Table of contents for October/November 2018 in Field & Stream

• THE SEASON • FISHING• ASK PETZAL• THE WILD CHEF• SHOTGUNS• HUNTING• THE TOTAL OUTDOORSMAN• RIFLES THE BULL DIED in the shade, and when I came to his side, I just about collapsed. I remember resting my forehead on his right antler, struggling to gather my breath in the thin air. The 4x4 was not the biggest bull I’d seen all week, but kneeling beside him in that moment, it was hard for me to fathom that a larger animal could exist. All first elk, I imagine, must leave this impression. We made short work of the field dressing and quartering, and after I carried the last load up the small, but steep, hill to the truck, I turned around and looked into the country below. The area was…

From the back of the skiff, on a homemade poling platform bolted to the johnboat hull, Walter “Joe Guide” Dinkins is taking no chances. “Watch close, now,” the 59-year-old says. “Watch good. These rail birds will hide in no more grass than you can hold in your hand, and still you can’t see ’em.” I watch—I think I watch pretty darn good—but in the salt marshes of North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, on a Super Moon tide with an early sun and not a ripple on the surface, watching the water is like looking into a mirror. I mark one clapper rail before it somehow vanishes in the reeds—even though there doesn’t seem to be enough cover in this clump of cordgrass to hide a clam. In the silver…

South Island, NEW ZEALAND THE QUIET HERE IS EERIE. IT’S ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS I NOTICED ABOUT New Zealand. As I fill a jug for coffee from the head of a mountain stream on the South Island, there are no birds chattering or even insects humming. No coyotes howling. Even the riverbed itself is strange. The rocks—called greywacke—look like coarse stone hauled in from a quarry. The banks are lined with spear grass stout and sharp enough to pierce a calf muscle. The peaks above seem lifeless. It is, in a word, foreign. Returning to camp, I notice a small chunk of meat stuck to the outside of the tent, remnants of our savage feast the night before. David Draper is sitting in a damp chair, snapping twigs…

Layout blinds are as much a part of the modern goose hunter’s arsenal as short reeds and steel BBs. Fred Zink, founder of Zink Calls and Avian-X decoys, helped design and popularize the first layout blinds back in the ’90s. So, on a recent hunt in Saskatchewan, I was surprised when Zink set pieces of aluminum framing and camo denier fabric on the ground in front of us. Within 10 minutes, we were adding the final layers of brush to the outsides of two stand-up blinds and arranging chairs and bags inside. On the Canadian prairie, you expect lessers to be accommodating in early October—particularly with a guy like Zink doing the calling. But we were hiding a large crowd, including a couple of other writers, marketing staff from…

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AGO, I was swarmed. Waves of little Batmen, Optimus Primes, and Frozen princesses rushed my doorstep, all clawing at my plastic pumpkin filled with sweet Halloween staples. Instructing them to take one or two was futile, so I just let them have at it. The dust would settle eventually, and I’d be able to assess what was left of the candy stores. Now, on the night of November 1, I’m in a similar situation. At my feet, a 30-plus-pound flathead catfish is flopping around with a hook still in its mouth. The monster I’m fighting is pulling drag out into the darkness. Susquehanna River guide Joe Gunter is frantically trying to clear the other lines. In the front of the boat, another rod is bent to the…

BISMUTH SHOT IS now bigger, better, and cheaper than ever. That’s good news if you want some extra oomph compared to steel loads, or if you want to shoot an older, classic shotgun someplace where lead isn’t legal. Bismuth, you may remember, was the first nontoxic steel alternative and was popular until denser tungsten-based pellets came along. Now, as tungsten prices shoot skyward, bismuth isn’t just back—it may be the last affordable premium nontoxic upland and waterfowl option standing. Bismuth shot was developed in the 1990s by Canadian carpenter John Brown and bankrolled by Guns & Ammo publisher Robert Petersen. The element bismuth is best known as the main ingredient in Pepto-Bismol. When alloyed with tin, it makes a dandy, if brittle, pellet that is almost exactly halfway between…

