For some folks, it’s the beginning of the end.  In December of this year, according to some “experts”, the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world.  Of course there are other interpretations.  I won’t go there, but for what it’s worth, I believe in living every day as if it will be my last.

Nevertheless, I’ve got a lot to look forward to in the coming year and I’m a little excited.

Of course, it’s not news that I’ve just bought my first piece of Texas property.  I’ll be spending some time down there over the next several months, getting it ready for the big move.  I don’t have a hard and fast timeline yet, but I have sort of nailed down early fall for relocation.  Anybody looking for a cozy, 3-bedroom rental in the SF Bay Area?

I have big plans for the property, and lots of work to do, so there’ll be regular trips down there until it’s ready for us to set up housekeeping.  I’ve already written about most of these plans, so I’ll spare the redundancy.

On a smaller scale, I’m looking forward to the 2012 SHOT Show.  It’s coming up in two weeks, and as always I’ll be there, cruising the floor like a shark on the hunt for the hottest new products.  The pre-show Media Day shoot is one of my favorite parts of the event.  Of course I’ll let you all know what I learn about new, lead-free ammunition offerings.  There are still some gaps in the market (e.g. smoothbore shotgun slugs), and maybe someone will start filling them.

In 2011, I didn’t do much hunting at all.  A good bit of my time and money was spent (or, rather, saved) trying to make the Texas move come together.  I didn’t go elk hunting, curtailed my Tejon trips, and even cut back on my weekend trips to Golden Ram properties.  In November I allowed my Golden Ram membership to lapse… a hard call, but the savings will go directly into preparations for Texas.

This year I look forward to making remedy for that, primarily with hunts on my new place.  Pigs, axis deer, and turkeys should keep me busy until whitetail season comes back around.  I’ve also been talking to my brother about planning an elk hunt this year.  There’s even a Tejon hunt or two in the offing.

It’s going to be a full and productive year.

How about you folks?  Big plans for 2012?

Santa Hog approves!

You know, for all this politicized discussion of the lead ammo issue, I almost missed another (and entirely relevant at this time of year) aspect of the discussion.  Every hunter can use a little more ammo, and this could be the perfect opportunity to get a little lead-free stuff and try it out.  Stuff a box of bullets in that stocking, or wrap it up and set it under the tree, and someone will have a big smile on Christmas morning.

“But,” you may ask, “which ammo should I give?”

The first answer I would offer is, “which ammo is the hunter using now?”

With centerfire rifles, it’s important to understand that all ammo doesn’t perform the same.  Even when you’re shooting the same bullet weight, different brands and bullet materials can have a significant effect on your accuracy.  To make it even more confusing, ammo that shoots great in one rifle may not shoot well at all in another rifle.  So if your hunter is already really happy with a particular cartridge, then it’s usually best not to change things up.

But say your hunter is shooting lead ammo and wants to try non-lead… or if you’d like your hunter to switch… what do you do?  The ideal solution is to buy a selection of different brands and bullet weights so that the hunter can try them out to see what shoots best.  This can be a pricey proposition, but heck… it’s Christmas!  Besides, this is what it takes to make the best decision about a new cartridge.

So what are the options?

If you’ve followed the Hog Blog for a while, you’ll know that I’ve been partial to the Winchester/Nosler ETip for my 30-06.  This is my go-to, hunt everything rifle and I’ve found the 180gr bullet works like a charm on everything from ground squirrels (OK, it’s a little much for ground squirrels, but it’s accurate enough to whack them neatly) to big boars.  For the deer hunter, I’ve shot axis deer, blackbuck, and blacktail deer and found the bullet performs nicely every time.  It delivers good terminal performance, and in my opinion (based purely on my own experience), it has an edge over the Barnes TSX on the thin-skinned game.

I’ve also recommended the ETip to several people who have asked for suggestions, and the concensus is quite positive.  It’s a really good option for hunters whose rifles don’t seem to like the Barnes bullets (for example, Kat’s  Browning A-bolt .270 simply won’t shoot them well at all… something I hear a lot from .270 owners).

