Category: Outdoor life

“With my name and my success, guys just figured I was lucky,” says O’Shea, who farms and ranches east of Edmonton in the part of the province where rolling grain fields transition to the bush, the local term for the fingers of aspen and poplar that dominate the landscape as you go north. “I’ve taken some nice animals over the years, but to my testament, I probably hunt and think about hunting 100 times more than anybody I know. When I watch TV, it’s about hunting. When I read, it’s about hunting. When I go to church, I’m praying for my family and for the chance to kill bigger bucks and bulls.”

O’Shea’s benedictions must have been received, because the 55-year-old Albertan holds the new world record for non-typical elk. The 449 4/8-inch bull, shot in September on land O’Shea has hunted since he was a boy, has been certified by the Pope and Young Club as the largest non-typical elk ever taken by a bowhunter.

But tagging that elk was the product of anything but luck. Instead, O’Shea’s harvest of the 9×9 bull with crowns of nontypical points is the result of generations of his family living on productive land, learning how to hunt it, and days and hours spent in the presence of the elk herd that produced the remarkable specimen.

“I guess you can say we’ve had a long-term relationship with those elk,” says O’Shea, whose achievement will be officially recognized by Pope & Young at its July convention in Reno, Nevada. “I know every square inch of that area because I’ve hunted it for my lifetime. I’ve been hunting it so long that I can remember the first time I saw elk show up,” more than 30 years ago.

“Honestly, I couldn’t give a care about the score, but I had him scored and went through the process of entering him because I knew he was a special animal,” says O’Shea. “A little more special than most, I guess you’d say. He’s just an incredible animal, and I wanted to recognize and respect him. He grew those antlers. I’m just the jerk who shot him.”

But O’Shea is also protective of the place that grew him. The farmer/rancher hunts with his four boys, and while most of the ground they hunt is private, there is enough provincial (crown) land and various Ducks Unlimited conservation properties open to public hunting that they don’t want to draw a crowd of trophy-seekers.

“It pays to be under the radar,” says O’Shea. “My four boys all hunt with me. My boys killed their first elk when they were 12 years old, with rifles, though they are now in their 20s and are pretty accomplished bowhunters. We don’t post anything on social media. This was the first animal that kinda got away from us. One of the first photos escaped and little by little people started finding out about it.”

What they discovered was the sort of story that restores faith in the rewards of hard hunting, deep knowledge of a place, and a singular passion for bowhunting elk. They also discovered an almost mythical animal, a bull that displaced the previous world record by 7 4/8 inches and which had spent its life in a few rural townships of central Alberta’s wheat belt.

Prelude to the Hunt

Unbelievably, the O’Sheas had never laid eyes on the bull prior to Sept. 14. They had some tantalizing trail cam photos, and a handful of neighbors claimed they had seen an outsized bull running with a herd of cows and satellite bulls.

“Every trail cam picture we had of him was nocturnal,” says O’Shea. “There’s a single pine tree out in the bush, and pretty much every elk will go rub on that one tree, so I have a camera there. I have pictures of him rubbing on that tree, almost every night before the season opened.”

Alberta’s bow season runs the month of September, and O’Shea and his boys had prepared as usual. O’Shea still shoots the same Mathews Z7 compound that he bought new a decade ago. The original string is getting worn but is still serviceable. He shoots a dozen arrows every evening in the weeks leading up to the opener.

“I have five targets set up in my yard, and I’ll shoot from different angles and heights, kneeling and sitting, practicing a little bit of everything,” says O’Shea of his pre-season preparation. “For me, I’m confident out to 30 yards. Anything out past that for me, I don’t know. I’m not confident enough to shoot past that. Which ain’t much, I know. My boys, they’ll shoot out to 50 and beyond, and they shoot really good, but I have a hard time holding a 3-inch group out that far.”

Dialed in, the O’Shea boys targeted the big bull they had only seen on cameras from the opener. They hunted every day, starting in the morning with locator bugles, and then vectoring toward the deep bush where the elk go to bed in the mid-day heat. In the evenings, they’d set up in likely spots and hope to cow-call the bull into bow range. For two weeks, the big bull gave them the slip.

“We couldn’t get close to him those first 14 days,” says O’Shea. “He had cows with him, and we’d bust them” or the wind was wrong, or the herd would move out of cover before they could get set up. “The bush right there is pretty thick. Historically, it’s a good area for whitetails, just a tangle of aspen and poplar and underbrush. When they tuck in there in the daytime, it’s hard to work in on them.”

Read Next: 11 Ways to Start Preparing for Your Fall Elk Hunt in the Offseason

But on Sept. 13, they finally had a close encounter. The big bull was bugling in the brush, and as the O’Sheas triangulated in on the sound, another bull bugled, and then they heard crashing, “like two bulls really going at it.” They pulled out, but were back in the spot at daybreak.

“We tried some locator bugles, but all was quiet,” says O’Shea. “We didn’t know where he was. Usually we can get them to respond in the mornings and figure out a plan from there, but there was nothing. So that night, we went back where we had last heard him.”

O’Shea and one of his sons split up. O’Shea headed for a homemade ground blind that he had constructed out of deadfall limbs years earlier, and which he often used for whitetails. It was set up on a slope, on the edge of a clearing along a well-used trail.

The Bull Appears

“It’s an area I know the elk use, and I figured it was just as good a spot as any to set up for the night, so that’s what I did. I tried some locator bugling, but there was not a peep. I was in my blind for maybe 10 minutes when I heard something to my left—upwind. There’s a little clearing and I saw him standing there, just staring forward in the clearing, like he was studying what to do next. The minute I saw him, my heart raced out of my head. He stood there for maybe five minutes. I couldn’t even move because he would have seen me. But the wind was right so I didn’t have to worry, and as long as he didn’t detect movement, I was good. He was 18 yards, ish. I was shaking when he first came out, but he stood there so long that I was able to gain my composure. I never looked at his horns. I knew what he was. I just looked at his body and focused on the shot. I concentrated on that crease, and when he turned slightly quartering away, I was able to draw, let a little chirp out, and let the arrow go.”

The shot looked good, and more importantly, it sounded good. The bull bounded away into the bush.

“It was probably 45 minutes to dark. He took off, and I just backed out and regrouped with my boy and called another of my boys. We got back in there and got on the trail. He went probably 150 yards and just piled up dead. But that was the longest time of my life.

“It was amazing. Just amazing. We never said a word. Everybody just looked at each other and just… Wow. I’ve killed some pretty good animals, but I’ve never seen anything like that. We didn’t know what he was. We knew the potential, but score-wise, we didn’t even know. We took a couple of phone pictures out there in the bush, and then got him dressed and home, back at my son’s place. We had him in the garage at probably one in the morning, and just stood around, still just guessing and amazed. I can’t describe it. Everybody just kept looking at each other and shaking our heads.”

Scoring the New World-Record Elk

A neighbor heard about O’Shea’s big bull, and thinking that he had sheds from a previous year, asked to come look at the trophy. He brought along an official Boone and Crockett Club scorer, and his rough score confirmed the dimensions that the O’Shea boys had only whispered: a score well north of 420.