I KNEW JACK HAD BEEN bitten by the same gun bug that got me when I was a youngster when I asked him, right before he turned 10, what kind of rifle he wanted for his first big-game season. “A .257 Roberts,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. I’d always had a soft spot for the “Bob,” but it wasn’t really a cartridge we talked about much or shot, so the seed for that request was planted by someone other than me. Not that I minded in the least. I was impressed that Jack was already forging his own path in the gun world. That .25 caliber is a stylish little round, based on the granddaddy of our modern high-power cartridges, the 7x57 Mauser, and is great in…

We live for the anticipation that builds with each step in an upland field, knowing that at any moment a rooster might rise. We never tire of the sound of a flush—a wild alarm that stops the heart for a split second before muscle memory takes over and the shotgun comes to the shoulder. We take pleasure in the mix of gun smoke and stray feathers wafting in the air after a good shot. More than anything, though, we simply love watching the dogs work—flushing, pointing, and when we’ve done our job, retrieving. Few hunters have seen more good dogs at work than Brian Grossenbacher, who has been documenting upland hunts all over the world for 10 years. “Without a doubt, my favorite part of photographing hunting dogs is…

Habitat Flats guide Arliss Reed kills limits of ducks, geese, and cranes from Saskatchewan to Missouri, and New York to Arkansas. The secret is in the setup. When a mixed bag of birds is in the area, Reed runs a mega spread of spinning-wing puddle-duck decoys and full-body plastic geese. He keeps the spinners on until he hears geese or cranes, then he hits the kill switch and hand-flags and calls the big birds into gun range. “You can get a lot of birds in the landing zone with a half-dozen spinners and a goose spread,” he says. Here’s how he does it. CREATE VARIETY The downside of spinning-wing decoys is when they’re turned on, they repel geese and cranes. The solution is to hot-wire all of your spinners…

Q: If you could carry one gun for hiking and protection, what would it be? —JAY L. BOLYARD, FELLOWSVILLE, W.VA. A: I would carry a 5-inch-barrel Smith & Wesson Model 629 .44 Magnum. For bears, load it with magnums. For general protection, use .44 Specials. Q: What makes the best meal after a hard hunt? —RONNY EVERSTON, ERIE, PA. A: I’m partial to hash, either corned beef or roast beef. If it’s the former, throw a couple of fried eggs on top, and with either one, heavy on the onions. Good hash should sit in the stomach like wet cement so that you know you have, by God, eaten something. Q: In 25 words or less, how would you describe Jim Carmichel? —STAN KEMMERER, SPRING CREEK, NEV. A: In…

DOESN’T THAT LOOK like crap?” I asked my brother, Matt, as we stopped to stare at a makeshift blind in the beams of our headlamps. Six steel T-posts had been driven into the mudflat, wrapped maybe chest-high with faded burlap, and hung with a few oak limbs and small cedars. Anything flying overhead, like a mallard, would have a full view of the occupants inside. It was 3 A.M., and we’d already hauled three dozen decoys, two layout blinds, a blind bag stuffed with shotgun shells and coffee, a spinner, and two shotguns across a half-mile of sodden mudflat. “It does look like crap,” Matt said. “Think they’ll shoot anything out of that?” “Not as many as we’re going to.” We kept walking, icy mud gurgling around our ankles…

IT HAS BEEN a high-water year in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness, and the river is running bank-full and ice-cold, even now, in the middle of July. But the water is clear as ether, and we can see the cutthroats holding in the current, their perfect fluid shapes against the clean gravel of the bottom, their backs as green as emeralds. We have all stopped talking for the first time all morning, watching the river and the up-and-down dancing of a hatch of caddis in a shaft of hot sunlight. The fish begin to rise, dimpling the surface, and there is a heavier splash near the cliff on the far side of the river. Yvon Chouinard is rigging up his Tenkara fly rod—an unadorned 12-foot collapsible pole with no reel.…

THEY CALL IT steelhead madness for a reason. Obsessed is not too strong a word to describe the afflicted. In fall and winter, I’ve driven five hours to a Great Lakes tributary, slept for four, was on the water at 5 A.M., and was headed home at noon. I’ve stood for hours in 33-degree water, endured all manner of stinging precipitation, seen rods snap like twigs on days when the mercury never made it out of the single digits, and still not had a single touch from a steelhead. Is the suffering really worth it for a fish? You bet. No other freshwater species can match the strength and wildness of a fresh chromer. Steelhead are capable of blistering runs, instantaneous 180-degree turns, and cartwheels that would put a…