By: Jim Kushner This little semi-auto carbine is easy to carry and fast to get on target. especially if you hunt thick cover or from an enclosed blind where room to move is limited. It is only a little longer overall than a yard stick and weighs about 6 lbs. It has an 18 1/2 inch barrel and holds 4 rounds in a tube magazine that loads from the bottom similar to a pump action shotgun. A friend of mine used one of these successfully from his pop up blinds until his daughter started deer … Read More
Listen! …for the Call Of The Wild.
By: Jim Kushner. I recently received an e-mail from my friend Gary Morgan. When I opened it I saw a picture of his place at ELO (East Lake Outfitters). There was snow up around the front door and no sign that anyone had been around recently. His message was that he had an urge to go up there and get a fire going in the stove and maybe start a small trap line…asking that I drop what I’m doing and join him. The image took me back to my own cabin in Ontario. I have … Read More
A Classic Winchester Lever Action
By: Jim Kushner. I wanted to start this off with something old and work my way up to more modern rifles but will limit it to guns I can get my hands on or at least some good photos. Thank you to everyone kind enough to loan me their classics and not yet classics. Please e-mail me if you have a gun you would considering featured and WGD or myself would be happy to consider; attaching quality pictures are all that’s necessary. The rifle featured today is in fact a very old classic. Its a … Read More
Debating Deer Rifles
By: Jim Kushner A lot has been written about deer rifles and cartridges. There is a lot of opinion and thought about the best or most accurate or most powerful rifle/cartridge combination for whitetails. I have thought about the subject myself a lot over the years, many times while I am sitting in the deer woods not seeing any deer. My first rifle was given to me for Christmas the year I turned 14 and I still have it, the best Christmas gift ever. It was a Marlin 336 in .35 Remington and it came … Read More
Building A Hunting Rifle
By: Jim Kushner I have been thinking about buying another rifle for a while now. I have always had an interest in the 6.5×55 Swede cartridge. It is an old military cartridge that is supposed to have a good reputation for accuracy and as good a reputation as a hunting round. It shoots bullets from 100 to 160 grains with 120 & 140 being favorites for hunting. I am not sure why this cartridge appeals to me so much, maybe just the fact that it isn’t one of the everyday calibers you hear about. One … Read More
Through The Eyes Of A Taxidermist
By: Jim Kushner Mounting a good whitetail buck is a whole lot more than just skinning and “stuffing” it. There are certain steps that need to be followed and like a lot of specialty careers or in my case hobbies, there are some little tricks and procedures that help to make your trophy look great and last a lifetime. The actual supply list for mounting a deer is fairly small but the amount of labor involved is what you ultimately pay your taxidermist for. The most important thing a good taxidermist needs is knowledge of … Read More
Melancholy or ‘Tag Soup’ ?
By: Jim Kushner As I sat in my deer stand toward the end of the season I thought a lot about what I might be able to write about that was entertaining or at least interesting. An idea came to me after I had taken a doe one evening… My Dad offered his blind because he was not hunting anymore and had regularly been seeing deer there. As opposed to my regularly not seeing deer here. So I loaded up my open sighted 30-30 and drove over to sit for the evening. Dad’s elevated box … Read More
For The Love Of Bow Hunting!
When I was a kid, maybe six or seven years old, my Dad took up bow hunting. I remember watching him shoot his Bear recurve in the back yard and I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to start shooting a bow. My first real bow was a green, fiberglass recurve with a white rubber handle that doubled as an arrow rest. I think it was all of 30 or 35lbs. draw weight. We shot wood arrows with glue on tips and feather fletching. I don’t remember there being any particular attention paid to matching arrows … Read More
Where Did Your Love Of Deer Hunting Come From?
It was a long time ago but as a little kid I remember my Dad coming home from deer camp dressed in a pair of red & black wool pants, a black leather belt with a Marbles knife and a short section of rope on it. It was always a big deal to touch his week long beard, being a career firefighter this was the only time Dad was not clean shaven. Deer camp was an old camper trailer hauled to a section of State land with the family station wagon. Dad and his brothers … Read More
What happened when I stopped baiting deer?
I stopped shooting 4 & 6 point bucks & started shooting 8 & 10 point bucks. I also started seeing fewer deer than when I was baiting. That was one of the hardest things I had to get used to but eventually I became convinced that I just wasn’t going to have success with bigger bucks as long as I was continually seeing and spooking the same groups of young deer. (left) Author’s impressive wall of whitetail fame of northern Michigan. I do have the advantage of having lived and hunted the same piece of … Read More