“After we got some preliminary scores, we kept debating about whether to have it officially scored or not,” says Shawn O’Shea. “We wanted to know, but I’m not much for attention. It’s not my thing, put it that way.”

But he felt he owed the big bull some notoriety and allowed the preliminary score to be submitted to Pope and Young, whose representatives responded that a bull of that caliber should be panel scored, one of the prerequisites for award designations.

“They wanted me to ship the head to Minnesota,” where the Pope and Young Club is headquartered. “With COVID going on, I couldn’t just take it, so I looked at shipping. It was expensive, maybe $4,000 or $5,000 including the crate. But what really caught me was when the insurance people asked me what I valued it at. That’s where it hit me. Monetarily, I don’t know what it’s worth, but to me, it’s unreplaceable. I was like, forget it. That thing’s not going anywhere.”

But Pope and Young officials said they could convene a scoring panel in Regina, Saskatchewan, and O’Shea drove the head to his neighboring province, where scorers arrived at the official dimensions: 449 4/8 inches.

That score eclipses the standing non-typical bowkilledworld-record elk, a 442-inch monster taken in 2003 by Nick Franklin in Coconino County, Arizona. And it surpasses the 430-inch typical world record taken in 2016 by Steve Felix in southeastern Montana.

In fact, O’Shea’s bull has more inches of antler than any other North American game animal taken by archery equipment. Only a handful of mountain caribou, taken by rifle hunters, have a greater amount of antler and a higher score than the Alberta non-typical elk.

Was it luck, or was O’Shea’s success the product of time and effort?

“I’ll allow that there was a little bit of luck involved,” says Shamrock. “A lot. But I’ll tell you what. We ground hard for him. Me and my boys were out there every day and every night for 14 days of the season. I’ll generally hunt every day of bow season, every day of September. And I’m out in the bush trapping coyotes in the winter and doing nuisance beaver trapping for the county. So I’m out there every day. Every single day.”

Praise the deer gods, it won’t be long now until opening day of hunting season. But don’t wait until the last minute to get ready. To tie your tag to a big whitetail, the advance work you do right now is as important, maybe even more important, than the hunt tactics you’ll employ in a couple of months. Here’s your plan for scouting deer in summer.

1. Chart a Course

On your kitchen table with the A/C cranking, check topographic and aerial maps, either old-school paper ones or on apps like OnX Hunt or HuntStand, of the lands you’ll hunt this fall. Study the contours of crop fields, pastures and woodland edges. Key on timber strips, draws, creeks, and similar funnels that connect potential feeding and bedding areas of deer.

Scan the maps and visualize the likely patterns of bucks. If you’ve hunted a property before, think back to how animals fed, traveled and bedded according to prevailing winds.

By reading and studying maps you can eliminate some 60 percent of marginal deer habitat before you ever leave the house. Then focus your scouting in the 40 percent where you’re most apt to get on a good buck.

2. Go Bachelor Clubbing

On late July and August evenings, drive to a hunting area and park where you can see a good piece, or if you have to sneak to a hill that overlooks fields of alfalfa, soybeans, or clover. In a more contiguous woods habitat, set up with a partial view of clear-cuts, power lines and other openings in the timber.

Once you’ve found a good vantage, go to work with a 10X binocular and a spotting scope. Buy and use the best optics you can afford. Then put that glass to work looking for velvet-racked bucks that gather to feed and posture out in the open at dusk.

Here are some interesting facts about those bachelor whitetails you’re fixing to gawk at:

• A group of two to eight bucks hanging out together in mid-summer is typical.
• Groups are comprised of bucks of all ages; the deer in each gang are usually not related.
• While summer bucks get along well, they establish a pecking order and use semi-aggressive vocalizations and sometimes hoof-flailing to show who’s who in the hierarchy.
• As days begin to shorten in mid-August, testosterone levels in the bucks begins to rise, triggering the hardening of antlers and the eventual breakup of the groups.
• Dispersal studies have shown that from late August to mid-September, some of the bucks within a group might move a mile or more to fall and winter range, but other bucks will hang tight in the core areas where they live year-round. You should be able to hunt at least one of those big deer and likely more right there in the same fields, edges and strips where you’ve watched them this summer.

3. Take a Hike

Until now, your scouting has been long-range and low-impact, but I’m a firm believer that you also need to dive in and do a little ground pounding, especially if you’ll be on a new property this fall. You’ll bump some deer and a few bucks, but who cares? As long as you’re smart and sneaky, the deer will forget about your intrusion long before the season opens.

Take a few days to ground scout over the next few weeks. Tuck your pants into knee-high boots, lather on bug dope, spray down with scent killer, and go.

First, target food and cover that will be available to deer from September on throughout the season.

Biologists say that in late summer, whitetail deer are genetically programmed to set up their home ranges near nutritious food sources and with heavy bedding cover close by. Bucks can pile on the pounds (up to 20 percent of their body weight now through September) while moving short distances.

Finding deer and shooter bucks now is all about zeroing in on the best food sources: alfalfa, soybeans, clover, and corn. If you have any of these fields on your land or planted nearby on neighboring properties, you will have bucks in your woods to hunt.

Read Next: Best Food Plots for Deer

Pennsylvania biologist Jeannine Fleegle adds, “It is no secret that acorns are a favorite (food source for deer). When available, acorns dominate their diet in fall and winter.”

Roam ridges and bottoms, and point your binoculars into the tops of oak trees. Do you see bunches of green nuts near the branch tips? Or are the limbs sparse?

Read Next: How to Scout for Whitetail Deer

A big crop of acorns come September will draw and concentrate deer in the timber, so your hottest stands will likely be on ridges and in oak bottoms. Conversely, a lack of nuts and a poor mast year will scatter deer as they move around and seek other food choices; you’ll generally do better to hunt the edges of bean and corn fields, and browse thickets where does and bucks browse.

As you hike around, note pockets and strips of greenery, saplings, briers and weeds in proximity to the feed. Biologists denote security cover as “vegetation thick enough to hide 90 percent of a deer at a distance of 200 yards or less.” Stand back and look for thickets that fit the bill.

Walk field edges, creek bottoms, strips of woods and other funnels that look good on your maps. Look for main and secondary deer trails, and especially spots where they converge and cross water. Food and cover conditions will change as summer turns to fall, but some deer will use those trails and funnels from now to October and even through the rut.

It’s too early to find fresh rubs, but be on the lookout for scarred trees that bucks blazed last fall or two years ago. In a study in Michigan, a herd of whitetails was totally removed from a large enclosure, and no deer inhabited the joint for three years. The fourth year, deer were restocked into the pen.

That fall, the new bucks immediately began blazing the same trees that their predecessors rubbed years ago, which is fascinating, so use science to your advantage. Pinpoint clusters of old rubs and plan to hunt nearby because some bucks will travel in the vicinity of those old rubs this fall.

As you walk, look for and flag strategic trees in various corners of a property where you’ll want to hang a stand in a month or so. Or go ahead and set a stand or two on a ridge or in a creek bottom where your gut says bucks will travel in six or eight weeks.

4. Summer Cam Strategy

I’ve had a few trail cameras running since June on my Virginia properties, but mid-July, when the bucks’ racks are on fire and growing fast, is when I really get serious.

