Here’s a quickie while I’m off in Texas chasing hogs and exotics, and checking out properties.

I was contacted a little while back by a fella who said he had this new website where he offered some great deals on ammunition.  He’d send me a box of my choice if I’d say a little something about his site, and me, mercenary that I sometimes can be, said, “why not?”

The site is AmmoForSale.com, and I’ve got to say, free box or not, it’s a pretty good place to shop.  The selections are still a little bit limited for hunters, although if you’re a handgunner or a fan of military ammo (5.56, .308, 7.63×39, etc.) he’s got a pretty wide variety of options.  He’s also got plenty of .22 rimfire ammo, and some shotgun ammo as well.  He told me the selections would expand, but only when he can get deals that are good enough to pass along to his customers.  The prices are in line with, and generally a buck or two below the prices you’ll see in the major online catalogues.  If the sample he sent me (a box of Remington 9mm, by the way) is any indication, shipping is quick too.

Caleb, the site owner, says he’s not out to become the next Cheaper Than Dirt or Sportsman’s Guide.  He just wanted to offer some good deals on ammo to hunters and shooters.  I think he’s off to a great start.  If you’re shopping for some ammo, I’d definitely suggest taking a look over at AmmoForSale.com.  You might save yourself a couple of bucks and help out a small businessman at the same time.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve been hog hunting.  In fact, I’d say this is the longest I’ve gone between hunts in the last ten years!  I haven’t even guided a hog hunt since early December.  That’s just too long to be away from the woods.  Fortunately, that’s all subject to change next weekend if the weather holds.  I’m finally getting back out to Tejon Ranch!

In the meantime, I’ve had to settle myself with tales from my friends in the blogosphere.  At least someone is hunting swine out there!

First up, I popped over to check in with Jeff and the good people at Cypress Creek Hunting Club.  It looks like the South Carolina hunters had a pretty good deer season, but with that behind them and turkeys still over the horizon, it’s time for hogs.  And boy, oh boy, it looks like they’ve got them! 

Even with the wacky, foul weather (snow, freezing temps, rain, more cold, etc.), they still managed to keep the meat pole sagging with fresh pork.  Check out the action at Jeff’s Skinning Shed blog!

Back at the end of January (seems like so long ago), my new online friend and blogroll member, The Bumbling Bushman headed down to Florida to see if he could do his part to defend Mickey Mouse and the orange groves from rampaging hogs.  From the sounds of things, Jamie and crew had a great time down there and even managed to knock over a couple of orange-thieves! 

My jaw drops as I look out into the field – a herd, a sounder of hogs, maybe 25 strong, is rooting contentedly in the rain-soaked soil. There are three or four black ones that look enormous compared to the kaleidoscope of shoats swirling around their feet. One of them is a boar and he is sniffing the sows to see if any of them are in season for breeding. In addition to the tankers, another five or six sturdy looking pigs of varying colors and patterns complete the group. They are 200 yards away and the sun is setting rapidly.

Exciting stuff, Jamie!  The adventures that followed were equally exciting.  Florida is high on my “One Day” list for hog hunting destinations.

Scooting back across the continent, I slid by Al’s SoCal Bowhunter blog to see that he’s been out chasing hogs a little bit.  Unfortunately, as you can read on this post, the sign he encountered was primarily from pigs of the two-legged variety.  This is a damned shame, and one of the very few things that really gets me pissed off.  I don’t often see it on the scale that Al and his buddies encountered, but folks, please! 

Of course, my daily blog visits are never complete without a stop at Rex’s Deer Camp blog. 

Rex and the boys have been having a good bit of success with the hogs down there too.  Even better is that they have a hog hunt scheduled next month that promises to be epic… if not in the harvest, then at least in the story-telling that I’m sure will ensue.  Despite my constant threats to do so, I have yet to be able to coordinate a trip to Mississippi to visit Rex, and to help rid the swamps of those horrid beasties. 

If California ever gets that damned lottery machine fixed, I’ll use some of my newfound fortune to pack my guns in the tactical vehicle and road trip to some of these folks, starting with Rex and his crew. 

