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
Life And Times Of Michigan’s Wild Pheasant
Featured Pic (above): Dr. Kelly Straka is the new MDNR Wildlife Division Veterinarian and is proof positive ladies love to hunt wild pheasants too. Her favorite shotgun for wild Thumb roosters this past December is a semi-automatic 12 ga. The MDNR places a strong focus on pheasant (and small game) hunting in Michigan. By: Tom Lounsbury. The pheasant’s history in Michigan is relatively short when you figure overall events in century form. I’m always amazed by the amount of folks today who believe the pheasant is an indigenous (native) wild bird species to North America. The … Read More
So You Want To Train A Bird Dog?
By: Amy Gauthier So you want to train a bird dog. Congratulations! You are interested in an activity that will teach you more about yourself than almost any other hobby. As I sat down, attempting to produce my first dog training article, my head began to spin. So many questions are asked by hopeful new puppy owners: Where do I start? What do I need? What do I DO? Ah, the articles that could be written to answer these questions…and they have been written, in magazines, and books galore. Who am I to add to … 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
Closure to the one that got away
By: Tom Lounsbury Most hunters these jet age days have a bucket-list of far away adventures they would like to do, and of course I have mine. On my list there is red stag and wild boar hunting in Argentina, hunting various antelope in Africa and hunting desert mule deer in old Mexico. I had a wonderful opportunity for the Africa hunt last spring, but I had to pass because Africa’s hunting season is during our spring and summer and I had a good portion of our farm going into new conservation programs that required … Read More
Will Work For Food!
Many of us have booked a wild game hunt with an outfitter…at least once. There are many reasons for trusting our hunts to someone else’s planning and handiwork, but few will admit they most need a professional to cover their ‘back side’. WGD found a handful of some of the toughest hunting guides in the Midwest. We recently sat down with them to get a feel of what drives their ambition. “Most guides are in shape, physically…it’s the mental toughness that matters most”, says Ross Chambers, a professional guide in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula. Imagine … 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