READ NEXT: Best Trail Cameras

Here’s a typical camera strategy for an 800-acre farm I hunt. On a hike next week, I’ll set two cameras on two half-acre clover plots we’ve hidden back in the woods. I’ll put more cameras on the edges of larger plots and a corn field, strapped to trees along prominent deer trails that wend out of the woods and thickets.

I’ll wind up by placing cameras in creek bottoms and near a beaver pond located back in the woods with good security cover nearby.

After a few weeks of checking images and tweaking setups, I’ll zero in on the field corners, edges and ridges where a shooter buck or two are feeding and traveling to bed. Although this intel will reveal their summer habits, the deer will be on a similar pattern when bow season opens, and some bucks will hang in the nearby woods all fall.

5. Fake Some Scrapes

Several studies have shown that whitetail bucks will visit scrapes year-round, and often in late summer.

A mock scrape is not only scent-based, but also a visual sign. Rake out at least a 2×3-foot area below an overhanging branch where deer can see it. The prominent “lick branch” 3 or 4 feet above the scrape is all-important. Any time of year, and especially in summer, bucks will rub the branch with their faces, eyes, and racks, and chew on it.

Now is a great time to douse the scrapes with liquid scent (check your state’s regulations on scent use), or use a dripper system. Rather than using a doe-in-heat or tarsal rut lure now, doctor summer scrapes with an all-purpose and all-season curiosity scent. To pique the interest of bucks, you simply need the scrapes to reek of the barnyard smell of lots of deer.

Set a trail camera within 10 feet or so of each scrape and see who comes sniffing. This new scrape scent/cam strategy is a good option for areas where, due to CWD concerns, states have banned the use of corn and minerals to attract deer to camera sites.

6. Put it All Together

One August, Iowa bowhunter Jay Gregory glassed a huge buck in a soybean field several evenings in a row. The stud was sneaking out of deep cover in a river bottom to feed and posture for does at dusk.

Jay took a chance, sneaked 100 yards into the river bottom and set out a few cameras. A stickler for controlling human scent, he wore rubber gloves and sprayed his entire body, boots, cameras and with straps with an odor-neutralizer.

Over the next few weeks, Jay got some incredible pictures. The buck looked even bigger on camera, maybe 200 inches.

Bow season opened and Jay snuck into the bottom and set a treestand. The first time in the stand he killed the 198-inch giant.

That is how you do it in the short term: Late-summer visuals of a big buck coupled with subsequent trail-camera images of the deer give you a fighting chance of punching your tag in early archery season.

7. Play the Long Game

One summer my friend Elliot spotted a particularly big 10-pointer roaming his ranch along the Milk River in northeast Montana. The buck traveled a primary core area of about 200 acres throughout July and August. He was very visible as he browsed in an irrigated alfalfa field on dusky evenings, then sneaked back to a field of standing corn to bed for the night.

The deer continued this pattern into the bow season in September, passing close to Elliot’s treestand several times, always just a tad too dark and late for a shot.

As the season progressed, the buck’s pattern changed, and he became less visible and more unpredictable. He would spend a week or so in sub-core areas a half-mile away as food sources and weather patterns changed.

But ultimately the buck came back to his primary lair where he felt most at home and comfortable. Elliot figured the deer would do that and he was ready.

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On the second day of November, 51 days after he’d first spotted the 10-pointer back in July, Elliott spotted the buck coming and stood up in his stand. The pre-rut was kicking now, and the buck was a lot less cautious. My buddy lanced him in the alfalfa with 40 minutes of shooting light to spare.

Scouting early and often in July and August pays off, even if you don’t connect on a good buck during the first weeks of archery season. As summer fades to fall, you might spot your target buck only a few times or lose him altogether for weeks or even months. But the onset of the rut will often bring a mature deer back to his home core area, back to familiar ground where you spotted him earlier in the summer. Be there and be ready.

Matt Brunswick works as a K9 handler for the local Sheriff’s Department. But his hobby is killing big whitetail deer.

He started shotgun hunting as a kid. Then, once in high school, he got a crossbow. At age 16, Brunswick tagged his first buck. He didn’t bag another one until he turned 23, though. Then, it was on. He shot a 170 in 2008, another 170 in 2009, and then a 160 in 2010.

Unfortunately, this year, he lost one of the properties he frequently hunted. That spurred him to look for a new spot, and he’d seen big deer in—one particular area of Hancock County, Ohio.

“That made me target this spot,” says Brunswick. “I knocked on a door, met the owners, and they were kind enough to let me hunt their property.”

He immediately put out a trail camera. On July 3, his first card pull revealed a mega giant. The photo just showed the buck’s left side, which was really thick and almost appeared palmated. It reminded Brunswick of moose antlers, and so naturally he called the buck “Moose.”

“If you’re familiar with the Dan Coffman buck from Ohio, he contacted one of the wildlife officers ahead of time and let them know he was hunting a 300-inch deer,” Brunswick says. “I thought that was a good idea. So, I filled in a guy I train with who also has a K9 and works for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). He notified our local wildlife officer.”

Because of that, he almost gave up hope on the buck. Deer season opened, and he began targeting other, more huntable mature deer. Still, with a hope and prayer, he occasionally went after the big joker.

Read Next: An Ohio Hunter’s First Buck May Be a Record-Book Whitetail

The Dream Was Dying

“I honestly felt this buck wouldn’t be killable where I was hunting at,” Brunswick says. “July 8 was the last daytime photo I had of him. I didn’t get another picture until October 3. Then, once every 10 days or so, he’d pop up on camera at night. That was just enough to let me know he was still in the area.”

On the morning of November 5, he decided to go after a different deer. That plan didn’t pan out. Around lunchtime, he had an urge to go after Moose. The odds weren’t great, but anything is possible, and he opted to hunt the 6 ½-year-old monster.

“With only having nighttime photos, I knew he was not bedding on the property,” Brunswick says. “I figured that, if I was going to kill this deer, it was going to happen during the rut when he’s looking for does.”

Around noon, he slowly eased along a low-impact entry route, and finally made it to his destined treestand location. It’s a heavily-wooded area with thick cover on three sides, and an open field behind him.

“Where my treestand was, there was a blowdown which created a pinch point,” he says. “Deer had to come closer to my stand, which is why I sat there.”

It was unseasonably warm, but at least a south-southwest wind blew all unwanted scent into the open air behind him. Deer weren’t expected to come from that direction.

Soon after settling in, a doe and fawn walked by. They followed a trail through the timber that ran east to west. Several minutes later, a 4-pointer dogged a different doe right by the stand.

Game Time

Then, he saw him. Moose walked directly toward Brunswick. He stopped to work a scrape, and then continued along the same path.

“I could see his ginormous rack and I knew exactly what deer it was,” Brunswick says. “At that point, I quit looking at him, picked my spot where I was going to take a shot, and kept watching out of my peripheral.”

The monster buck walked to within 20 yards, and turned perfectly broadside. Brunswick came to full draw, settled his pin, and let it rip. The arrow double-lunged the brute, and even nicked the heart. He only went about 15 yards and fell over in sight.

