York Times has called an “artisanal ax craze.” Handmade axes are not only useful, they are now trendy. The craze began in the mid-1990s, when we were introduced to a Swedish axe made by a company called Gränsfors Bruk. These were (and are) axes as they used to be—made by hand, beautifully finished, finely balanced, and sharp as sushi knives. I wrote at the time that a Gränsfors was…

THE CALL TYPICALLY COMES AT NIGHT. Joe Blattner answers his phone, and on the other end is either the sheriff’s office or one of its deputies. “Hey, Joe,” they’ll say. “We’ve got something.” Depending on the season, that something could be any number of emergencies: A hunter who never came out of the woods. An angler clinging to a strainer in a raging river. A hiker who lost his footing and fell off a rock face. An alpinist buried in an avalanche. A body that needs to be recovered. “One way or another,” Blattner says, “our job is to bring people home.” As the chief of Missoula County Search and Rescue, Blattner oversees a unit of 32 other Montanans who brave harsh conditions in dangerous country to assist adventurers.…

FOR THE LONGEST time, American hunters wanted nothing to do with first-focal-plane scopes. They were a European thing—like monarchies, futball, and bidets—and as such were suspect and best avoided if at all possible. Long ago we developed a preference for simple duplex reticles in the second focal plane in scopes with magnification ranges of 3X–9X, or if we wanted to shoot longer distances, 4X–12X. Until about seven years ago, these scopes accounted for approximately 90 percent of the hunting market. But in order to take advantage of the improved accuracy of everyday rifles and ammunition, more hunters are putting FFP scopes on their deer guns. The first time I mounted an FFP scope on a rifle was around two decades back. It was a Kahles 1X–6X with a thick…

JOHN MERWIN was a martini drinker, and by the time I sidled up next to him at the lobby bar in the Las Vegas Hilton, he’d had a couple. This was in 2010, at ICAST, the annual fishing-industry trade show. Merwin had recently stepped down as FIELD & STREAM’s fishing editor. His legendary shoes were big ones to fill, and I was the guy chosen to do so. At the time, I’d only written three fishing columns in this new role. I agonized over every one of them, and knowing that Merwin—a man 40-plus years my senior—was not one to mince words, I assumed he had arranged this meetup to drop not-so-subtle hints as to why my columns weren’t to his liking. I was warned, in fact, not to…

WAY BACK IN THE DAY, FIELD & STREAM used to be in charge of recognizing record fish, but we’ve long since handed that job over to the International Game Fish Association. Recently, though, the IGFA opened up its 2019 database to us, so we tried to glean any trends or patterns from the nearly 300 ord fish that were caught in the last year. While we cannotrec-tell you exactly where or how to land record fish, let’s just say this: A trophy-chasing fisherman could do a lot worse than spending a week on Canada’s Great Bear Lake in July casting Dardevles for monster lake trout. Longest Fight 5 hours Shortest Fight 20 seconds Biggest Fish 665 lb. 13 oz. Blue marlin Smallest Fish 1 lb., 9.75 in. King angelfish…

I’ve been a fan of the .350 Legend since Winchester introduced it, not because it’s any miracle of ballistics or accuracy, but because it’s truly useful to the thousands of deer hunters who live in states that restrict rifle hunters to straight-wall cartridges. Last fall, I used Federal’s Non-Typical White-tail version of the .350, which is loaded with a 180-grain soft-point bullet, and found that it does exactly what it promises to, which is kill whitetails to 200 yards or so without much fuss, recoil, or money. $25 • FEDERALPREMIUM.COM…

JSJ may not be known to a wide audience, but its creations are well-regarded among swimbait freaks. Now it has partnered with River2Sea, which markets lures like the Whopper Plopper, to offer the new Trigger Trout, a 7½-inch-long, soft-plastic rainbow trout imitation designed to temp the biggest bass. The lure weighs a full 3 ounces and comes with a custom screw-lock hook. But its coolest feature is the tail’s “dual plane tail rotation,” which is a fancy way of saying that it kicks like crazy to trigger bites from hawg largemouths. $29 • RIVER2SEAUSA.COM…

