Advice is cheap,�?goes the saying. “Bull,�?say the writers whose names appear above. This advice has been paid for in blood, sweat, lost opportunities, frustration, disappointment, and an incredible amount of ribbing for doing dumb stuff. In a combined 400 years or so in the fields and streams, they learned what works and what doesn’t. And in the 110-year history of Field & Stream, we’ve discovered that smart tips and true wisdom are timeless. We figure there is no better way to celebrate our anniversary than to collect all this hunting knowledge in one place. We learned the hard way so you don’t have to.
Sportsmanship
001 Be a leader.
Always obey the game laws. Always take less than the limit. Do some work each year toward improving habitat for game, controlling predators, preventing erosion, or a similar worthwhile activity. Belong to a sportsmen’s organization and encourage others to do so. Try to instill the precepts of sportsmanship into at least one hunter a year. Ted Trueblood, October 1948
002 Stay modest.
Never brag about your shooting ability, especially before you start shooting. Gene Hill, January 1993
003 Lie a little.
Always tell a guide you’re five years older than you really are. G.H., January 1993
004 Get lost.
For safety’s sake, you should always tell someone where you’re going when you hunt alone. Unless, of course, you’re going to prime woodcock cover and the flight is down. You’re not required to pass on everything you know. G.H., January 1995
005Don’t be a snob.
Forget your guide is a hired hand. If you meet him on equal grounds, he may turn out to be the best friend you ever had. And chances are that you’ll experience a brand of sport you never thought possible. H.G. Tapply, January 1954
007 Honor the game.
If the only thing important about hunting is what we can nail up on the wall, then we’re not really hunters and we bring little honor to ourselves or to what we hunt, or why. G.H., August 1981
Guns
008 Stay cool.
It’s the cool and collected individual who gets the best use out of a quick-repeating rifle, no matter what style of action it may be. He has sense enough to know that no shot is ever going to be any better than his first one. Warren Page, July 1955
009 Check stock fit.
Pick out your target object, shut both eyes, and mount the shotgun. Now open your right eye (if you’re right-handed). Are you looking straight down the barrel? If you see just the bead sight or perhaps an inch of the end of the barrel, you are properly down on the gun. If you see half the barrel, or all of it, your head position is too high and the gun will shoot high. If you cannot see the bead sight without raising your head from a comfortable stock position, the comb is too low. Bob Brister, September 1979
010 Listen to the expert.
It goes down poorly when you tell a gunsmith how to do a job. If he explains his methods to you, your response should be “Fine, how much?�?and not an argument over techniques. David E. Petzal, February 1988
011 Mount a scope.
You can avoid endless trouble by degreasing the base screws on your scope mounts and screwing them in hard. How hard is hard? Hard is when you’re turning the screwdriver for all you’re worth and the next thing you know you’re lying on the floor and the dog is pawing at you and whining. Hard is when you’re twisting away and everything turns purple and silver. You get the idea. D.E.P., February 1989
012 Mount a scope, part 2.
When tightening scope ring screws, you do not crank on the screwdriver until all the little blood vessels in your nose burst. You crank until, with a reasonable amount of effort, the screws will turn no longer. Then you stop. D.E.P., February 1989
013 Go large.
If in doubt about which shot size to use, pick the larger one. Although there will be fewer pellets and the patterns aren’t as pretty, you’ll get more clean kills at longer ranges. They’re faster to the target because they maintain velocity better, and they deliver more shock. B.B., December 1998
014 Become a gun writer.
Shoot constantly. Lose most of your hearing by your mid-30s. Pick out one cartridge that you admire and one that you despise and make this a leitmotif of your writing. It helps to be from the West or the South, but Easterners can be successful if they are eccentric enough. Escape death in Africa at least once. D.E.P., June 1994
015 Save your hunt.
Bring a spare scope. A rifle that’s put out of commission can often be fixed, but if your scope is damaged, it’s time to pee on the fire and call in the dogs, because the hunt is over. D.E.P., October 1991
016 Go long—but only when you have to.
Shooting at long range is a last-ditch measure that should be in the repertory of every skilled hunter, but it should not be used as a substitute for being able to hunt. D.E.P., August 1990
017 Hurry up and take your time.
Wyatt Earp was a masterful liar about some things, but he was a deadly son of a gun and he had some advice that all shooters can use. If you’re in a gunfight, he used to say, get your revolver out of the holster just as fast as you can, but take your time aiming. A skilled marksman gets on target very quickly, rifle to shoulder, crosshairs on critter, safety off, and then does not shoot but takes a fraction of a second to make absolutely sure of his sight picture. D.E.P., October 1994