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“I called my wife,” Brunswick said. “My first call was to her to tell her I’d shot Moose. She knows how important bowhunting is to me.

“As soon as I got off the phone with her, I called my friend who works for the ODNR,” Brunswick continues. “I wanted him to come out just in case there were any questions. He took pictures of my permission slip, hunting license, treestand, arrow, blood trail, and the whole nine yards. In my line of work, I’m used to documenting stuff.”

Then, he called his best friend, T.J. Brooks, who also came out and helped with the recovery.

After that, while awaiting everyone’s arrival, he got down out of his treestand, and went over to his deer. He didn’t grab the arrow, or move anything. He just knelt down, put his hand on Moose’s rack, said a little prayer, and waited for everyone to get there. It was a pretty surreal experience.

“I’m very fortunate that my family is extremely supportive of my bowhunting,” Brunswick says. “I was on rut-cation. This is something I do almost every year. I save a lot of vacation to hunt the tail end of October and first week and a half of November. I was actually on an 18-day stretch of not having to work, which is kind of nice.”

He attributes most of his success to clean entry and exit routes and hunting with the wind in his favor. Not putting himself on the giant buck’s radar paid off. And now he has a 252-inch Ohio buck to show for it.

• Buck: 252 inches (green gross score)
• Date of Harvest: Nov. 5, 2020
• Location: Hancock County, Ohio
• Weapon: Compound bow

“We have about 15 different properties in Kansas, not for outfitting or guiding, but for our personal hunting and for taking friends from around the state and outside the area,” says Somers, 33, an assistant manager of PrimeTime Grill in Kansas. “My buddy Cody Larrimore and I got permission to hunt an 80-acre farm and started putting cellular trail cameras up last summer.”

The pair of bowhunters knew it was likely a prime whitetail spot because Larrimore, 34, arrowed a huge 205-inch buck last year on another farm only 30 minutes south of their spot.

On July 21, they got the first photos of an incredible buck still in velvet on the new 80 acres. The buck was naturally impressive in velvet, since velvet always makes a rack look more massive. But the pair of experienced Kansas deer hunters were amazed that the deer’s headgear seemingly didn’t diminish in size even after rubbing off its velvet to reveal hard antlers.

“He was a giant, and very smart, using the wind 24/7 and almost always alone,” Somers says. “He wasn’t camera shy, but he would disappear for weeks at a time. We’d get photos from several different cameras, then he’d just disappear.”

Somers nicknamed the deer “Larri” after his friend Larrimore, who he credits for all his deer hunting knowledge and success.

The pair of hunters had learned from Don Higgins of Higgins Outdoors that the only sure way to get a chance at an older, bigger buck like Larri was to move carefully, quietly, and rarely into the deer’s core area for scouting and hunting.

“Discipline was the hardest part of taking this buck, because he was so wary, wind-smart and cautious,” Somers says. “We stayed out of the farm right until we started hunting him because we didn’t want to rush in and bust him from his usual routine in bedding and feeding areas. We didn’t know much about the property, so we were very cautious going in, and getting out quickly to avoid bumping the buck and maybe [making] Larri leave the farm…I think not knowing the farm well, and taking our time setting up and executing the hunt the way we did, is the chief reason we got him.”

The hunters worked as a team, with Somers as the shooter and Larrimore working multiple cameras to record the hunt. They set up a slightly elevated blind Sept. 1, and were careful accessing the spot by walking in along a railroad track that bordered one side of the property. Somers believes the buck bedded in a thick area off the farm on the opposite side of the railroad track.

Because Larri would show up on camera for a couple days, then disappear for weeks at a time, the hunting team placed Ani-Logics deer attractant near the blind to draw and hold the buck on the farm.

“He loved the Ani-Logics, Larri just gorged on that stuff,” Somers says.

The blind area where they set to take Larri often had a swirling, unusual wind. So the buddies had to be selective as to when they hunted the spot. They hunted the place only four times from Sept. to Oct. 15. On Oct. 15 they got into the blind about 3 p.m., and as they headed in they put a lot of Ani-Logics out near the blind.

During all their other hunts they only saw a few distant deer, and never the buck they hoped to see. They knew Larri was still in the area from trail camera photos, but their blind was set well back in cover, offering only a narrow open window for shooting.

Well after 6 p.m., Larri finally showed. He moved directly to the Ani-Logics and started feeding. It was the first time the hunters had actually seen the buck on the hoof. Now he was standing at 25 yards.

Somers drew, but just then the bucked turned its body away, offering a poor shot angle. Next, Larri turned and looked directly at the hunters in the blind.

Somers had to freeze at full draw for minutes, then had to let down his bow. He was coming out of full draw when Larri turned his head away. The giant suddenly became skittish. The buddies couldn’t tell why at the time, but they later learned from trail camera photos that four coyotes showed about 50 yards away behind Larri.

Finally, the coyotes moved away, Larri returned to feeding on Ani-Logics again, and offered a broadside shot for Somers at 25 yards.

Somers drew, aimed, and released his arrow, hitting the deer behind the shoulder.

The giant buck bolted from the area, and the two hunters were overjoyed after pursuing the buck for four months.

They found Somers’ arrow and a blood trail. But they decided to leave the area quietly, check camera videos, and call Somers’ brother Matt to help them track the deer.

They arrived back at the blind about midnight, picked up the blood trail, and found Larri dead only 70 yards away. Somers’ arrow had passed completely through the massive buck’s chest, hitting one lung, the liver, and exiting on the far side.

The field-dressed buck weighed 274 pounds on a farm scale, with an estimated live weight over 340 pounds. Somers’ first bow buck is one destined to rank high up in the record books. The deer has 21 scoreable points, with an estimated green-score of 245-inches.

“My eyes filled with tears in the blind that evening with Larrimore after I’d shot the buck,” says Somers. “It’s the most humbling, rewarding and meaningful thing I’ve ever experienced hunting. I learned how smart mature whitetails are, what friends are willing to do for each other, and how much I value the chase of whitetail deer.

The issue, which is now getting national attention, boils down local subsistence “food” hunters vs. non-local “sport hunters,” or “trophy hunters.” In this case, the federal government differentiates between sport and subsistence hunting by location of residence, not nuanced individual motivations. So even if you are a hunter from the Lower 48, or even here in the town of Fairbanks, who wants to hunt moose or caribou to fill your freezer with meat, you would be prohibited from hunting in this area. You would not be defined as a “subsistence hunter,” even if your main objective was hunting for meat.

Related: The Proposed Closure of Public Land Caribou Hunting Isn’t About Herd Health: It’s About Hunter Conflict

You can oppose this issue by writing a letter to the Department of Interior, but you must do it today or tomorrow. You can email the DOI at subsistence@fws.gov, or write a letter through the Backcountry Hunters & Anglers site here—just make sure to make the comment your own. Or you can call in to the public hearing later this week:

• Friday, April 23, 2021 from 5-7 p.m. Alaska Time (or until the end of public participation)
• Teleconference, toll free: (877) 918-3011
• Passcode: 8147177

As I mentioned in the article detailing this issue, the push for this closure isn’t motivated by scientific wildlife management or herd population objectives: it’s rooted in conflict between local and non-local hunters. It’s also about whether or not federal public lands really are public for everyone.