That’s not all to knock the Barnes, by the way.  Barnes has made a premium copper bullet for more than two decades now, and they keep finding ways to make it better.  These are the only non-lead option currently available for my .325wsm, and I have shot a bunch of hogs with them, as well as a pretty hefty oryx.  They work as advertised, and my handloaded rounds for the .325 are about as accurate as anything you could ask for.   There are factory-loaded options from several manufacturers, including Federal, Black Hills, Cor-Bon, and now directly from Barnes in their new Vor-TX loads.

The thing about the Barnes is that they probably offer the widest selection of calibers and bullet weights of any non-lead bullet manufacturer.  While the rest of the industry is still catching up, Barnes has covered the market from centerfire rifles to handguns to muzzleloader bullets.  If your hunter shoots something that is a little less common, this is probably the option you’ll have to look at.  Fortunately, they’re great bullets and they do perform very well in most implementations.

I’ve used the ETips and Barnes TSX bullets pretty extensively, and my recommendations are informed by my own experience, as well as the experiences of hunters I’ve accompanied in the field (both as a guide and as a companion).  I’ve also receieved a fair body of feedback from other hunters in regards to their own experiences, positive and a few negative.  There are a couple of other quality options that you might look at as well.

I’ve had a little pile of the Hornady GMX bullets loaded up for that finicky .270, but I haven’t had the opportunity to hunt with them, or to shoot them much.  They do seem to be fairly accurate, but the rifle I was testing them in, a Remington 710, simply isn’t up to the challenge.  I need to load them in Kat’s Browning at some point and get a better idea of how they perform.  I also need to hunt with them a bit, and see how they perform on game.  I’ve heard a lot of good and a little bad about this bullet, but as always, I prefer to base my recommendations (or vice versa) on my own, first-hand experience.  Hornady also offers the NTX bullet for varmint hunters who need more significant expansion.

A bullet I’ve had some experience with, but still want to experience on game, is the new Winchester Power-Core 95/5.  I had a chance to experiment a bit with this cartridge earlier in the summer, but I had several complications, including a bad batch of ammo that had to be returned to Winchester.  They sent several new boxes, but I simply haven’t had the chance to get out and hunt with them.  The Power Core is Winchester’s effort to provide a more economical lead-free alternative.  One of the biggest complaints about lead-free ammo is the high cost, with some magnum or non-standard calibers running as high as $65 to $80 a box.  Even the common calibers, such as 30-06 and .270 can cost $45 or more for a box of 20.  The Power Core ammo runs from about $25 to $40 a box.

Finally, for hunters using the .308, Winchester’s new Razorback is the first round specifically designed for hog hunting.  I got to experience this round first hand down in Georgia back in October, and it definitely appeared to work as advertised.  I’d prefer to have a little more experience with this round before I give it any sort of glowing recommendation, but my biggest concern was less to do with the bullet performance, and more to do with the choice of caliber and bullet size.  However, what I did see convinced me that the bullet design is sound, and I think it would serve well for most big game animals… not just hogs.  For example, in a heftier caliber (30-06 or .300) this bullet should perform very well on elk.

As you can see, there are a lot of options.  If your hunter has never tried lead-free ammo, and you have the wherewithal, load that stocking up with a little of everything.  After it’s all gone, and a favorite is selected, make sure and drop us a note here at the blog to let us know what worked, and what didn’t.  It’ll give me something to write about next Christmas.

Girl Hunter tells the story of her journey to becoming a hunter, and what it’s meant to her life and to her relationship with food.  This is a pretty hot and happening theme these days, and Pellegrini is an excellent example of what some people would call, “the new face of hunting.”  One thing she is not, as you’ll learn in the book, is your typical “redneck girl”. 

The writing is, at its best, well-crafted and evocative.  But… there’s a mighty fine line between evocative and sticky-sweet, verging on purple.  Georgia dances dangerously back and forth across this line.  I defintely get the sense of nostalgia and of place, but then I start to feel like it’s beating me senseless instead of treating my senses.

Or maybe it’s just my tastes.  I spent a lot of time and thought trying to figure out what it was, exactly, that defines Georgia’s writing.  It finally hit me.  This book is feminine.  The voice, the stories, everything about it says, “I was written by a girl.” 

