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West said he first thought about calling animal control, which would have been the safest option for both him and the moose. But he was worried the moose might choke to death before help arrived. Only the very top of the trash bag was visible at the time.

“I kind of felt like time was of the essence,” West said, “so I slowly made my way closer and closer to see if I could just get ahold of it.”

This took a fair bit of courage, but the moose didn’t run away or react aggressively, and it allowed West to grab onto the plastic bag. West then slowly pulled bag out of the moose’s throat without hurting himself or the animal.

The comments on West’s social media post have been overwhelmingly positive, with most people calling him a hero. One person did point out, however, that what he did was extremely dangerous.

“Aww poor creature!” wrote one user. “I’m glad you could help him, but you could have been hurt. He is still a wild animal!”

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The Alaska Department of Fish and Game—along with most other wildlife agencies—strongly discourages people from trying to rescue stranded or injured wildlife. This can often lead to injuries, and wildlife professionals are much better equipped than members of the public when it comes to helping animals in distress.

It’s also illegal to feed wildlife in Alaska, according to ADFG, which points out that “hungry animals that associate people with food can become dangerous.” This is especially true of bears and moose, the agency says. Bird feeders are one of the few exceptions to this rule—and even then, ADFG asks people to only feed birds between Nov. 1 and mid-March, when most bears are hibernating.

There are several quality mechanical broadheads on the market that, when combined with good shot placement, are incredibly effective. In fact, for average deer hunters shooting compounds and crossbows, mechanical broadheads might still be the best choice. Here’s why.

Quality Mechanical Broadheads Kill Deer

One of the downsides of mechanical heads is that they require more force to push through a medium. This is simply a caveat of the design. The larger cutting diameters plus their mechanisms for opening require force. Last year, gear editor Scott Einsmann and archery guru Cody Greenwood did an in-depth test on the amount of force needed to push the best broadheads through doormats, foam, and leather. The fixed-blade heads required less force, hands down. This is important because you want your arrow to fully pass through the deer. All other things being equal, a passthrough creates a quicker kill and better blood trail.

I realize this is only one field anectdote, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Just watch the videos from my buddy Michael Hunsucker over at Heartland Bowhunter. He shoots an arrow with a 95-grain insert and a 100-grain expandable broadhead, which gives him a total arrow weight of 500 grains. As you’ll see in the videos, he has no issue getting passthroughs on even the biggest bucks.

Most archery whitetails are killed at 30 yards or closer. Modern compound bows and crossbows (which even more hunters are shooting now) deliver arrows with plenty of force to push a quality mechanical broadhead through a deer’s vitals at those close and moderate ranges.

Quality is Key

Notice how I keep writing “quality mechanical broadhead”? That’s because there are plenty of crappy mechanical broadheads on the market and those low-quality products have undoubtedly helped lead us to the fixed-blade trend we’re seeing today.

In previous seasons I shot a mechanical head and wasn’t getting passthroughs, even with good shots at moderate ranges. Those broadheads still killed deer, but I was getting broken arrows and spotty blood trails. Bowhunters should expect better performance than that. In Einsmann’s testing, there was a big difference in effectiveness between top mechanical broadheads and the poor performers. Interestingly, a head being more expensive didn’t guarantee better performance. If you’re going to shoot a mechanical broadhead, you should read his review of the best broadheads for deer and strongly consider choosing either a Sevr or the G5 Deadmeat V2.

Mechanical Broadheads Are Accurate

In a perfect world, all bowhunters would know how to tune their bow, sharpen a broadhead, and shoot with ideal form. But we live in an imperfect world, and many of the bowhunters I know aren’t exactly masterful at any of those things.

I’m not saying that we all shouldn’t strive to be better bowhunters. But I am saying we should set realistic expectations. If you don’t have the time or skill to tune your bow every season and you aren’t interested in sharpening fixed blade broadheads, then you should opt for mechanical heads. This is simply because they generally fly closer to field points with less fussing. Crossbow hunters will find this to be true as well. This is important because there’s not much a crossbow hunter can do in terms of tuning, so choosing a broadhead for optimal accuracy is key.