018 Shoot a flashlight.
Insert a Mini Maglite flashlight into your shotgun’s empty barrel. It will fit into a 12-gauge Skeet choke (or if the gun has interchangeable chokes, take the tube out). Tape in the flashlight so it can’t fall out, focus the beam, and wherever the gun points, the light will go. Practice mounting the gun from the carrying position, and see how quickly you can light up some spot on the wall. You’ll quickly find out how the gun has to be mounted to point where you look. Now have a friend shine a second beam, leaving it on just long enough so you can cover it with yours. It’ll teach you speed. B.B., November 1998
019 Start small.
The beginning handgunner has no use for anything other than a .22 rimfire. Heavier calibers are useful for serious target work or the stopping of bad men, but none of these is a job for the man without some handgun training. W.P., June 1955
020 Reduce recoil.
No amount of muzzle energy can substitute for the ability to send a bullet right where you want it, and the less kick you have to handle, the more precisely you will shoot. Lose the magnum, and you’ll probably shoot much better. D.E.P., August 1991
021 Fix your trigger.
If your trigger gums up due to cold weather, here are a couple of cures: Take the barreled action out of the stock and then pour either boiling water or unheated Coleman lantern fuel through the trigger. That should clear out whatever is jamming it. D.E.P., February 1997
022 Winterize your shotgun.
No gunstock can fit well in light clothing and also fit well with a couple of inches of padding created by a heavy winter coat. One easy solution is to have two recoil pads, one approximately an inch thinner than the other for cold-weather hunting, and change them to match your clothes. B.B., September 1972
023 Forget busting brush.
Putting the crosshairs on a tangle of branches with a deer on the other side and pulling the trigger results in tofu for dinner. No bullet bucks the brush. Would you like a real brush bucker? Get a 20mm cannon. D.E.P., September 2000
024 Fit your rifle.
A badly fitted rifle will kick all out of proportion to its calculable recoil energy. W.P., July 1949
025 Hold your breath.
Be careful as you bring your rifle up to aim that you don’t exhale a cloud of moisture-laden breath onto the cold scope lenses. This will fog your scope in an instant. Hold your breath as you bring the rifle up, aim, and shoot. Then exhale. D.E.P., January 2000
026 Test your ammunition.
A box of ammo is not simply a box of ammo; it is either a buck lying slain on the greensward or a buck running off and you standing there with egg on your face. You must, dear reader, find out which ammo shoots accurately in your rifle, and then never depart from it thereafter. D.E.P., May 1987
027 Don’t screw around.
Always carry a screwdriver that fits your gun. G.H., January 1993
028 Shop carefully.
When buying a used rifle, avoid anything that shows signs of home gunsmithing. There are two kinds of people who work on guns—those who know how, and morons. Amateur tinkering can not only render a rifle useless; it can also render it dangerous. D.E.P., January 2001
029 Shoot ice.
Ice cubes make sporty plinking targets. They shatter as explosively as glass when you hit them but create no litter that must be picked up later. They also encourage careful marksmanship, because every time you miss the target it melts down a little smaller. H.G.T., May 1983
030 Don’t be surprised.
A man is a boob if he has not eliminated every possible element of chance from the performance of his gun. W.P., October 1949
031 Fix your recoil pad.
Soft-rubber recoil pads can occasionally grip on clothing no matter how well you mount your gun. Wrap the sides of the pads (but not the butt) with slick plastic electrical tape. If you don’t want tape on your fine butt-stock, try spraying the sides of the pad with some slick vinyl protectant like Armor All. That will help the stock slide over your clothes. B.B., November 1998
032 Beat rust.
After hunting on a very cold day, let your gun warm to room temperature before you put it away in a closed case or cabinet. If you store the firearm while it is still cold, moisture could condense on the metal parts and leave rust spots. H.G.T., January 1981
033 Sight in right.
Eight rifles out of 10 will throw the first round from an oil-wet bore anywhere from 1 to 6 inches away from the center of impact normal to the barrel when it is fouled. W.P., January 1955
034 Save your Muzzle.
The rifling at the muzzle is critical because it puts the final spin on the bullet, and if there is a nick or a ding, or if the muzzle is worn by bad use of a cleaning rod, you might as well be throwing rocks. D.E.P., August 1989
035 Practice.
The best shooting instructor is a case of shells. G.H., January 1993
Deer
036 Make a clean kill. There is only one shot to take, and that is the lung shot. It offers the largest target and it is always fatal. D.E.P., July 2001