Of course this shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, having spent a good bit of time reading Georgia’s blog before the book came out.  This is how she writes, and it definitely creates a “personality”.  So as far as that goes, she’s quite consistent.  The “girl hunter” writes with a girly voice.  There’s nothing at all wrong with that, especially because it comes across as fairly genuine.  I appreciate a writer who puts that much of their personality into her work.  This is no indefinite or generic narrator… there’s a very real person behind these words.  Even some of the technical errors struck me as particularly feminine (Note that these may have been corrected in the final release… I received a press copy).

And pardon me here, because I’m going to stereotype.  Flog me later. 

Some of the things that were a bit discordant in a hunting book struck me as the sort of mistakes that I’ve heard most commonly from women.  For example, in her opening story of the turkey hunt in Arkansas she’s looking through the scope at one point and  then, a paragraph of so later, she’s looking down the rib at the bead.  Generally speaking, you’re doing one or the other with a turkey gun… but not both.  It’s a critical detail to me, as an experienced hunter because it undermines her credibility. 

But is attention to these little details really more of a “guy thing” anyway?  I know that as much as Kat enjoyed some of the hunting we did, she never really paid close attention to the more technical aspects of the guns and optics we used.  Of course she tries in conversation to get the terminology right, but it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t what’s important to her about the hunt.  My mom often makes similar errors, despite a lifetime of exposure to hunting and shooting conversations from her dad and brother, my dad, me, and my little brother.  I know she knows better, but it doesn’t seem to matter all that much.  The gun goes “bang” and we bring home the meat.  Shotgun or rifle, centerfire or rimfire, scope or iron sights… none of that seems particularly important. 

So I don’t know if it’s a Venus vs. Mars thing, or just simple mistakes that an editor should have caught, but in the bigger picture I allowed it to become part of the girlish atmosphere of the book.  It’s not completely off-putting, but I’ll admit that it butted up against my own testosterone-shaded sensibilities from time to time.  Then again, I got the feeling that this book wasn’t really written for me in the first place, and I’m probably right. 

Nevertheless, once I started reading I had to finish.  The entire book (I admit, I didn’t read all of the recipes that accompany each chapter) was actually a reasonably short read.  And despite some of what I just said, I really enjoyed most of  it.  Each chapter is built around the story of a hunt in various parts of the country (and in Britain).  It’s sort of a handy structure for this kind of book, and because Pellegrini is far from the conventional hunter, it offers a very non-conventional perspective on the experiences she had along the way. 

Ostensibly, there’s a subtext throughout that asks about the sustainability of each hunting tradition or practice.  I don’t feel like she really challenged the question, but I didn’t feel like it was all that critical to the movement of the book either.  The important thing to me was that the writing didn’t become dogmatic or focused on whether one kind of hunter is better than the other.  What it did (and I liked this) was show that there are many kinds of hunters, and that the methods, means, and motivations of each vary as much by individual as by geographic location. 

Oh, and the recipes… I’m not real big on following recipes myself, but Pellegrini’s book is full of them.   Each chapter is focused on a regional game specialty (e.g. turkeys in CA and elk in WY), and at the end of the chapter are some recipes for cooking the various game mentioned in the chapter.  The structure works and the recipes that I did read actually sound pretty tasty.  For example, the Moroccan elk stew recipe below actually makes me want to try it.  Check it out:

Moroccan Elk Stew
Serves 8

Also try: beef, lamb, bison, venison and other antlered game

4 pounds elk shoulder or haunch, cut into cubes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons grape seed oil or butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger powder
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 medium-size onions, roughly chopped
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium-size turnips, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2/3 cup dried apricots
2/3 cup prunes, pitted
3 to 4 cups beef or antlered game stock

1. Heat a large, heavy-bottomed pot with oil. In a bowl, toss the elk cubes in the flour. Shake the cubes well and place them in the pot in batches, being sure not to crowd them. Brown them on all sides and transfer to a plate or rack.
2. Put all of the browned meat back in the pan and sprinkle it with the salt, cinnamon, ginger and pepper. Then add the vegetables, garlic, and dried fruit. Pour in enough stock for the meat to be three-quarters covered, and bring it to a boil. Lower the heat so the bubbles percolate. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours, until tender.

From the book Girl Hunter by Georgia Pellegrini. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group.  Copyright © 2011.

 Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time is available on Amazon, and at several other locations.  Santa Hog approves.