Abu-Garcia has made the Revo Rocket series even more affordable for 2020, but the company hasn’t sacrificed any quality on this 9:1 burner. The SX has a sturdy alloy construction, nine ball bearings and one roller bearing, and a powerful Carbon Matrix drag system that was once thought to be incompatible with ultrafast retrieves. The reel picks up 37 inches of line for each turn of the handle, which is perfect when you need to quickly fire another cast or gain line on a fish. Plus, the black frame with red accents just looks fast. $180 • ABUGARCIA.COM…

You can call it a man purse, or even a murse, if you want, but me and Indiana Jones know the truth: It’s a satchel. I swapped my turkey vest for a satchel a few seasons ago, and I’m not looking back. Fact is, I’ve never liked vests. They’re heavy, they snag on fences, and they’re filled with all sorts of crap I never use. And every time a turkey hunt gets good and serious—as in, it’s time to crawl—I shuck them off and leave them behind. Not my satchel, though. It’s a nondescript thing called a T3 Bolt Bag, and it’s about the size of a nice Louis Vuitton. It holds all of the essential gear that I need for a hunt, and I can crawl or run…

I LIKE TO SEE A gobbler slap a plastic jake as much as anyone, but in the timber I’d rather not be tethered to a bag of decoys. I learned to turkey hunt by setting up within gun range of the lip of a ridge, and then shooting the gobbler as soon as he popped into view, looking for the sounds of the hen. There’s still no way I’d rather do it. There are a few rules to follow when you are hunting ridge turkeys like this, though. First, set up above the birds. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve set up below a wild turkey in the woods and managed to kill him. You can get away with being on his level, too,…

The Doan Magne-sium Fire Starter was invented in 1973 by an outdoorsman named Sol Levenson, who came up with the idea while on a trip to South America. You scrape tiny shavings from the solid block of mag-nesium, to which a sparking rod is at-tached. When you strike the spine of a knife, sparks ignite the shavings for a blistering 5,400-degree burn. That’s hot enough to light oil-soaked rags and strips of thin rub-ber, not to mention wood shavings. Adopted by U.S. armed forces and issued in the survival packs of F-16 fighter pilots, the Doan Magne-sium Fire Starter spawned a mini industry of knockoffs. Some are good, others are cheap imitations with wimpy materials. But thankfully, the original is still available.…

AFTER WE READ Richard Connell’s classic survival story The Most Dangerous Game in junior high school English class, I became obsessed with the idea of pit-trapping rabbits in the woods. In the story, a shipwrecked American named Sanger Rainsford is hunted by a psychotic Russian named Zaroff, and at one point (spoiler alert), Rainsford digs a deep Burmese tiger trap that winds up killing Zaroff’s dog. I can’t remember what grade I made in that English class, but I do know that I spent days drawing diagrams of Malay man-catchers and bent-over saplings armed with knives lashed to their tips. And I riddled 40 acres of woods with bunny-size pits lined with sticks I had whittled sharp and camouflaged with springy pine boughs. Small-game snaring is a fundamental tool…

I have nothing against a modern batwing camping tarp, with its funky geometric shape and ability to pitch in multiple configu-rations. But my Tundra Tarp from Cooke Custom Sewing has had me covered for nearly 15 years. It’s an old-school, rectangular camping tarp with heavily reinforced grom-mets, multiple tie-outs along each edge, and a reinforced central pole patch. It goes up in a snap with a simple ridgeline and guylines running to tent stakes or nearby trees, and when the center of the tarp is pushed skyward by fitting a long pole, or a couple of canoe paddles lashed together into the center pouch, it will shed heavy rains. Call me a square, but this tarp is still the bomb for cooking, dining, and foul-weather shelter.…

I’VE COOKED DUTCH OVEN meals that were fit to eat at a blacktie dinner and black-pot grub so scorched that I couldn’t get the gruel off the pot with a jackhammer. I learned late in the game how to set a Dutch oven’s cooking dial with a few simple charcoal briquette formulas. You still need to experiment at home to fine-tune the numbers since Dutch ovens and briquette brands vary. But start here to dial up your pioneer street cred. If you’re baking, use twice the number of briquettes as the number of inches in the diameter of the Dutch oven. Place three-quarters of the briquettes on the lid and the remaining under the oven, arranging them in a ring. So, for a 10-inch Dutch oven, use 20 briquettes—with…