For example: After explaining the method for measuring a bear skull, one prominent media figure stated recently, “Now you have successfully reduced an awesome animal to a number,” and went on to talk about how it was better to be in the kitchen cooking and sharing the meat from that animal. I certainly don’t find fault in cooking and sharing bear meat. And while I don’t want to assume intent, I do think this statement carries an implication: If you care enough or are even curious enough about “trophy size” to measure an animal you killed, you reduce that animal’s value to just a number. And that’s absurd. It’s possible to both appreciate a remarkable animal’s trophy qualities and enjoy the meat it provides. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Examples and attitudes like this drive the message that if you live in the right place or follow the doctrine of a pure food or subsistence hunter, you are more virtuous, and therefore more entitled to the wild resources than hunters who may want to travel to specifically target the largest animal they can find—regardless of the fact that they may be just as interested in bringing home meat as you are.

Although the particular regulatory avenues for Alaska’s potential closure are complex and somewhat unique to Alaska, the fact that any federal public lands can be closed off from non-local user groups simply because local users don’t want them there should scare all hunters.

Read Next: Wyoming Has a Wilderness Problem

This has already started happening in Alaska and will likely continue. How long until similar things start happening in the Lower 48? Most hunters in destination states can already relate to a resentment of non-local hunters crowding trailheads and backcountry honey holes, even if they’re only fleeting thoughts—right now.

In much of the western United States, where federal public land is touted as a crown jewel of hunting opportunity and access for everyone, hunting pressure and competition seem to be growing issues in many places. Will we soon see hunting on federal lands across the country be restricted to only locals who are deemed qualified? In other words, will all those non-resident elk, antelope, and mule deer hunters from the Midwest, South, and East find themselves unable to hunt federal land in the West? You can already see hints of this in states like Wyoming, where non-resident big game hunters can only access federal wilderness areas if they have a guide, or in Montana where there’s a proposal to set aside more non-resident, big-game tags for outfitters. Both of these issues simply make it more limiting (or at least more expensive) for non-residents to hunt big game on federal public land.

The precedent set by the proposed closure in Alaska, and those closures that could follow, would at the very least serve to further divide hunters based on the food hunting versus sport hunting divide. The result will be lost opportunity for many. If federal public land becomes closed to hunting for the vast majority of Americans, then is it even really public hunting land?

If ever a topic begged for alliteration, it’s coyote cartridges and calibers clearly and concisely contrasted and compared. But we won’t stoop to that here. We’ll just outline three of the most popular and effective cartridges employed by serious coyote hunters these past four decades.

But, before we jump into the ballistics of the .223 Remington, .22-250 Remington, and .243 Winchester, we should remember why anyone bothers hunting what is generally considered an inedible critter (even though some meat eaters are now imbibing.) The reasons are several, among which two are most often cited:

1. Valuable pelts—They might fetch anywhere from $10 to $200 depending on the market and quality. This should be celebrated by environmentalists because coyote fur is not only beautiful and warming, but all-natural, biodegradable, organic, free-range, abundant and sustainable. Coyotes are Nature’s own renewable clothing resource. Wearing fur instead of turning up the thermostat reduces your carbon footprint, too. Fight climate change! Wear fur.

2. Balancing the scales—Overly abundant coyotes have been proven to severely deplete populations of prey species including woodchucks, pronghorns, mule deer, and similar-sized game. They are not significant predators on birds, but they have attacked small children.

There are a few more reasons to hunt coyotes. East of the Mississippi, they are truly an invasive species. Even across much of the West, where they are native, they were historically kept in check by large numbers of wolves. By changing habitats, we humans have enabled excessive increases in coyote numbers. It’s our responsibility to correct some of that.

So you’d better have the right rifle and cartridge…

Rifles

Of course anything from a single-shot .22 Long Rifle to a semi-automatic .50 BMG will suffice, but both are at extreme ends of the acceptable scale. Aside from sensible cartridges, appropriate rifles contribute to success. Experienced coyote hunters have been relying on traditional bolt actions for decades because they are durable, reliable, and fairly easy to tune to shoot precisely. Called coyotes are usually engaged inside of 200 yards, often 20 yards, but they can also hang up beyond 300 yards. They provide about a nine-inch broadside target, perhaps just a four-inch kill zone when head on. And they’re often coming head-on. So an accurate rifle is a must.

The potential for multiple shots on coyotes is driving the current trend toward autoloaders. During the peak of the fur market in the 1970s coyote hunters were increasingly looking to the Ruger Ranch Rifle, a semi-auto in .223 Rem. These days the versatile AR-style semi-autos are quite popular and deadly accurate. There’s nothing wrong with Browning’s BAR or BLR in .243 Win. either. Choose whatever action-style you like, but do think about quick, smooth follow up shots. Here we go.

.223 Remington

The allure of .22 centerfires seems to be minimum cost, recoil, and fur damage combined with long reach. The ubiquitous .223 Remington addresses most of these very well.

Fast .22 centerfires have been high on fur-collectors’ cartridge lists since the .22 Savage High-Power or Imp first hit the scene in 1912. This was just 16 years after the introduction of the .30 WCF (30-30), our first smokeless powder sporting cartridge. The Savage pushed a 71-grain bullet 2,790 fps. It was so novel that a few wealthy sports used it to deadly effect on lions and Indian tigers. There followed many centerfire .22s like the .22 Hornet, .222 Remington, .222 Remington Magnum, .224 Weatherby Magnum, .219 Zipper, .218 Bee, .220 Swift, .225 Winchester, .22-250 Remington, and this .223 Remington. Why has it come to dominate sales?

Because it was officially adopted by our military as the 5.56x45mm in 1964. It so closely matches in size, shape and performance the .222 Remington Magnum that we could ask why it was ever created. Remington wondered the same thing. It had built its .222 Rem. Mag. in an attempt to have it adopted as our new military round in the AR-15. When it was rejected, Remington commercialized it in 1958 as a “magnum” version of its already popular .222 Remington.

Despite this Mag’s six-year head start, Remington knew it would quickly fade once cheap 5.56×45 military brass began pouring out of rifles. So Remington commercialized the 5.56mm as the .223 Remington. Smart move.

Today the .222 Remington Magnum is obsolete and the .222 Remington is close behind. But everyone and his sister’s girlfriend shoots a .223 Rem. This narrow (.378” head) and short (2.260” COAL) centerfire holds about 27 grains of water when loaded with 50- to 55-grain bullets. You can stuff them with 60-grain and heavier slugs, too, but most commercial rifles don’t have fast enough twist rates to stabilize these longer bullets. Most .223 Remington rifles are built with 1-12 twist. Many, if not most ARs in .223/5.56×45 roll with 1-8 or 1-7.

We might as well address cartridge interchangeability right here. Dimensionally the .223 Remington and 5.56×45 are identical. The trouble arises with heavier bullets and higher pressures in some 5.56×45 loads. It is commonly accepted as safe to fire .223 Remingtons in 5.56×45 chambers, but not vice versa.