Of all the factors that go into making a clean killing shot on a deer, accuracy is most important. And consistent accuracy is easier to achieve with mechanical heads. Use whatever free time you have in the offseason to practice shooting your bow.

Behind-the-Shoulder Shot Placement Is Still Best

There’s a reason why bowhunter’s education courses and the National Deer Association instruct archers to aim for the crease behind the shoulder (and not into the shoulder): It’s deadly.

This shot also allows for some margin of error. Hit a few inches back and you’ll still penetrate the rear of the lungs and possibly the liver. Hit too far forward and you’ll likely strike inside the “V” that the deer’s leg bones and scapula form, still resulting in a heart/lung shot. Either of these three scenarios (perfect hit, a little back, a little forward) are ideal for a mechanical broadhead with a wide cutting diameter.

The only scenario where a quality mechanical is less effective is if you shoot into heavy bones. But in most cases (see my caveats section below) archers should avoid this. Just check out this graphic from the Ohio Deer Trackers group:

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The red pins show deer that were found dead and recovered by trackers. The green pins were deer that were hit and then confirmed alive (likely by trail cam photos). The blue pins were undetermined, the white pins were tracked and required a follow up shot.

There are several green pins in the shoulder area, while almost all of the hits behind the shoulder resulted in red pins — recovered deer. Now, it’s difficult to confirm exactly where a deer was hit if you don’t recover it. It’s also important to note that this graphic doesn’t show all the deer that were killed and didn’t need help from a tracking dog (that’s why you don’t see many red pins found in the crease). But still, the illustration is telling. Archery deer hunters should aim for the crease behind the shoulder, no matter what broadhead they’re shooting.

Einsmann hunts with a fixed blade and a traditional bow, and aims exclusively for the crease because for the margin of error it offers, and he’s had 100 percent recoveries (all under 100 yards) on dozens of deer.

And yet, some bowhunters have started advocating for shooting tighter into the shoulder, essentially aiming for the “vital V” that the leg bones and scapula create. If you hit this area you will certainly kill your deer. But will you kill him any deader than if you strike a few inches back, just behind the shoulder? Certainly not.

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But what about those quartering-to shots? I hate to be labeled a Fudd, but most archery deer hunters should simply pass on these. While a frontal or quartering-to shot can be deadly, the target is much smaller than a broadside or quartering-away shot. And when hunting out of a treestand, deer will often give you a broadside shot or quartering-away shot if you’re patient enough. If a buck doesn’t give you one of those shot opportunities, then he wins the day. No matter how good our gear gets, knowing when to pass on shots is a critical aspect of bowhunting.

Deer Hunters Want Large Wound Channels and Good Blood Trails

Let’s not overthink the equation for a good bowhunting kill: devastating wound channel through vital organs plus quick blood loss equals a fast, clean kill. Einsmann measured wound channels using ballistic gel in his broadhead testing and found that mechanicals typically created larger channels (in some cases almost twice as large). This makes sense given their wider cutting diameters.

Whitetails are not known to be tough game animals. Deer hunters aren’t trying to drive an arrow through a cape buffalo. But many of us hunt deer in thick cover, which can make recovering even well-hit deer a challenge if there’s a light blood trail. For large wound channels and heavy blood trails, it’s hard to beat the best mechanical broadheads.

When to Shoot Fixed Blades

But I’m not some sort of mechanical broadhead evangelist. On certain big-game hunts I switch to fixed-blade heads, and I fully agree that not every bowhunter should shoot mechanicals. If you shoot a traditional bow or shoot a compound at a low draw weight, a fixed blade is better for penetration. Likewise, if you’re targeting large game like elk or moose, a fixed-blade head is the way to go. When I drew a once-in-a-lifetime archery goat tag in Utah, I went with a fixed-blade broadhead because I’d heard all about how tough goats are. Interestingly, archery pro John Dudley does recommend some mechanical heads for elk hunting in his picks for the best broadheads for elk.

