Canada

You don’t have to hunt for very long before people start telling you about great hunting places. These are what are known as wild goose chases. It is easy to fall for them, but you never know until you go. My friend Tim Rose called this one Pig Central and it was central all right…

According to Senior Wildlife Biologist, Doug Updike, California’s black bear population has increased over the past 25 years. “In the last 30-plus years, we’ve seen a three-fold increase,” Updike said. Recent estimates put California’s bear population at about 30,000 animals spread over 52,000 square miles of habitat. Today, the state ranks among the top black…

Most hunters think of Oregon or Washington when they think of blacktail deer, but from the ocean beaches inland to I-5 and beyond, California is home to large numbers of Odocoileus hemionus columbianus and mule deer/blacktail hybrids. California is divided into five main deer management zones. The pure coastal deer is found in the A-Zone…

Fall colors are striking in the Tahoe National Forest in California’s High Sierras. Granite peaks are capped with snow, the vine maple turns red, purple, and orange. Oaks shine yellow and apples glow in the morning sun. Even the black bears come in colors. A chocolate pelt is most common, but cinnamons, blondes and even…

West of Quesnel, between the Fraser River and the Pacific, the foothills of the Itcha Range rise gently from the arid steppe. Heaped like slag on the horizon, the Nechakos stand black and white in the distance. Nearer, the forest resolves into greens and yellows: spruce and jack pine, willows and summer’s grass.

1946. BRITISH COLUMBIA. The moose stood broadside, his polished antlers gleaming, body black with caked mud. John raised the rifle, found the bull in his sights, thumbed the safety to “fire” and squeezed the trigger. At the shot, the bull shook his head. John sighted on the shoulder and fired again.

We were climbing a steep gravel ranch road in Charlie’s Toyota when we saw it, as big as a full-grown bear and on a dead run. Charlie hit the brakes and switched off the engine. There was no time to load the rifle. The shaggy, gray boar had disappeared into the chemise brush, 200 yards…

We topped out on a narrow road that shadowed a knife-edge ridge. Snow capped the High Sierras’ granite peaks and lay like a blanket in the mountain valleys of the Tahoe National Forest. Outfitter Andrew Gregory pulled his rig to a stop. James Drummond and ‘Utah’ Corey Kinross drew up behind and opened their boxes…