As sort of an aside, but actually quite relevant, in my adventures around the blogosphere, I spotted a most unlikely magazine blogger out in pursuit of sus scrofa.  Kiera Butler, Articles Editor from Mother Jones magazine was down in Georgia hunting feral pigs with Locavore Hunter, Jackson Landers.  Kiera did an excellent and entertaining three-part blog series about the hunt.  It’s not your everyday hunting story, but it’s definitely worth a read if you have half a chance.  Here’s the first part, and in it you’ll find links to parts two and three. 

One of the coolest things about seeing this story in a magazine like Mother Jones was that it reinforces my feeling that hunting is entering something of a new age.  There’s a combination of factors here, including the number of people coming to the sport late in life, the accessibility of hunting via television, and the locavore and slow food movements that is really changing the way a lot of Americans see the sport of hunting.  And in a lot of ways, wild hogs are sort of intermingled in the whole picture.

When I first arrived in California I was lucky enough to have a friend help me get started hunting.  He turned me on to what has become my favorite blacktail hunting area, and also showed me some excellent duck hunting on and off of the refuge system.  But the one thing that we never had the chance to do was hunt pigs. 

“If you really want to hunt pigs in California,” he told me, “you’ll need to hire a guide.” 

Instead, I stubbornly devoted several years to hunting public land.  I learned some areas and hunted them hard and diligently.  As a reward, I found lots of sign and even had brief sightings of a couple of pigs.  I never fired a shot. 

So began the process of locating and securing my first guided hunt.  I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and it was really a crazy process.  As it turned out, I got lucky and didn’t get ripped off.  As it also turned out, despite the guide’s ads and the fact that I’d inquired about a deer/hog combination hunt, the guided hunt I ended up going on had nothing to do with hogs. 

I expect that my experience wasn’t that different from a lot of hunters who are looking to book their first hunts.  I read a lot of ads in the back of local hunting magazines (the Web was still coming into its own as a resource), and made a whole lot of phone calls… many of which resulted in leaving lots of voice messages.  The process took a lot of time, and any guide who didn’t return my calls got scratched from my list. 

The problem is, there are an awful lot of guides who don’t advertise.  Maybe they can’t afford to advertise, or maybe they don’t know how to take out an ad.  Some get enough traffic through word-of-mouth and repeat customers that they don’t really need to put out ads.  The Internet has done a lot for both hunters and guides by providing an easy-to-use platform for guides to offer their wares, and a relatively easy way for hunters to search for them.  However, there are still a lot of guides and outfitters out there who haven’t yet learned to utilize the Internet or simply don’t want anything to do with worrying about setting up websites, much less getting into social media. 

So how does a hunter find a guide?  What if you could just go to a central website, enter the criteria of your hunt, and have qualified guide services come to you? 

That’s exactly what Huntandfishguides.com is all about.  The idea behind the site is to connect hunters with guides in a fairly unique way.  The hunter simply enters some basic criteria: 

1. Where do you want to hunt?
2. What species do you want to hunt?
3. When do you want to hunt?
4. How many hunters will be in your party?

Once you’ve entered the data, you’ll get a listing of guides that match your criteria.  On top of that, you’ll get quotes emailed to you directly from guides who can offer what you’re looking for.  Once the guides have made contact, you can follow up with them to discuss details, get references, and answer questions about their services. 

For guides, it’s free to register with the site.  You pay a small fee for each lead that’s sent to you.  It’s up to you to close the deal with the prospective clients by following up quickly. 

Hunt and Fish Guides dot com is a brand new site, and still in the very early stages of rolling out.  If you go over to check them out right now, you won’t find a ton of listings.  That’s yet to come.  For now, we’re sort of wondering what you folks out there, the potential customers and guides/outfitters think about the idea. 

So do tell.  As a hunter looking for guided hunts, would you use a service like this?  How about any of you who are guides or outfitters… would you be interested in a site that sends you leads on hunters? 

The floor is open.

In addition to all the guns and ammo, gear and camo, the SHOT Show gives me an opportunity to meet a lot of folks with some less tangible products.  One of the standouts this year was the guys from HuntNFishRegs and their website. 

