Free Republic

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is launching a new ad as part of an effort to pressure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to take up gun reform legislation. The progressive outside group will go up with the ad in Kentucky this weekend, where it will appear on Fox, MSNBC and CNN. "Our ad makes clear Mitch McConnell is out of step with Kentucky voters, even gun owners. He's corrupt and in the pocket of gun manufacturers who have spend hundreds of thousands to elect McConnell," Adam Green, the co-founder of PCCC, said in a statement. In addition to running...

When they were first introduced to the national hunting community, these novel methods for bringing in bucks were considered unconventional at best, and harebrained schemes by most. Now deer hunters everywhere use these tried-and-true tactics. We take a look back to when these trusty standbys were still considered downright bizarre. RATTLING - The brush-country hunters of Texas and New Mexico were crashing antlers together for decades before the trend caught fire in the rest of whitetail country. Although native hunters likely developed the technique, legend has it that an old market hunter accidentally discovered the phenomenon: "He was coming to...

Two weeks before I started my teaching career, my mentor teacher asked if I had any questions. I replied, "I don't know enough to know what to ask." It was true; I had never student-taught, so without being in the classroom I had no idea what to expect, nor did I know what needed clarity. The same goes with hunting. The more you hunt, the more you establish a hunting program. How you prepare. What you take. How you handle adversity and the amount of risk you tolerate. Then there are the specific logistics pertaining to the quarry. You’ve hunted...

FOUR POINTS TO KEEP IN MIND BEFORE HEADING UP FOR BLACKTAIL DEER - I'm not one of those dudes who have been hunting for 30 years. I don’t have a ring of racks in my garage or an elegant mount in my living room. I don’t have epic stories of 400-yard shots. My hunting career is littered with chaos. I shot my first deer in the leg. I was with my high school basketball coach and his daughter. She put one through the neck of a fork-in-horn at 150, and then dropped a 4-point at 250 to set up my...

Sen. Cory Booker wants Democrats to go bolder on guns — and says they’re playing into the hands of the National Rifle Association and the corporate gun lobby by rejecting bolder ideas. “For Democrats to play into the hands of the corporate gun lobby, and just letting them define what the realm of possible is, it’s so defeatist to me,” the New Jersey senator told me during an interview this week. “At a time with the levels of carnage in our country, we don’t need people who are defeatist in their thinking about what’s possible.” Booker, who is running for...

THE CLOCK'S TICKING ON GETTING DOWNED GAME COOL – ARE YOU PREPARED? In my opinion, the ability to properly care for wild game in the field is one of the most important tools a successful hunter needs in his toolbox. If you’re serious about hunting and putting quality meat in the freezer, you need to know how to care for the animal once you have it on the ground. While there are several different ways to field-dress wild game, the suggested steps to preserve and care for the meat are essentially the same. Regardless of your hunting skill level, any...

Hunting corn country several years ago with Mike Krei, then a field rep for the National Rifle Association, we were working a draw for pheasants when one exploded from cover. Using a 20-gauge over-and-under, Krei fired twice and missed, after which I swung my 12-gauge side-by-side Beretta into action. My first shot missed, but then the ring neck sailed straight away at maybe 20 to 25 yards away, and my final round – a high-base 2¾-incher No. 6 – launched out of my fixed full choke barrel and the bird folded in a cloud of feathers. Krei proved repeatedly that...

Whether you Write about it, Record it or Photograph it, Documenting your Adventures Helps you Cherish them all the more. The bear’s wet hide and piercing eyes are still burned into my memory. The way he rushed us only to stop just a few feet away is a constant reminder of how close we really came to having a "big" problem. Then there was the way he tore our raft apart the night before, leaving ragged pieces of rubber scattered on the gravel bar in front of our camp. What great memories of an incredible hunt on the Wulik River!...

The 6.5 Creedmoor rifle cartridge has been around for a while now and very popular among long range competitive shooters. This caliber is also effective for hunting as well. As a matter of fact the 6.5 is gaining rapid popularity. With its mild recoil and long range accuracy this caliber can compete along the lines of other long range cartridges such as the .308. Anyhow, the 6.5 isn't new. The 6.5 caliber has been around since 1891. Orginally, produced for the Swedish military, hunters in Europe quickly found it to be great on game. Winchester came out with the .264...

Governor Abbott has just signed another pro-liberty bill,  this one about pig hunting. Texas has a problem with feral pigs. From smithsonianmag.com: Wild hogs are among the most destructive invasive species in the United States today. Two million to six million of the animals are wreaking havoc in at least 39 states and four Canadian provinces; half are in Texas, where they do some $400 million in damages annually. They tear up recreational areas, occasionally even terrorizing tourists in state and national parks, and squeeze out other wildlife.Texas allows hunters to kill wild hogs year-round without limits or capture...