While the .223 Rem. handles bullets from 35 grains to 60 grains, even 79 grains in custom fast twist barrels, the standards are 50-, 52-, 53-, and 55-grains. A 1-12 twist barrel will stabilize the 55, but not always the 60s. Although the 50-grain can be driven faster (roughly 3,400 fps in most factory loads) than the 55s (about 3,240 fps average,) coyote hunters sometimes find it a bit light for bigger dogs. An extra 5 grains might not sound like much, but in .224 it makes an appreciable difference in retained energy and wind deflection (forms being similar.) So let’s check the trajectory of one of the higher B.C. 55-grain .224 boat-tails on the market, the Sierra BlitzKing at .271 B.C. Sierra’s handloading manual indicates we can push it to 3,300 fps from a 24” barrel. We’ll zero it and all cartridges for a 5-inch target zone, maximum ordinate no higher than 2.5 inches. That’s plenty of room for a safe center mass hold on even a small coyote. We’ll figure maximum point-blank range (MPBR) will be the distance at which our bullet falls 2.5 inches below point-of-aim.

As you can see, we have ourselves a solid 275-yard MPBR coyote rifle here. With a laser rangefinder, turret dialing, or a ballistic reticle for holdovers, skilled shooters can take it well beyond that but dwindling energy levels after 300 yards start to raise questions. The average coyote weighs around 25 pounds, but a massive old male, especially in the NE where they’ve apparently hybridized with wolves and dogs, can reach 50 pounds. You might begin to question wounding efficiency with a 55-grain bullet carrying 600 ft-lbs of kinetic energy. I’ve chest-punched coyotes with 130-grain .270 Winchesters and 180-grain .300 Win. Mags. inside of 100 yards and watched them dash off 30 yards before expiring. However, I’ve also center punched them with .224 bullets carrying less than 600 ft-lbs and gotten decisive kills, DRT.

Recoil in a 7.5-pound rifle is almost nothing: 4 ft-lbs at 5.8 fps. This is one of the virtues of the .223 Rem. Not only is it easy to shoot precisely without fear of recoil or even significant muzzle blast (but wear hearing protection anyway!), but it’s fairly easy to see your hits, recover from recoil, and stay on target for follow up shots. A huge variety of ammo widely available at low prices combine to make the .223 Rem. a good option for coyote hunting. These attributes plus minimal pelt damage argue strongly for the .223 Rem. The biggest shortcomings are long-range drop, energy, and wind deflection. These aren’t horrible, but we should judge them in light of our next two cartridges’ performance.

.22-250 Remington

I don’t know why, but just as Winchester seems to rule the .30-caliber markets (.30-30, .308 Win., .300 Win. Mag.), Remington seems to own the .22-caliber category. It introduced the .22-250 Remington in 1965 while the Beatles were dominating the radio with I Feel Fine, Ticket to Ride, Eight Days a Week, Help!, and Yesterday. The cartridge should have been legitimized by someone long before that. It was a common, beloved wildcat (.22 Varminter) way back in the 1930s. Better late than never. With its Remington imprimatur it took off, dominating the charts with 55-grain .224 bullets screaming from 24-inch barrels an average 3,600 fps.

It should be noted that Winchester’s .220 Swift was beating that by about 200 fps and had been since 1935, but too many shooters were perhaps leery of its barrel burning tendencies. Popular writer Robert Ruark didn’t help the Swift’s reputation when he cursed it in print after wounding a hyena with several shots. He didn’t bother to consider the frangible, 48-grain varmint bullet might have been the culprit.

At any rate, the .22-250 remains our most popular upper-end .224 to this day. Not even the faster .223 WSSM could dislodge it. Shot rapid-fire on rodents, the .22-250 Rem., too, will chew through barrels pretty quickly, but as a coyote getter, it’ll last a long, long time. The coyotes, not so much. At 3,600 fps the same 55-grain BlitzKing fired in our .223 Rem. will hold 600 ft-lbs energy to 400 yards and extend MPBR to just beyond 300 yards. I can promise you this has worked for well over 90 percent of my coyote hunting chores over the past 40 years. In most cases, coyotes hit at 400 yards crumpled just as quickly as those at 40 yards. Generally, a solid chest hit results in a resounding “whump” followed by a “where’d he go?” question from the shooter who didn’t see the coyote fall in a heap.

Obviously, this cartridge fires the same .224 bullets as the .223 Rem., but with its fatter (.473” head) and longer (2.350 COAL) case, it has more powder volume (47-grains water capacity.) This cartridge was engineered by necking down the .250-3000 Savage case, thus the “250” in its title. As such, it has a bit more body taper than is popular in more modern cases like the 6mm Creedmoor. This doesn’t seem to bother coyotes. Nor .22-250 lovers.

Thanks to the extra powder in this case, recoil in a 7.5-pound rifle will be around 6.4 ft-lbs at 7.4 fps. Still too mild to induce a flinch, although recoil can throw you off target a bit more. Suppressors help with this, but so does additional rifle weight. Hunters who glass and pick off coyotes at longer ranges often use 9- to 11-pound rifles. I prefer a quick-handling, light rifle for my more active style of running, calling, and gunning. Hard-charging coyotes have, on occasion, ended up in my lap.

Advantages the .22-250 provides over the .223 Rem. can be seen on the trajectory tables. Figure roughly 30 yards more MPBR, slightly less wind deflection, and about 100 to 150 ft-lbs more energy at 300 yards. The price for this is a few dollars more per box of ammo and just enough extra recoil to prevent you from seeing some hits. I’d give the nod to the .223 Rem. for fast action, multiple shot flurries at close range, the .22-250 for longer range sniping and more decisive kills. Pelt damage can be a bit worse with hits “near the edges.” These tend to tear hides, but needle and thread can usually repair the damage.

After five decades in the coyote fur gathering business, I’ve settled on the .22-250 Rem. as my favorite, but I frequently use, and certainly can’t argue against, this next contender…

.243 Winchester

Some say this necked down .308 Winchester is a bit too light for deer, a bit too powerful for rodents and chucks, but perfect for coyotes. I think it’s remarkably effective on all of them. This 24-caliber spits .243-inch bullets weighing 55-grains to 100-grains anywhere from 3,700 fps to 3,000 fps from a 22-inch barrel. Add about 100 fps for a 24-inch tube.

The advantage the .243 has over our other contenders is horsepower and reach. To minimize wind deflection and maximize on-target energy, you can roll with a 90- to 100-grain boat tail spire point. Some of the latest, like Berger’s 95-grain VLD Hunting are rated a G1 B.C. of .467. That’s almost double the B.C. rating of the 55-grain .224 bullet above. A dose of about 44 grains of Ramshot Magnum powder should push this sleek bullet 3,000 fps from a 24-inch barrel. Let’s see how that plays out:

As the Range and Elevation columns point out, drop is twice that of the .22-250 at 300 yards, but look at that windage column (5th from left.) The higher B.C. .243 bullet is deflected 2 inches less in a 10 mph right angle breeze at 300 yards. That’ more than enough to turn a miss into a hit. Wind being the most unpredictable variable afield, you might want to run with this rather than flatter trajectory. But…

If you hunt where wind rarely blows, step down to something like an 80-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip at 3,400 fps and watch the trajectory flatten:

Now we’re within a half-inch of .22-250 Rem. drop at 300 yards and still maintain a 1-inch wind deflection advantage. Admittedly these are not huge differences. The real .243 Win. advantage is in retained energy at all ranges. Study those Energy columns and you’ll notice about 300 ft-lbs more energy in the 80-grain .243 than the 55-grain .224 at 400 yards.