037 Hunt a crosswind.
The standard advice is to still-hunt with the wind in your face. But this isn’t always best. Bucks like to bed at the edge of cover, with the wind at their backs, so they can see what’s coming in front of them and smell what’s behind them. By hunting at right angles to the wind, you have a better chance of getting the drop on a bedded buck before it either sees or smells you. Keith McCafferty, November 2004
038 Walk like a deer.
Moving whitetails generally stop on odd-numbered steps—three, five, seven, and so on—an irregular cadence that you should try to duplicate when tracking over crunchy snow, tricking deer into thinking that the intruder has four legs instead of two. K.M., December 2003–January 2004
039 Find his bed.
When a buck track turns downwind and begins to move uphill, assume that the buck is going to bed down. He will probably stop at the edge of heavy cover, on a high spot that offers a view of his surroundings and permits him to sense anything following on his back trail. To approach his bedding site without being seen or winded, circle away from his track for roughly 100 yards and then move cautiously, parallel to the track. Jerome B. Robinson, July 1999
040 Study scrapes.
A series of scrapes made in the same direction tells you which way the buck was traveling when he last came by. Notice the direction the buck was facing as he pawed the ground, throwing debris to the rear. You can assume he’ll pass in that direction again, so look around for a place to put your stand. J.B.R., June 1997
041 Look him in the eye.
If the rack of a deer is obscured by brush, check out the circumference of the antler base. If it’s about the same as the buck’s eye—about 4 inches—then counting points is beside the point. K.M., August 2003
042 Cool your buck.
To keep your deer from spoiling at camp during warm weather, put it in the shade and let it chill overnight. Then in the morning, before the sun reaches it, wrap it in anything available—extra blankets, canvas, even your sleeping bag. This will keep it cool until night when you can chill it again. You can keep a deer like this for several days. T.T., September 1974
043 Act indifferent.
Fred Bear thought that deer were quick to react to hunters who skulked through the woods but often stood still for humans who appeared to be out for a walk. The trick to fooling deer, he said, was to avoid eye contact and wait until you had passed the deer before turning smoothly to draw your bow. It works with a rifle too. K.M., November 2004
044 Block their way.
Find a well-used deer trail, block it with some fresh-cut brush, and wait nearby. Deer approaching the unfamiliar roadblock will stop and sniff and slowly pick out a new way around the obstacle. Totally preoccupied with this change in their world, they are oblivious to a hunter waiting near the trailside. An even easier way to create a similar diversion is to hang a slip of bright-colored cloth or shiny foil from a branch within good range of a trail, rub, or scrape. Norman Strung, February 1993
045 Don’t overhunt.
The most carefully wrought blind won’t work if you hunt out of it unceasingly. Alarmed by constant activity, wildlife will quickly learn to avoid the spot. Don’t use the same blind more than once a week and never more than twice. N.S., September 1991
046 Read the snow.
When tracking a deer in the snow, look for sign other than hoofprints to judge if it’s a buck. A rutting buck will often stop and sniff at crossing deer tracks and may leave the impressions of his antler tips in the snow. Also look for antler impressions where he drops his head to feed. K.M., September 2002
047 Make your move.
When a deer suddenly appears at close range in response to your grunt call or antler rattling, don’t be afraid to move slowly to shoulder your gun. Deer coming to calls will usually just stop and stare at you, mistaking your movements for those of the deer that they were expecting to see. J.B.R., October 1999
048 String a trail.
Before the season starts, spend 50 cents on a spool of sewing thread and stretch it across deer trails at dawn. Check the threads at noon and again before nightfall to pattern deer movements and determine where to put your stands. K.M., December 2001
049 Keep the sun at your back.
A low sun behind you makes it harder for deer to see you, but easier for you to see them, improving your chance of seeing deer when you are still-hunting. H.G.T., December 1984
050 Carry an extra layer.
Roll your additional clothing into a 2-foot-long bundle, and tie the ends to a 5-foot-long deer-drag rope, leaving enough slack to slip your head and one arm and shoulder through the resulting loop. Wear the bundle on your back with the strap over your nonshooting shoulder. J.B.R., November 1994
051 Bring your turkey call.
Deer are often reassured by turkey sounds. An occasional feeding call made between bouts of deer grunts and antler rattling gives nearby deer a sense of confidence that your area is safe. Turkeys don’t talk when they feel endangered. J.B.R., July 2001
