The .28 Nosler might be one of the most useful cartridge inventions of the 21st century. This powerful .284 cartridge is heavy and perfect for long-range shooting. It also doubles as an ideal choice for countless hunting scenarios around the globe. Everything shy of dangerous game will inevitably fall to a properly placed bullet of appropriate construction. All that out of a standard length cartridge with steep shoulders and minimal body taper to increase powder capacity.

Mr. Bruun doesn’t pull any punches about the current lack of outdoor stories of yesteryear. “I was and still am thinking about all that wonderful writing that used to come tumbling out of the Madison Avenue produced pure outdoor magazines.” I agree. I was part of that era of classic outdoor literature no longer published by outdoor magazines. Why has this happened?

I think I have an incurable knife fetish. I’m not happy unless I have a knife in my pocket. I feel incomplete unless I have a sharp fillet knife in my tackle box when fishing. I always carry a folding knife on my belt and a fixed blade knife in my pack if I’m hunting. Keeping my knives sharp is a year-round job.

“Find me a good flapping scalp story,” I’d say to the Outdoor Life editors at many of our staff meetings. I meant, of course, a good bear tale where a grizzly or Alaska brown bear got the upper hand and chewed off the hunter’s scalp. During my tenure at Outdoor Life, I learned very quickly that our readers had a true love affair with bears, especially rogue grizzlies.

Baffin Island in the Northwest Territories can be downright mean to hunters. It’s cold, windy, and wet. Campfires are a luxury on Baffin. There are no trees, and the only vegetation is lichen and moss. The shoreline is a maze of ankle-twisting rocks. But the caribou hunting more than made up for the aches and pains in my body when I hunted there years ago.

The .220 Swift is one hell of a cartridge, often said to be the fastest commercial cartridge on the market. But is that true? Perhaps not quite! The claim might be valid in the American market, but there’s a certain german cartridge that can shoot .224 bullets of any given weight up to 100 fps faster than the Swift. To no surprise, the cartridge I refer to has a metric designation: the 5.6x57mm.

Unfortunately, the recent black bear attack in northern New Jersey and the first fatal bear attack in about 150 years is an example of what happens when people panic and run scared. Perhaps this deadly attack might not have happened if the young hiker had been more knowledgeable about the dangers of encountering a wild animal.

It’s been a long cold winter, but it’s almost over, and it’s time to start thinking about trout fishing. I love trout fishing with flies, but if history repeats itself and you want to take home a limit of trout, you might have to change your tactics. In all probability, your favorite stream will be high, fast, and muddy.

I’ve always been a firm believer that a big 10- to 12–inch shiner is one of the most effective ways to catch big bass. Unfortunately, your first problem may be finding such big shiners in your local bait shop. You may have to catch them yourself. You can chum for shiners with oatmeal and bread crumbs and catch them with doughballs on a No. 12 or 14 hook. The best way to fish live shiners is to cast them along shorelines or floating vegetation.