Recoil from that load in our 7.5-pound rifle should be just over 10 ft-lbs at just a whiff over 9 fps velocity. Still delightfully easy to shoot. Ammo availability is extensive. And you can flatten trajectory even more by stepping down to 70- and even 55-grain bullets, but you’ll sacrifice your wind advantage.

Conclusion

There are other cartridges that provide equal or slightly better trajectories, but at significantly higher costs, recoil levels, and pelt damage. Perhaps we can detail them in a future article. In the meantime, if you’re eager to get started coyote hunting this winter, either of these three, time-tested and “coyote-disapproved” cartridges would be good to ride the river with.

My love affair with lever guns started with a plastic Winchester M94—my first toy gun—and was cemented by my first real rifle, a Winchester 9422 Magnum that was a graduation present. Like me, countless other hunters have fallen under the lever-gun spell. But as we know, fine accuracy isn’t the forte of the platform. That said, there are ways to improve groups and increase the range of your beloved .30/30.

Design Peculiarities

Lever-action rifles are unique in a couple of ways. They use a tubular magazine below the barrel that feeds cartridges into the chamber, which gives them a large ammunition capacity while maintaining their slim lines. However, this system can compromise accuracy.

The magazine tube and fore-end on lever actions are tightly fitted to the barrel and receiver. This does not allow the barrel to vibrate freely and puts pressure on the barrel as it heats up, causing a loss of accuracy and a shifting point of impact.

Lever rifles are also unusually stocked. The buttstock is attached to the rear of the receiver and the fore-end to the front of the receiver. Thus, the receiver forms the backbone of the rifle instead of the stock, as is the case with bolt actions. Excessive or inconsistent pressure on the stock of a lever gun will also degrade accuracy.

Lever-Action Tuneup

Before modifying your lever gun, consider its vintage and condition. A rifle that is in good shape and was manufactured anywhere near the beginning of the last century should be treated very carefully, lest you destroy its value. With a rifle like that, I recommend sticking to just loosening screws and not permanently modifying parts. A later-model rifle—say, from the 1950s on—could warrant more aggressive alterations.

Tuning a lever action amounts to creating a small amount of movement between the magazine and the fore-end relative to the barrel. Loosen the screw at the front of the magazine tube and the screw on the barrel band on the fore-end (for a carbine) or the two screws on the fore-end cap on a rifle. Put a drop of blue thread locker on these screws and leave the screws a little loose. This allows the magazine tube a small amount of movement relative to the barrel. I wouldn’t do more than this with a valuable vintage rifle.

With a newer rifle, in addition to loosening the screws, you can also shorten the magazine tube by taking .010 inch to .015 inch off the end that inserts into the receiver. You’ll also want to remove a small amount of wood from the fore-end with a few strokes of a file or sandpaper. Do this along the barrel channel and where it fits into the receiver as well. You want the fore-end to slip into the recess in the receiver with minimal resistance. This prevents binding on the barrel as it heats up. These adjustments will improve the accuracy and consistency of the point of impact as the barrel gets hot.

As a side note, these modifications were incorporated into Marlin’s XLR series of rifles to improve their accuracy and take maximum advantage of the LeverEvolution line of ammunition, which I helped develop. Tests done by editors at Outdoor Life and other publications in 2006 demonstrated the accuracy gains of these alterations.

Sight Options

Lever rifles have had buckhorn sights since the first 1860 Henry rifle. These sights work well for shooters with good eyesight and at modest ranges. Of course, the most effective sight for any rifle is an optical sight—a red-dot or scope. But if you want to maintain a lever gun’s elegant lines and handling qualities, the best option is a peep sight.
Among the benefits of a peep sight are the increased sight radius—the distance between the front and rear sights— which improves accuracy, and the fact that they give a clearer view of the target than buckhorns.

There are two types of peep sights available for lever rifles: receiver-mounted or tang-mounted. Williams Sight Company and Lyman offer different types of receiver sights, while Lyman and Marbles make tang sights for most lever-gun models.

Shooting Techniques

If a lever rifle is shot off bags underneath the fore-end and buttstock while the shooter presses his cheek on the stock, the rifle will flex and the point of impact will shift. My suggestion is to not use a rear bag at all. Instead, just pull the rifle in to your shoulder, as you would if you were in the field, while supporting the fore-end on a rest.

For bench shooting, fire only three-shot groups and let the gun cool for five minutes between strings. This prevents the gun from getting excessively hot and the point of impact from moving.

Optimized Ammunition

Hornady LeverEvolution ammunition, which allows you to use spitzer-style bullets in tubular magazines, and the Marlin XLR rifles dramatically improved the performance of lever guns right out of the box. Because LeverEvolution ammunition shoots much flatter than traditional lever-gun ammo, you’ll need to put a taller front sight on the rifle.

Read Next: The Top 10 Lever-Action Rifles of All Time

Basic Mods for a Lever-Action Rifle

To tighten up the groups on a lever gun, the answer lies, ironically, in loosening some of the screws and relieving pressure on tight-fitting spots where the stock joins the receiver. All of these modifications are done in order to minimize the external influences on the barrel. The closer we can get to allowing the barrel to free-float, the better.

“We were about dead,” Jumper told the Clarion-Ledger “It was rough. We just didn’t know how big it was.”

Teddy Coats, who is in his mid 50s, and his brother-in-law Joel Jumper had begun scouting on the evening of Aug. 31 with plans to hunt the following night with a business client, who had state gator tags.

Coats, of Alligator, Mississippi, and Jumper, from Helena, Arkansas, located some gators and had returned to the boat ramp near the town of Friar’s Point. That’s when they noticed a set of eyes near the boat ramp. Deciding to quickly fill one of their own alligator tags before heading home, they cast a big hook into the gator and begun what they thought was a routine fight.

“We thought it was going to be a little 30-minute deal, but it didn’t work out that way,” Coats told the newspaper. “I was in the middle of the boat when I got a second line on him and he came alive. He almost pulled the boat under.”

By 4 a.m. the hard-fighting gator lodged itself under some logs and wouldn’t budge. They duo backed out and returned in the morning to recover the gator, when they were able to recover it. They lashed it to their johnboat, got it to shore, and hauled it out with their truck. That’s when they realized how huge the gator was.

“It was a monster,” Coats explained. “He looked like an old T-rex dinosaur. He had been through a lot of battles.”

One of those battles had apparently resulted in a lost leg for the 13 foot 7 inch gator. A game warden told the hunters the lost leg would have added 12 pounds to the reptile’s weight of 819.5 pounds, making the gator a Mississippi record for heaviest alligator ever recorded taken from public waters. The heaviest public-water gator on record weighed 822 pounds and was tagged in 2015, also from the Mississippi River. The state keeps separate records for public and private land gators, as well as the longest and heaviest male and female gators within those categories.