So anyway…

There’s a lot of truth to the argument that most men are just little boys, grown old.  But the bigger we get, the bigger our toys get.  For some of us, our wind up trucks become Monster Mudders. For those of us who have a thing about shooting and guns, it’s the graduation of our Red Ryder to something more… something… BIGGER.

Enter the Benjamin Marauder, .25 caliber air rifle.  Oh, yeah!  This is sure enough not a step but a leap beyond the old BB gun.  It slings a .25 caliber pellet downrange like a miniature Hammer of Thor!  No more teeny-tiny .17 caliber BBs or pellets that would bounce off of a glass soda bottle (if you remember glass soda bottles, you’re old… make the best of it).  No more trying to shoot a real tin can (not aluminum) in the same spot three or four times until the metal finally ruptures.  No, this thing is the real deal… as close to a rimfire round as you can get without a FFL.

OK… that was probably a shade over the top.  Who can blame me , though, after the daily inundation of Christmas shopping ads on TV, the billboards, and the print ads?  Everything is bigger than sliced bread these days… and the truth is, I really am pretty much blown away by the Marauder.  If anything can stand up to the hype, this rifle can.  But of course, it is still “just ain air rifle.”

It’s just an air rifle that slings three of those huge pellets into a 3/4″ group at 40 yards (my experience so far). It’s just an air rifle that will penetrate clean through my 3-D wild boar archery target, as well as another 3/4″ of redwood fencing.

I’m no airgun expert, and I know there are some pretty incredible rifles out there.  There are guns that shoot faster, guns that shoot tighter, and a whole collection of guns that just look cool as hell.  But if the hunter or shooter on your list is looking for something that will shoot straight and hit hard, and you’re looking for something that won’t completely break the bank, the Marauder fits the bill.

By the way, you can also find this rifle in .22 or .117 which are also great options for pest control and plinking fun.

Santa Hog approves.

I’m guessing most of us do.  Some uf us may even meet him when we look in the mirror.

He’s that guy who lives and breathes hunting.  It’s the topic of conversation when he’s in a crowd.  It’s on his television when he’s at home.  It’s the subject of his magazines, the books on his shelves, and there’s a good bet that it’s what’s for dinner.

If you recognize this person, or if you know someone like him, show him your appreciation (or your irritation) with the Rather Be Hunting Guy bobblehead, complete with audio!  Or you can stuff his (or her) stocking with the line of comic books, or a bumper sticker with his tagline, “Working for the man, hunting when I can.”

It’s a funny, and inexpensive gift for the hardcore hunter on your list.

The good folks there sent one for me to check out, and I’ve got to say it sort of cracked me up.  I immediately knew who would be getting one of these for Christmas this year.  It fits him to a tee.  I think his wife will agree when she sees it… although I have a feeling she’ll lose that sense of humor soon enough, when he sets it off at 0-dark-thirty on Christmas morning before heading out to the tree stand.

Personally, I’ve tried to keep to the policy of not getting too amped up about Christmas season until at least the first of December.  In fact, I’m hesistant to jump into the whole culture of gift buying and over-the-top consumerism that’s rapidly replaced any of the spiritual aspects of the season.  But, I do have a little sense of responsibility to some of the great companies that have provided gear and gadgets for me to try out, so maybe we can consider the upcoming series of “gift ideas” my Christmas present to them.

Or maybe it’s just to help fill some posts, since I still can’t seem to find time to actually go hunting these days.

Anyway, beginning on December 1, I’ll be occasionally posting up some gift ideas for the hunter and outdoorsman on your list.  Most of these have been reviewed on this site in the past, but there are a couple of new items coming along as well.  So get out your list, check it twice, and get ready…

I’ll also ask, as I usually do, that you take one more minute (that’s only two minutes folks… not too much to ask) to spare a thankful thought for our men and women overseas, doing a hard job in a hard place.

Finally, to any Hog Blog readers in other countries, remember… you shouldn’t need a special holiday to stop and count your blessings.  I hope you’ll join us, at least in that.

As a citizen of this country, I thank you for your service.  All ideology and politics aside, I know that you were there for me and for all citizens, and the sacrifices that you have all made were made selflessly in our names.

With my salute I offer a prayer of hope that our society and our government will do right by all of you, whether you returned yesterday or 60 years ago.

Thank you veterans.  Thank you all.