August 30th, 2008 began as many other days had for Corporal Jonathon Rist. He was on his second combat tour. His first tour earned him a Purple Heart but the thought of leaving a job undone and his many friends behind made him work hard toward recovery so he could return to the battlefield. His first tour had him in Iraq, this time he was in Afghanistan. He was exemplifying the Marine Corp motto, Semper Fidelis. Always faithful: faithful to his country, his mission, and his fellow Marines...
I will be the first to admit that I hate hunting in severe cold. Thus, November whitetail hunts in Canada’s big buck factories of Saskatchewan and Alberta have never been high on my list. I talked to Barry Samson who owns Safari River Outdoors (www.huntcanada.com) in Sask. about his October hunts, and he told me that he felt pretty sure that he could put me on a good buck and the weather should be quite bearable...
Hours of airtime travel going from San Antonio to Anchorage. Picked up at the airport almost immediately upon arrival and whisked away to Lake Hood.
A final check of gear to be sure all present and accounted for. Check to be sure ammo arrived, yes, there. Bug suit, yep still packed. Gear hurriedly placed in DeHaviland Beaver float plane, workhorse of the North, but as I recall last one made in about 1947...
Mbogo, Nyati, Black Death…whatever you want to call him, the Cape buffalo is one bad customer and should never be taken lightly. That is why it is imperative that you trust your rifle and ammunition completely, as in with your life!
I’m standing on the island of Atka, halfway between Alaska and Siberia, off the Aleutian Island chain. North of me is the Bering Sea and south is the Pacific Ocean. We left Anchorage this morning on a charter plane and landed in Dutch Harbor, where all of the “Deadliest Catch” boats dump all their catch...
“Can you hit him from here?” questioned Tri-State Outfitter’s Bridger Petrini.
“I’ve been shooting that distance on the range a lot lately. Got a good rock solid rest. Think I’m going to try it.” I said looking down at my .30-06 Encore® pistol, then positioning it on top of my western hat which I had placed on the boulder in front of me...
It was hot, way too hot, the wind was blowing like crazy, and there were rattlesnakes everywhere. In other words, it was your typical West Texas deer hunt. Actually, it was typical in that you couldn’t predict the West Texas weather.
On the other side of the world is a place called Quinghai. Never heard of it? Neither had I until I talked to Bob Kern, famed hunting consultant and owner of The Hunting Consortium, a company that specializes in organizing top quality international hunts...
Reliability, accuracy, simplicity, quality and value have made Thompson Center the undisputed industry leader in the muzzleloader market today. In fact, muzzleloading has undergone more technological improvements in the last two decades than in the previous several hundred years.
My introduction to the Encore started before any one knew what the new gun was going to be named. I took the first animal ever taken with the new gun, a pistol chambered in .308 Win., a Maine moose, then a Colorado Shiras moose, then a sizeable 6 x 6 elk.