“I’m hoping to get the alligator that bit him if I ever get another permit,” said Coats. “And I’m going to get a bigger boat. It had to be another monster gator that bit him.”

Read Next: Mississippi Hunters Land New 14-Foot, State-Record Gator After 7-Hour Fight

The state record for the longest alligator ever killed in Mississippi was broken on Aug. 26 when hunter Donald Woods and his buddies tagged an 802.5-pound gator that measured 14 feet, 3 inches.

Depending on your hunting area and local regulations, there are a variety of methods for alligator hunting. You can bowfish, spot and stalk gators on shore and shoot them with a rifle, or snag them with giant treble hooks and fight them to the boat on heavy tackle. When you get the reptile to the boat, you shoot it in the head or bangstick it. You can read the full story of their hunt over on the Clarion-Legder.

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This video is one of three clips recorded and originally posted by wildlife photographer Muhammad Mulla. At the start of the first clip, at least a dozen lionesses are milling around in a dry, open field. About half of them appear to be adults, and the rest are juveniles. Eventually, it becomes clear that the lions are focused on a crocodile lying on its belly in a large wallow. The larger lions tiptoe around the croc until one taps it tentatively on the snout with its paw.

The crocodile then leaps out the wallow and snaps at the lions. But the cats have power in numbers. They continue to circle the crocodile, swatting and nipping as it spins around defensively. At one point, one of the larger female lions (which happens to be wearing a tracking collar and appears to be the leader of the pack) bites down on the croc’s tail and drags it across the field. She continues to wrestle the crocodile while the others circle and keep it distracted.

Wearing down the crocodile is a slow process. By the end of the second clip, the lions are piled on top of it while the large, collared female sinks her teeth in and immobilizes it. The third and final clip shows the pride of lions finishing off the crocodile, and by the time the clip ends, the croc is all but dead.

Read Next: Hunting the Nile Crocodile in Zambia

As Nature is Metal points out in a caption, however, the cold-blooded crocodiles occasionally have to leave the river to warm up and sun themselves on dry land. When they do, they’re at the mercy of the predators prowling nearby.

“My instinct was to get the hell out of there, but my friend wanted to take a couple of photos,” one said over the phone.

Chugach State Park is big, wild, and attracts all types of outdoor enthusiasts. The most well-used area of the park is where the women found the moose. It butts up against Anchorage, a city that holds more than half of Alaska’s population and is well-known for moose, brown bears, black bears, and other wildlife prowling its neighborhoods. This makes for interesting and sometimes tense encounters between wildlife and humans, like when a brown bear broke into the zoo and ate a beloved Alpaca named Caesar, or when rutting bull moose, ready to take on anything, shut down traffic on the highway.

The hikers’ photos of the dead moose quickly circulated among a small, hardcore group of moose photographers. New Hampshire residents Rick and Libby Libbey, who own MooseMan Nature Photos, fly to Alaska each August and follow the park’s moose almost every day, rain or shine, until the first part of October (you can see some of the MooseMan Nature Photos video below). By looking at antlers in the photos, they suspected one of the moose to be a bull they’d first encountered in 2017. That fall the bull first showed up to the valley, alone and angry. After a violent display of thrashing the brush, he came out into the open with a 6-foot branch hanging from an antler to confront the Libbeys. They gave him the nickname Grumpy, though that was the only time they saw him act aggressively toward anything other than a rival bull during the six ruts they’d followed him. Nonetheless, the name stuck. The Libbeys knew going to the kill site was dangerous, but they wanted to know for sure.

This September there were hardly any cows around, causing bulls to roam further and fights to be more intense. The Libbeys came to an area that was torn up, bulldozed and had numerous trees broken and knocked down by the two 1,500-plus-pound animals. In the midst of the wreckage was one bull bizarrely draped over another bull. It appeared that one bull had charged from the side, slammed the other and in the process locked its left antler with the other moose’s right antler. While bulls do injure and even kill each other during battles, it’s usually a result from antler goring, broken bones, or massive internal bleeding. Death from locking antlers is rare in moose and, when it does happen, bulls usually tangle both antlers head-on and then die from dehydration or starvation. The Libbeys confirmed the moose on the bottom to be Grumpy and guessed he’d suffocated beneath the weight of the even larger bull, which they didn’t recognize.

READ NEXT: Ohio Hunter Finds a Massive 233-Inch Deadhead Buck

Tracking Grumpy

In the fall of 2020, the same year a brown bear ate Caesar, I got a call from a producer for the BBC Eden: Untamed Planet series. They wanted to know if I could fly to Anchorage immediately and spend a month assisting wildlife filmmaker Shane Moore while he filmed the moose rut. I dropped what I was doing, packed my kit and arrived in early September just as the bulls were shedding the velvet from their antlers. Shane and I had become good friends on a brown bear shoot earlier that year, and both of us quickly befriended the Libbeys. The days grew colder. Cows began moaning, and bulls began racking the brush and grunting. For awhile, there were small and medium bulls all over the place. Then Grumpy showed up and everything changed.

Rick guessed Grumpy was at least 10 years old in 2020. He’d become the dominant bull in the area during the 2019 rut. Since Grumpy was king, and Shane was hoping to film a fight, we spent weeks tailing him. Whenever Grumpy dug a rut pit, cows would rear up on their hind legs and pummel each other with their front hooves to have the first opportunity to lie in his urine-soaked wallow. Sometimes, a small bull would sneak in and roll in one of his rut pits as well. On one occasion, when Grumpy bedded down, I took a nap 40 yards away. Shane roused me from my slumber. Grumpy was standing almost directly over me. Eventually, he went off to survey the valley and make sure all his cows were accounted for.

By the third week of September, he had a harem of about ten cows. For all the buildup, and weeks of posturing and effort, the act of copulation was so quick that if you blinked you might miss it. A cow couldn’t hold Grumpy’s weight for more than a few seconds, so there was no messing around. Occasionally, another big bull would wander into the valley, grunting and thrashing. Most would back down after Grumpy swaggered their way.

One evening two bulls challenged Grumpy at the same time. One slammed into his side and impaled an antler tine deep into his chest in thick brush. I was just yards away recording sound as Grumpy rushed past, flayed open, blood streaming. The following morning, the two new bulls were guarding his harem. I wandered off and combed the area looking for Grumpy—he was central to the film, so, if he was dead or injured, Shane wanted to film it. I found some blood and hair but the trail went cold after a while. When I returned to Shane, Grumpy was standing off in a meadow surrounded by his cows. While I was gone, he’d come back and thrashed the two bulls and then humped one of his cows. Any mature bull moose is an awe-inspiring animal, but Grumpy was next level.

Like all boss bulls, Grumpy’s reign eventually had to come to an end. In 2022, Rick noted he was looking old and was backing down more than normal from challenging other bulls. Since there were hardly any cows around, he may have been saving his energy for battles that really mattered. His last fight couldn’t have been more epic, nor could there have been a better death for an old moose.

Within a week, as bears feasted on his flesh, a new bull fought his way to the top and claimed the valley.