Dog steps on shotgun left lying on ground and wounds two hunters in Perthshire, Scotland

The Devil Deer:

A little kid fought off a wild animal attack his buddy with that little stick?

Self-defense is a mindset.

Sebastian notes that proponents of expanding the no-lead range claim the “the science is in on lead in wildlife” and “There’s no debate.”

Can’t discuss if banning lead ammo makes sense. We can only discuss how much to ban it.

As usual.

Deer gun season opens today in the Wolverine State and runs through the end of November.

Good luck, straight shooting, and be careful out there.

The Pittsburg Tribune has a pretty good story on the increasing number of ARs showing up in the hands of hunters: AR-style rifles spurring some debate

(”Spurring some debate” is the unofficial middle name of the AR, by the way.)

There are still some states — just how many the NSSF hopes to determine via survey within a week or so — where it’s illegal to hunt with a semiautomatic rifle.

Pennsylvania is one of those.

“It’s not the AR styling per se. That really has nothing to do with it,” said Scott Tomlinson, law enforcement supervisor in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s southwest region office in Bolivar. “It has to do with the capacity for shooting multiple rounds.”

That issue is easily addressed with low-capacity magazines. I’ve never really understood that limitation. Is there fear that someone with a 30-round mag is going to mow down an entire herd of deer at once? Do they have tags for all those deer?

Even within the hunting community, some “traditionalist” hunters dislike the rifles. That’s led the NSSF to mount a campaign aimed at getting sportsmen to quit arguing amongst themselves.

Because it’s unusual for gun owners to argue amongst themselves.

You want to really see the fur fly? Call that 5-round low-cap hunting magazine a “clip”.

Fallow Deer

A release on the Outdooor Wire notes that fallow deer have been observed in a couple of Ohio counties. Fallow deer are European natives but some are raised in the US.

The fallow deer are reportedly escapees from a propagator in Warren County. Both fallow bucks and does have been observed according to reports. This deer is not native to Ohio and there is no restricted season or bag limit. Hunters are encouraged to harvest them while out in the field. As with any non-native species it is important to quickly limit their populations to control spread of disease and competition with native Ohio wildlife.

Looks like gun season for white-tails opens November 30th, which means that the number of guys with guns on the lookout for deer with be through the roof. Hopefully, these fallows can be taken out.

Selecting and Ordering a Custom Hunting Rifle by Sisk Rifles
AVAILABLE NOW

Richard Mann, who contributed several chapters to the book, writes

Charlie Sisk is a respected rifle builder and in this book shares his thoughts on custom hunting rifles. The idea was to provide those looking to purchase a custom hunting rifle with information so they could make informed decisions and be able to engage in a conversation with a potential gun builder about topics relevant to the rifle they may or may not decide they want. (The first chapter deals with the question of whether you should even buy a custom rifle.)

Chapters include Custom Varmint Rifles, Rifles for Alaska, Custom Rifles and Kids, and What About a Wildcat?.

These guns come with a significant price tag, and that cost is only worth it if the performance measures up. To get what you need, you need to know what you need and how to ask for it. This book was written to help with that.

The thrill of the hunt is still there, but hunting continues to fade

It’s that family tradition of hunting that introduces most people to the sport. And it’s what keeps them coming back.

But in the past few years, the number of people hunting has continued its decade-long decline in South Carolina. As the number of hunters has declined so have sales of shotguns and rifles in the state.

Earlier I posted that South Carolina, like many states, just set a new conceal carry permit record. Something else noted in that story, though, is that the sales of both shotguns and rifles are declining. Last year saw a 9% decline in the number of hunting licenses issued in the state since 1999. Not huge, but it’s a significant number. Background checks for rifles and shotguns in South Carolina have dropped by 18% over the same period. Though transactions between individuals for these guns won’t show up in those numbers, transactions between individuals will be used guns, meaning that the sales of new long guns are down.

It would be interesting to see if rifle sales saw an increase in 2009 due to the great AR Rush. Many of those buying new rifles are not buying them to hunt.

Was out running this morning on a paved trail near my house when what looked a bit like a German shepherd started to cross the trail.

Except that it was a coyote.

It must have spotted me out of the corner of its eye or maybe scented me (though the wind was strong and mostly wrong for that), because about halfway across it suddenly sped up and dashed into a cornfield across the trail from the swampy woods it had come from.

This was all about 150 yards from a neighborhood along a heavily-used trail on the edge of the city of Wyoming, Michigan. I’ve seen a lot of deer along the trail, including about a dozen last fall crossing at nearly the exact spot as I saw the coyote. And I often spot deer even further into the residential area. But no coyotes until today.

And this wasn’t one of the stumpy mangy looking coyotes I remember seeing in Colorado, either. This was about the size of sleek shepherd.

Coyotes don’t usually attack humans. But there are exceptions.

(When my wife sees this she’s going to think I’m making it up to justify a predator upper for my rifle.)

Last July I mentioned that a new digital magazine about AR Guns and Hunting called, um, AR Guns & Hunting, was on the way from Grand View Media Group and that it would be edited by Predator Xtreme’s Ralph Lermayer. Well, it’s here:

AR Guns & Hunting
Volume 1, Issue 1

Read the premier issue, which is packed with a lot of great stuff. I’ll have to spend a little more time looking, but two articles that jump right out at Murdoc are Calibers that Hunt by Peter B. Mathiesen and AR Snafus by Kevin Murmatsu.

Overall, it looks like a major winner, and not only for hunters. I encourage you to check it out.

A note on the format: I was talking to Ralph at an event earlier this month and made the mistake of asking when his new web site would going live.  He immediately corrected me with a “it’s not a ‘web site’…it’s an online magazine.” And that is exactly what it is, laid out like a traditional print magazine but incorporating multimedia such as video into its pages. The interface works well and the pages are absolutely beautiful, but those used to surfing standard web page publishing may be a little put off. An upside is that you can download the entire 140-page issue via Google Gears for reading while offline.