052 Watch your back trail.
Deer are curious about where you have been. That’s why you often find deer tracks on top of the ones you made earlier in the day. You can take advantage of the deer’s tendency to follow human tracks by doubling back on the downwind side of your own trail before choosing a place to wait and watch. Pick a spot that overlooks an area used by deer and also gives a good view of your track from the downwind side. J.B.R., March 2002
053 Judge a trophy.
The best way to tell the length of a deer’s antler tines is by comparing them to the length of its ears, which typically measure about 8 inches. If the first or longest tine appears longer than the ear and the second point is only a little shorter than the ear, you have all the information you need to make your decision. Shoot. K.M., August 2003
Survival
054 Survive in three steps.
If forced to spend an unexpected night in the wilderness, you can save yourself, no matter how bad the weather is, by following three steps: first, admit you’re lost and stay where you are; second, use whatever materials you carried or that nature provides to shelter yourself from the wind; and third, build a fire. K.M., September 1997
055 Practice a worst-case scenario.
Make yourself spend a cold night without much gear. It won’t be comfortable, but it’s a great confidence builder. Plus you’ll discover if your gear is adequate. i
056 Follow the road.
Logging trail systems branch out like tree limbs from the main stem. The sharp angle formed at their junctions always points to the route the loggers used to haul the timber to the road. J.B.R., November 1994
057 Get found.
Make an impression with your hunting boots by stepping onto a sheet of tinfoil and leave it at home before a hunt. This will help searchers isolate your track should you become lost. K.M., February 2003
058 Make tinder.
If you’re without tinder, use your ingenuity. Paper money, the coveted elk license that set you back $500, shaved body hair, and even the lint in your pockets will burn. K.M., February 2003
059 Avoid grizzlies.
Stay out of places where bears feed in early autumn—berry patches, whitebark pine stands, mountainsides with cutworm moths. Always hunt with a partner. Use a flashlight when walking to hunting areas before dawn, and never investigate a carcass. K.M., September 2000
060 Build the perfect lean-to.
A Whelen tarp shelter is often all you need for shelter, and it packs much lighter than a tent. The sloping back wall reflects light and heat from a fire, and the side walls provide protection from crosswinds and space for gear. To make one, use grommets, lightweight stakes, and a nylon cord strung between two trees to set up a 12x20-foot piece of water-repellent ripstop nylon as a lean-to, with the open side facing your fire. Line the floor with pine boughs. K.M., August 2003
061 Save your dog’s life.
Hunting dogs are bitten far more often by venomous snakes than dog owners are. Because many bites occur out of sight and the dog’s hair may cover fang marks, it’s vital to recognize secondary symptoms. Look for rapid swelling of the nose, face, or limb, vomiting, wobbly walking, seizures, pale gums, and a rapid heart rate. If you suspect your dog was bitten, try to keep it calm. Immobilize it and hurry to a vet. Administer an antihistamine to help the dog breathe. K.M., June 2004
062 Fight like a lion.
If you are attacked by a cougar, fight back. Lion attacks are predatory, not territorial like those of bears. Playing dead will just make you into a meal that much sooner. K.M., December 2003–January 2004
063 Don’t overload the boat.
Duck hunters favor unstable craft such as johnboats, sneak boats, and canoes, and tend to overload them. When they lean over the gunwales to retrieve a decoy line or a retriever jumps into the water, the boat capsizes. Pack carefully. K.M., February 2004
064 Build a fire.
In a survival situation the ability to build a fire could prove the difference between life and death. A simple dexterity test can tell you when you’ve reached the critical juncture: Try to touch one thumb to the little finger of the same hand. When your hands become so cold that this is difficult, drop whatever you’re doing and build a fire. In a few more minutes, you might not be able to. K.M., November 2001
065 Drink the water.
Boiling is the surest way to eliminate all dangerous microorganisms. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to boil water for 10 minutes for disinfection. Just bringing water to a boil will do the trick. K.M., May 2002
066 Find your way home.
If you get lost in flat country, make right-angle turns after hiking increasingly longer distances until you hit a familiar landmark. K.M., July 1998
067 Don’t swim for safety.
If you capsize or fall overboard, stick with the boat if possible. Swimming exposes more surfaces of the body to cold water, hastening the onset of hypothermia. It’s also much easier for rescuers to spot a boat than a head bobbing in choppy water. K.M., February 2004
068 Find shelter.
Of the body’s four basic requirements—food, water, shelter, and warmth—shelter is by far the most critical for survival in a winter emergency. Hypothermia kills not so much by temperature as it does by windchill. K.M., February 2003
SPECIAL THANKS TO FIELD AND STREAM MAGAZINE
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