Author: Larry Weishuhn

If you can remember the turn of the 21st century, you will recall States such as Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and a couple of others allowed hunting whitetail deer only with shotguns, muzzleloaders and bow and arrow. Conventional bottle-necked cartridges were not legal. Not being an archer, I hunted those states with a Modern Muzzleloader .50 inline, occasionally a 12 or 20-gauge T/C Encore shotgun shooting slugs, and either a .44 Mag or .454 Casull revolver once straight-walled handguns were allowed. Many was the time I longed for a conventional rifle chambered in a round capable of shooting at least 200 yards.…

How to survive a charge by some of the most dangerous animals in the world “Oh Great…  Now I’m going to have to dig him out of that tangled impenetrable jungle!”  My shot had felt good.  He should have gone down immediately, but he had not.  The shot had been slightly quartering away.  I had held to break his off-side shoulder.  “I should have waited until he turned full on broadside and then tried to break both shoulders!” said I speaking to no one while mentally kicking myself. Before picking up the blood trail which I could see from where…

“I don’t know, but I’ve been told, if you’re gonna hunt bear, you better be bold…..and use a big gun!” “What did you just say?” Joe Polanco, my guide grinned as he walked out of the wall tent I would be sharing with Jerry Baker. I glanced at Jerry. He was smiling. It was mostly because of him I was finally on my first Alaskan brown bear hunt. Jerry, a native Texan, had spent time in Anchorage where he had partnered in an accounting firm that worked with Alaska’s premier guides and outfitters including the Branham family. At the time…

Caribou and Grizzly Bear Camp Somewhere Near the Middle of Alaska… The day had been a long one, matter fact the last five days had been rather long…but much had happened. I had taken two truly impressive western barren ground caribou with my .30-06 Thompson Center Encore handgun, selected from several thousand caribou in the herd. Our first day in camp, two 2-man tents on the top of a knoll overlooking a huge expansive drainage, we estimated at least 20,000 caribou had paraded past our “grand stand”. Some of the bulls would have easily placed high in the Boone &…

Photos: Larry Weishuhn Outdoors “And pray tell, what are you planning on doing with THAT?” Asked the outfitter when I approached the shooting bench where fellow hunters had made certain their rifles were properly sighted-in and so the outfitter and guides could see how each hunter handled their rifles. “I intend to shoot my elk with it, Sir!” said I pulling my .44 Mag revolver, topped with a 2-7x long eye-relief scope out of my I glanced at the outfitter and the guide to whom I had been assigned. Both outfitter and guide wagged their heads negatively while rolling their…

Monty DeBoer during his tenure with Hornady has worn numerous hats. Fairly recently he was promoted to what he while smiling refers to himself as “Hornady’s MOM”, or more correctly Hornady’s Marketing Operations Manager. Monty is no stranger to the many who shoot Hornady ammunition. He, over the past years has become a very familiar face at the many consumer shows Hornady does and supports. I was able to catch up with him in bear camp in far northern Alberta, Canada where Monty was on his first black bear hunt. During our visit we talked about his early years of…

“Eight inches high, six inches to the left of the bullseye,” I reported, as I looked at the 100-yard target through my Meopta spotting scope. “Shoot one more. Bam! Six-inches low and three-inches to the right of the bull’s eye” came next. My shooting partner retorted: “Ought to be good enough. Elk are big! OK, I’m ready!” he said, putting his rifle back into a soft case. I did not say out loud what I was thinking: “You gotta be kidding, good enough? If you have to shoot beyond about 50 yards, you’re going to have a wounded elk on…

Evening’s light was grudgingly waning and there were no more shadows. The afternoon vigil had been a long one, starting shortly after three o’clock. I had asked to be taken to the bear bait early. My outfitter and guide had seen a super-sized cinnamon brown boar in the area. His visiting time to the bait was reputedly erratic. Sometimes he arrived mid-afternoon and sometimes, just before dark. I truly wanted to take a large color-phase bear.  In many years  hunting black bears, I had taken numerous big, totally-black bears, and now I was looking for something different. With the cooling…

Here we were, talking about a friend’s new mount. “I don’t know how to tell Jim, or if I should, but that mount he just got back doesn’t look anything like a Whitetail! It looks more like a rat with antlers than the magnificent buck he was. Horrible!,” my friend said. Before I could agree, Jim’s and my mutual friend continued. “He must have thought he was getting a really good deal. He did tell me the guy only charged $150 for a shoulder mount and told him he’d have it back in less than three months. Actually, that should…

“Dad, we want to go deer hunting with you and I want to shoot a deer!” I recall that my Dad smiled at this exclamation and nodded approvingly. At the time, I was nearing seven and my sister, Beth, was five. I had actually been hunting with Dad for the past couple of years. Beth joined us when she was four. We sat in blinds, ate cookies, drank hot chocolate, looked at books, played games, looked through Dad’s binoculars and did our best to be quiet, which we seldom were. Dad simply smiled. When it became obvious that we were…