HuntNFish Regs is a pretty simple idea.  Take all of the hunting and fishing regulation books from all of the states (and a bunch of Canadian provinces) and put them online in an easy-to-use web site.  Add in quick links to the online licensing systems for each state… or at least for the states that have online licensing.  Top that off with photo galleries for members to share their success, and you’ve got the basic makings of a really useful tool for outdoorsmen. 

You don’t have to be a member to use the basic functions of the site.  You can select a state, review the regs, and even buy licenses and tags without ever signing up for anything.  However, should you choose to sign on for the free membership, you get a few extra benefits.  These include:

• Email alerts on state-specific news and updates
• Free, unlimited classified posts
• Full photo gallery access
• Eligibility for contests and drawings
• Advertising discounts (advertise your outdoors business on the site)
• Free 6-month subscription to the digital version of Outdoors Magazine

It’s a nicely done site, and still getting better.  For the hunter interested in going out of state, but daunted by trying to find the regulations and information, this is the site you’ve been looking for.  Heck, I’ll be using it for my own research. 

Check it out for yourself.

Yeah… sometimes I just like to use neglected language.  Like nascent.

Anyway, it’s New Year’s Eve (duh), and I know a lot of folks are planning their resolutions.  Personally, I gave up on that concept years ago, but it is a fun way to think about goals for the future… what is it about myself I want to change?  What do I want to accomplish?  For me, those ideas crop up and evolve daily, so just trying to set one target on January 1 is pretty moot.  The relevance is usually gone by January 7.

At any rate, one of the things I do need to do in this coming year is update my blog roll.  It’s been pretty static for a while, in large part because I can only keep up with so many sites at one time.  I am a pretty regular reader of all of the blogs in my list (although I don’t comment so much lately), and that takes a lot of time.  Even so, there are a lot more blogs out there… some, like Bumbling Bushman that I’ve been reading for a while, and others, like BulletProofMedia that I’ve only just learned about. 

Of course, it raises the question of how to manage such a large number of links on my blog roll.  The list already runs clear down to a couple of pages (depending on your monitor’s resolution). Do I just let it extend even further?  Do I eliminate someone?  I always try to remove links to blogs that aren’t regularly updated, so most of those currently listed are active.  They’re also quality sites for one reason or another, which is the only reason I linked them in the first place.  Ahh… impasse.

Anyway, I guess I’ll have another Sudafed and a cup of coffee while I work this out.  Looks like a quiet, sniffly New Year’s Eve around here.

While I’m out, I thought maybe I’d share a couple of my favorite blogs.  I hesitated before I started this, because I was a little concerned that my choice of blogs to spotlight would reflect poorly on those that didn’t get included.  The truth is, though, if a blog is on my list, then I read your site regularly… if I didn’t read it and enjoy it, I’d remove it.  I don’t have time to do a profile on everyone, so folks will just have to follow the links and check them out for yourselves.

We all need a little diversion from time to time, and while I enjoy reading as much as I can about hunting trips, gear, and tactics, I like to see things that take a little different perspective.  Well Jody’s The Hunter’s Wife blog certainly fits that bill!

Jody is easily the funniest writer on my blog roll (well, Pat McManus doesn’t count…he’s a professional).  She’s not a hunter, and is something of a delicate fisherwoman, but she’s married to a man who apparently lives to hunt and fish.  Jody’s gift is that she captures the life of a “hunting widow” with great style and humor. 

I can guarantee she’ll put a grin on your face too.  Check her out at The Hunter’s Wife.

This is the last in the highlight series for now.  I should be back to live blogging by the end of this week.  As I mentioned, the blogs listed on my blog roll are all great reads.  Sorry I couldn’t go through the whole list, because many of them are deserving of mention.  

While I’m out, I thought maybe I’d share a couple of my favorite blogs.  I hesitated before I started this, because I was a little concerned that my choice of blogs to spotlight would reflect poorly on those that didn’t get included.  The truth is, though, if a blog is on my list, then I read your site regularly… if I didn’t read it and enjoy it, I’d remove it.  I don’t have time to do a profile on everyone, so folks will just have to follow the links and check them out for yourselves.

One of the blogs I’ve really gotten into in the last year or so is Chad Love’s Mallard of Discontent.  