I carry too much stuff in my flyfishing vest—always have. Part of it is because I’m superstitious that I’ll need something I leave behind. But mostly, I just love tackle. Fly boxes take up the most space. I have one each for hoppers, streamers, caddis, etc. I also have one just for nymphs. That box is my oldest and my favorite. Not counting rods and reels, it’s also the fanciest piece of fishing gear I’ve ever owned. It’s a Richard Wheatley box that I bought when I was 17 years old. Looking back, I don’t know what I was thinking spending that kind of money on a fly box—but I’m glad I did. Twenty-two years later, the box looks better than ever—scratched, faded, and patinaed. If I keep taking…

WHEN I WAS IN MIDDLE school, my buddies and I used to fish strip-mine lakes that were crystal clear and full of big bass that were easy to see as they cruised the banks. I lost count of the number of casts we made at those fish with plastic worms and lizards, spinnerbaits, and jigs. Mostly, our efforts were ignored, and it caused us a lot of despair. One day when I was complaining about having never caught a trophy bass, my neighbor Ronnie told me: “Son, get your daddy’s baitcaster, some heavy line, and a big worm hook. Thread you a little bluegill on that hook, toss him out there in front of that big bass, and hang on.” Following Ronnie’s advice, I went to one of our…

FIELD & STREAM VOL. 125, NO. 2 2020 1. The Katwalk YEARS AGO, I casually asked a friend who owned an upscale drift-boat business if I could have the rotting wooden hull that had been sitting in his shop’s side yard for a decade or more. He agreed, but only if I promised never to bring it back. I spent the next two years of my life learning the dos and don’ts of wooden-boat restoration. It was equal parts fun and frustration, and a ton of work. By the late summer of 2014, I was ready to name her—when the unthinkable happened. My 26-year-old sister died after a drowning accident. She hung on for a week in the hospital but eventually succumbed. Her name was Kathryn Walker, but everyone…

FIRST SHOT Muskie Mayhem Lee Kjos had been on many photo assignments to try to capture a monster muskie, but the results were always the same. “Nothing,” he says. That is, until he traveled to Lake St. Clair in Michigan last June. Day one started slow, as hours crept by without even a tug. “Then the guide yells, ‘Fish on!’” Kjos says, “and for the next 90 minutes, all hell broke loose.” The crew landed five muskies over 48 inches, with three breaking 50—including the 52-inch giant shown here, landed by Jeff Schultie. “After so many failed attempts,” Kjos says, “the fish gods shined on us in epic fashion.”…

With this rifle and cartridge, Weatherby has reestablished itself as an innovator in the hunting realm. The rifle combines titanium, carbon fiber, and 3-D printing technology in a 5-pound 1-ounce package that’s a delight to shoot. The 6.5 RPM is a high-performance, but balanced, 6.5mm round built on the principles of modern cartridge design. Available in your choice of three bullets, the cartridge drives the 140-grain Nosler Accubond at 3075 fps, the 140-grain Hornady Interlock at 2975 fps, and the 127-grain Barnes LRX at 3225 fps. Together, rifle and cartridge are a dream combo for mountain hunting. $3,349 • WEATHERBY.COM…

This new pocketknife from Benchmade may be the perfect expression of an EDC knife. As its name suggests, the 533 Mini is a scaled-down version of Benchmade’s popular Bugout. The Mini weighs just 1.5 ounces and is less than 4 inches closed. It comes with a reversible, “deep-carry” clip, and the drop-point blade is made of CPM-S30V steel, measures 2.82 inches, and keeps an edge that’s more than sharp enough to tackle whatever you encounter in your everyday life. $160 • BENCHMADE.COM…