Tess Talley, an American trophy hunter who went viral in 2018 after posting a picture of a giraffe she’d killed, spoke out for the first time since the controversy in an interview with CBS aired this week. The image, which showed Talley posing next to a dead giraffe she’d bagged during a trip to South Africa in 2017, sparked widespread backlash. Talley spoke to “CBS This Morning” on Friday and revealed that the worldwide outcry hadn’t dulled her passion for hunting. “It’s a hobby, it’s something that I love to do,” she said and explained that the 2017 kill was...

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Native American man who was convicted of hunting off-season in Bighorn National Forest. Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices in Herrera v. Wyoming, holding that an 1868 treaty between the U.S. and the Native American Crow Tribe granted the tribe the right to hunt in "unoccupied lands," and that the treaty did not expire when Wyoming became a state in 1890. Crow Tribe member Clayvin Herrera was charged with off-season hunting in 2014, but he argued that the 151-year-old treaty protected his ability to hunt at that time....

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch broke with conservatives and joined four other liberal justices in a 5-4 tribal rights decision Monday. The Supreme Court upheld a Native American man’s hunting rights under a 150-year-old treaty. Crow tribe member Clayvin Herrera was charged in 2014 for off-season hunting in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming but argued that a treaty signed in 1868 between the tribe and Wyoming allowed him to hunt any time of the year. The state argued the treaty was nullified in 1890 when Wyoming achieved statehood, lower courts agreed, and the case made its way to the...

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) has appointed an exotic game hunter — who has posted several photos of the animals he killed on Instagram — to the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife Commission. The Willamette Weekly reports that Brown appointed James Nash last week to the body that is responsible, among other things, for managing the state’s wild wolf population. A coalition of eight conservation groups penned a letter to Brown this week voicing their displeasure with Nash’s appointment and urging her to rescind it. "Our organizations were stunned to learn that the proposed slate of appointments to serve...

A big city lawyer went duck hunting in rural South DAKOTA. He shot a bird, but it fell into farmer's field on the other side of a fence. As the lawyer climbed over the fence, an elderly farmer drove up on his tractor and asked him what he was doing. The litigator responded, "I shot a duck and it fell in this field, and now I'm going to retrieve it." The old farmer replied, "This is my property, and you are not coming over here" The indignant lawyer said, "I am one of the best trial attorneys in New York...

Guiding....hunts

@KeithOlbermann “This pea-brained scumbag identifies himself as Hunter Waltman and we should do our best to make sure the rest of his life is a living hell.” “And the nitwit clown who wrote this fawning piece should be fired.” "We have spoken to him about not making personal attacks," an ESPN representative said in a statement. "Someone with his following needs to understand the possible impact of his words," Hall noted. ”Telling over 1 million people to make someone’s life a living hell could have seriously dangerous consequences. (This quote from The Clarion-Ledger’s Executive Editor Sam Hall, not ESPN)

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The National Park Service improperly banned an Alaska moose hunter from using a hovercraft on a river through a national preserve, the US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in a unanimous decision. The court limited the National Park Service’s authority to enforce laws and regulations on state-owned rivers in Alaska. Justices rejected the agency’s argument that the river was “public land” for regulatory authority and that the agency’s water rights interest gave it rule-making authority. The outcome was a victory for moose hunter John Sturgeon of Anchorage, who had sued and lost in lower court rulings. “We reverse...

<p>The photograph, published last week in Pakistani newspapers, was stunning. It showed a magnificent mountain goat, with huge, symmetrically spiral horns, nestled on a rock and surrounded by breathtaking snowy mountains, with a man kneeling and smiling behind it.</p> <p>It took a few seconds to realize that the animal, a wild Astore markhor, was dead. The caption described the man as an American hunter who had paid a record $110,000 to shoot it on a tourist expedition to Pakistan’s northern Himalayan region of Gilgit-Baltistan.</p>

Two members of the U.S. House of Representatives re-introduced a bill last week that would make malicious acts of animal cruelty a felony nationwide. A person convicted of the crime could face a fine or up to seven years in prison, or both. The bill, known as the Preventing Animal Cruel and Torture (PACT) Act, is co-sponsored by Democrat Ted Deutch and Republican Vern Buchanan. PACT would criminalize "crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating and impaling animals." The measure would also address bestiality and other attempts to sexually exploit animals. Deutch tweeted, "We will get this done. It's bipartisan, common-sense policy that...