Chad is a freelance writer, and is currently co-blogging at Field and Stream’s Field Notes blog (which is where I first read his comments).  He’s got a great style and voice in his writing.  From time to time I can catch a whiff of Aldo Leopold, and other times he ranges more toward the Edward Abbey school. 

Chad doesn’t always follow the road most travelled, and that’s one of the things I enjoy about his writing.  He’s willing to look behind the curtain sometimes, and he’s not always particularly thrilled about what he sees.  One of the benefits of writing his own blog, in addition to the Field and Stream site, is that he can speak his mind… and that’s what I enjoy most.

I think you’ll dig him too, so check it out.  The Mallard of Discontent.

While I’m out, I thought maybe I’d share a couple of my favorite blogs.  I hesitated before I started this, because I was a little concerned that my choice of blogs to spotlight would reflect poorly on those that didn’t get included.  The truth is, though, if a blog is on my list, then I read your site regularly… if I didn’t read it and enjoy it, I’d remove it.  I don’t have time to do a profile on everyone, so folks will just have to follow the links and check them out for yourselves.

Arthur, from Simply Outdoors has been one of the most supportive fellow bloggers I’ve had the privilege of dealing with.  While he’s away in the great, white northern reaches of Michigan, he’s as dedicated an outdoorsman as I could ever hope to meet.  And I do hope to meet him one day.  It’s been ages since I went up to Michigan, but if I ever make it back to that great state, I’ll definitely look him up. 

Arthur’s site has evolved a lot over the last couple of years.  He and his brother, along with some friends, have branched out into some videography work, which really complements Arthur’s writing on a variety of topics.  From turkeys to fishing with the kids, he’s at it all the time, and shares his adventures and his thoughts with us on the blog. 

So take a little time, if you haven’t already, to head over and take a look at the Simply Outdoors blog.

While I’m out, I thought maybe I’d share a couple of my favorite blogs.  I hesitated before I started this, because I was a little concerned that my choice of blogs to spotlight would reflect poorly on those that didn’t get included.  The truth is, though, if a blog is on my list, then I read your site regularly… if I didn’t read it and enjoy it, I’d remove it.  I don’t have time to do a profile on everyone, so folks will just have to follow the links and check them out for yourselves.

This one is a little bit special.  Albert Rasch, of the Rasch Outdoor Chronicles, is an excellent writer and blogger.  He’s usually got some great stuff on the outdoors from his home in Florida.  He’s also a busy networker, and has provided publicity to several excellent blogs on his “Blog Rodeos”.  When he sits down to tell a story, I’ve got to say he spins a yarn on par with any of the greats in the Hook-n-bullet genre. 

However, Albert has been over in Afghanistan, helping out our troops as a contractor for over a year now (time flies!).  Even though he’s so far away, he’s managed to sift the sand out of the keyboards enough to keep his site updated.  I know he’d love to be back stateside, chasing big hogs, fish, and deer… not to mention spending time with his family, but he recognizes the importance of what he’s doing.

I’ve had the good fortune to spend time with Albert, in person, and he’s as good a guy in real life as he is in the blogosphere.  I think you’ll like him too, so check him out.  The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles.

While I’m out, I thought maybe I’d share a couple of my favorite blogs.  I hesitated before I started this, because I was a little concerned that my choice of blogs to spotlight would reflect poorly on those that didn’t get included.  The truth is, though, if a blog is on my list, then I read your site regularly… if I didn’t read it and enjoy it, I’d remove it.  I don’t have time to do a profile on everyone, so folks will just have to follow the links and check them out for yourselves.

OK, that said, let’s start…

There are a lot of reasons I’m starting with the NorCal Cazadora blog.  First of all, it’s got a lot to do with the fact that Holly and I share a lot of information back and forth.  We’ve hunted together and will again.  And, of course, her writing is always top notch. 

We may or may  not agree on every topic or issue, and that’s just fine.  But I enjoy reading what she has to say.  From her posts, I’ve learned a good bit about what it’s like for a new hunter to come into this sport.   I’ve also learned a lot about some of the issues that women hunters face, and what’s going on in the industry to address those issues.

If you’re a regular here, you’ve probably already followed a link back to her blog.  If not, do yourself a favor and check her out.  The NorCal Cazadora.