If you’re a deer hunter who does a lot of rattling or decoying on the ground and you’re likely to see mostly frontal shots or quartering-to shots, then you’ll want to go with heavy arrows and bomb-proof fixed-blade broadheads.

But to in order to beef up your rig and start shooting critters through the shoulder, you also need to get good at tuning your bow and sharpening broadheads. You must fully understand the anatomy of the animal you’re hunting and how different angles and ranges present different challenges. You need to understand how the animal might react at the shot.

In other words, you must truly master all of the finer details of bowhunting. If you’re not committed to that, then buy the highest quality mechanical heads you can, practice as often as you can, and only take the shots (broadside and quartering away) you’re certain you can make.

Also, no matter what you read or watch on YouTube, make sure to practice with your hunting arrows and broadheads to confirm that they have the same point of impact as your field points. Do this at the farthest range you intend to shoot in a hunting scenario. If you can check with a quick paper tune, even better. Several mechanical broadhead brands offer practice points. Sevr broadheads allow you to install a tiny screw that locks the head closed (so the blades won’t expand when they hit your foam target). This means you won’t dull your broadheads while practicing. Hunters shooting fixed-blade broadheads will have to sharpen their blades.

When to Switch Your Broadheads

Hunters tend to get defensive over their broadhead choice. If the last few deer you shot were killed cleanly, it’s easy to believe you’ve got the greatest setup of all time. If that’s how you feel, then stick with it, because confidence is the X-factor in bowhunting.

However, you should consider changing setups if you’ve been getting the following results:

• Broken heads on good shots through the vitals
• Good shots that don’t pass through
• Light blood trails on lung shots
• Inconsistent accuracy with broadheads on the range or in the field
• Inability to tune with your hunting setup

There are several good mechanical options out there, and it’s worth upgrading your head even if that means spending a little extra money on the front end. It will save you plenty of heartache in the long run.

“The next day he drove the frozen fish to our Nebraska state fish hatchery in Valentine, about 25 miles from the lake,” Bauer tells Outdoor Life. “There, Zach Brashers, a facility fisheries manager, identified it as a common carp, weighed, and measured it.”

Hensel’s common carp measured over 40 inches long and weighed 39 pounds, 8 ounces. This replaces the previous Nebraska record for common carp, which was caught in May 2019 and weighed 34 pounds, 13 ounces. Angler Robert Busk caught that fish from a private pond in Washington County, and he was using a nightcrawler as bait, according to the NGPC fishing records book.

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“[Hensel told me] it was quite a struggle landing the fish,” Bauer said. “He asked a couple guys in a boat nearby to come to shore and help out and shoot a photo.”

I’m not going to get all righteous and tell you that these tags shouldn’t be sold, or that they represent some dire direction for public-resource management. But even if the rest of us don’t pay these prices for our deer tags, we should pay attention to what’s happening in state legislatures and fish-and-game commission rooms and understand the mechanics of these high-visibility transactions.

As a Western hunter, and as a member of the board of the Mule Deer Foundation (MDF), which presents the Expo along with Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife (SFW), these auction tags play an outsized role in funding opportunities the rest of us enjoy. Each of the record-setting tags is a little different, both in what the buyers purchased and how their funds will trickle down to those of us who wince when we pay 1/1,000^th of what these high-rollers paid for their deer tags.

Antelope Island Tag

Utah’s Antelope Island hosts a class of bucks that most of us will never get to hunt. The 42-square-mile island in the Great Salt Lake is visible from the convention center where the Expo’s auction is held. It’s owned entirely by the State of Utah, which manages the land as a state park and the deer resource for older, trophy-class bucks.

The state issues only two tags for mule deer bucks on the island. One is distributed in the public lottery, and last year it was awarded to a Utah resident who had only six bonus points going into the draw. The auction tag is offered for sale at the Expo, and since 2011, the tag has raised over $3.5 million for Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources, which receives 30 percent of the auction revenue to “improve habitat on the island and benefit mule deer translocations throughout the state,” according to the enabling legislation that authorizes the sale. The remaining 70 percent of the tag revenue is split. Ten percent stays with MDF and SFW to compensate the organizations for administering the Expo where the auction takes place. The remaining 60 percent must be used by the organizations for “eligible projects,” which include “habitat improvement and acquisition, transplants, targeted education efforts and other projects providing a substantial benefit to species of wildlife for which conservation permits are issued,” among other details.

