Hunting Tips

Just 30 years ago the white or scimitar-horned oryx roamed the desert of northern Chad in thousands. His two buddies, the twist-horned addax and the large-bodied, short-horned dama gazelle, were nowhere near as prolific, but they still occurred in very good numbers. When Libya invaded Chad the Libyans machine-gunned the herds and trucked the meat back to Tripoli. Very efficient. This was probably the last stronghold of Africa’s desert antelope in Africa, but all three species are found on private ranches in Texas. Since all three hail from North Africa and all three are genuinely endangered in their homelands, they are often referred to as the “three amigos.”Read more

I learned to handload centerfire at the same time I learned to shoot. The deal was that if I wanted to shoot, I also needed to reload. Since then I’ve spent lots of time at the reloading bench. I always enjoyed it, but I don’t do it much anymore. Back then, if you wanted accurate ammo, you pretty much had to load it yourself. Back then, if you wanted particular bullets, anything beyond the “vanilla ice cream” bullets offered by major manufacturers, you had to load them yourself.Read more

“I didn’t know you could still hunt elephant.” This is one of the first comments I usually hear on the subject of elephant hunting, even among fairly knowledgeable hunters. That’s the first hurdle to get past: In our new millennium, should elephants be hunted? Indeed they should, and indeed they must.Read more

Some hunts are tougher than others, some are tough physically, while others are tough mentally. On any mountain hunt you know going in that you’re going to sweat, struggle, and huff and puff your way up—and with increasingly bad knees, I know the downhill is going to hurt just as bad. On the other hand, I hate to sit still…but I love to hunt whitetails, and in a lot of good country stand-hunting is the only viable option. It’s late December now, and I’ve spent much of the last month sitting on stands waiting for a good buck to step out. I did it in Nebraska and Kansas, and the last few days I did it in Georgia. Results were, er, mixed…but now that’s behind me, and I’m gearing up for the toughest hunt of all: Convention Season!Read more