Falcon Rods is now offering its excellent Lowrider model in a pair of multipiece sticks purpose-built for travel. Offered in a 7-foot medium-action spinning model and a 7-foot medium-heavy casting version, the new Traveler rods come in three pieces and feature Tangle-Free K Frame guides and Fuji blank through reel seats. They also come with a three-sectioned, Cordura-covered hard case with the rod’s specifications written on the outside. Most important, both the rods and their cases are built to take a beating, on the water and in the airport. And given the quality, they’re a solid value too. $150 • FALCONRODS.COM…

A DECADE AND A HALF AGO, I ASKED A South African professional hunter what he thought of American riflemen. “Bleddy awful,” he said. “They’re afraid of their guns, they’re over-scoped, and they won’t take a shot unless they have a bench rest. None of them can shoot offhand.” How things have changed. When Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway and Robert Ruark smoked up the bushveld, you shot offhand, period. Now, if you have to shoot on your hind legs, you have a tripod to steady your pulsating muzzle. If you hit an animal, you pay for it, dead or wounded, and since paying for it can run into five figures, tripods are a permanent part of the African scene these days. It was not ever thus. In the days…

MY CLOSEST CALL IN 40 YEARS OF wilderness travel came about—not surprisingly—on a FIELD & STREAM assignment in Alaska. My buddies and I were on a 10-day float of a remote section of the Kipchuk River. We were enamored of paddling water that rarely, if ever, saw a canoe. We’d flown in via multiple trips in a tiny Piper Cub and landed beside a tundra river that whipped back and forth through braided, scoured gravel bars. On one hairpin curve, photographer Colby Lysne and I fought the current but careened into a giant sweeper—a downed tree whose canopy limbs and branches were buried under roaring current. Swept into a wall of trees, the heavily laden canoe went broadside to the river, then heeled over with a jerk. The heavy…

I WAS FORTUNATE TO START MY ANGLING career on stingy water, which instilled in me the twin blessings of humility and low expectations. Camp Inverness had a small lake almost devoid of fish. What few there were got pounded by boys like me, each armed with a push-button reel, a hooked nightcrawler, and a red-and-white bobber the size of a tennis ball. You baited up, cast, and tried to make the bobber go under from the pressure of your brain waves alone. Looking back, I’m struck by how stubborn I was. There was a 90-minute break during those hot afternoons, and I nearly always spent that time fishing and working on my sunburn. I caught a fish maybe one day in four (and never more than one fish in…

Every hunter who has ever trained and loved a dog has a story. If that dog lives to be old and gray-faced, stove-up from heroic efforts and mishaps afield, groaning on a bed by the woodstove, feet twitching in dreams of long-gone birds and battles and glory, that is one kind of story. If your dog dies, violently, needlessly, at the height of his powers, the sun-lit days of wind and prairie and swamp still unfolding, and then cut short, that is another kind of story, indeed. FALL In the early 1990s, with a carefully timed phone call at midnight, you could leave a message and be first in line to reserve a day on the Teller Wildlife Refuge, a 5-mile piece of bottomland along the east bank of…

when the first deer pokes her nose into the food plot. The rest of the does and fawns appear in the clover one by one, trickling from the timber to the tall grass and then into range. They drift toward a nearby cornfield, and I let them go, hoping a buck might appear on their trail. If not, I’m content to wait for another doe. I’m in a great spot, leaning against the trunk of an old white pine, standing on a sturdy ladder platform. Pine boughs shield everything but my head and shoulders from the deer below. I consider folding down the stand’s half-seat, but there’s no cushion for the metal frame. Just as well. I’m restless, and it feels like a good night to shoot a deer.…

THE TOM ARROWED DOWN THROUGH THE PIÑON PINES OF THE ALDO LEOPOLD WILDERNESS. We were hunting public land—a national forest in New Mexico—and the bird’s challenging cries rang from the canyon walls. I could hear every gobble and step yet couldn’t get a visual on the bird. But Ted Koch could. He was 15 feet to my left, in a spare brush blind, hands on a traditional bow, and when I saw him drop his eyes to the ground, I knew the tom was closing in—and very close to dead. Then, in an instant, everything that was right turned not-quite-right. The gobbler stepped into view and froze, head erect and eyes alarmed. I tried to stymie every possible movement—my eyes, my chest rising with each breath—and then the air…