In Utah, revenue from Antelope Island—along with the more than 200 other tags offered at auction—have funded thousands of GPS collars that biologist have strapped to mule deer and other big-game species in order to track their movements, better understand migration patterns, and ultimately influence management decisions that benefit wildlife populations and create additional hunting opportunity.

Arizona Mule Deer Tag

If Utah allows certain latitudes with 70 percent of the revenue raised by the Antelope Island deer tag, Arizona runs a much tighter ship. One hundred percent of the $725,000 raised at Saturday’s auction for the statewide deer tag goes to Arizona Game & Fish for “management and habitat projects that will benefit mule deer,” according to the Expo auction book.

Arizona actually offers two of these statewide deer tags, which can be used from Aug. 15, 2023 to Aug. 14, 2024. That’s right: It’s a year-long season, which means the recipient can hunt velvet bucks in the Kaibab or wintering bucks on Unit 12B, the legendary Arizona Strip. Presumably, hunters could also target bucks that haven’t yet fully developed their annual antlers.

“Maybe a June buck with beer-can bases,” says Jim Heffelfinger, wildlife science coordinator with Arizona Game & Fish and widely respected authority on mule deer management. “That would be a rare trophy. I bet nobody else with that [statewide] tag has one of those.”

Heffelfinger’s agency and wildlife program benefit grandly from special-tag revenue. Jackson Miller, habitat partnership coordinator for both MDF and Arizona Game and Fish, says the auction-tag revenue funded 47 habitat projects across the state last year to the tune of $3.2 million.

Many are landscape-level habitat improvements such as a 50,000-acre grassland restoration project in Unit 18A, water developments, and pinyon-juniper removal.

“Without the Habitat Partnership program, thousands of acres of habitat would not receive the treatment they need every year,” Miller says. “It truly changes the landscape.”

Auction Tags vs. General Tags

Given the eye-popping prices—and outsized attention—that these auction tags receive, it’s worth asking: How does that revenue compare with general-tag sales to hunters who can’t afford a new pickup, let alone a six-figure deer tag?

States’ revenue reporting systems are so different that it’s hard to quantify revenue, but in 2019 alone, Colorado sold nearly $100 million in hunting licenses. Revenue generated from those deer, elk, turkey, and moose tags paid for the salaries of wildlife biologists and hatchery technicians, for paper, power, and light at regional offices, and for the computer systems that enable these tags, used to manage public wildlife resources, to be distributed quickly and equitably.

That’s an important consideration for states as they wonder if they should put more of the public’s resources up for sale on the auction block, or simply keep distributing public tags to public hunters.

As they’re considering that choice, policy-makers would be wise to calculate the indirect financial impact that public hunters can have on rural communities. Nevada estimates that hunters spent about $380 million in 2020 on hunting and hunting related expenditures in addition to their licenses.

“More people want to hunt big-game animals here in Nevada than there are available big-game hunting tags,” said Michael Taylor, a co-author of the report. “That’s what makes hunting kind of a recession-proof industry. There are so many people who want to go that demand stays strong even during an economic downturn.”

An economic downturn that doesn’t seem to have affected the purchasing power of at least some Expo auction bidders.

In a shooting industry that has gadgets for everything, there’s a surprising lack of variety in options for covering your rifle muzzle to keep out debris and moisture. There are the movie references to using condoms for that purpose, and the only muzzle-specific product I can think of is simply a miniature condom that’s rolled over the muzzle. However, it doesn’t disappoint me to see a lack of effort in tackling this problem. After all, it’s already been solved.

Electrical tape is the best thing I’ve found to keep moisture and debris out of my rifle muzzle. Once I began hunting in Alaska in conditions that were often harsh and wet, I quickly inherited the trick of tightly covering my muzzle with electrical tape. I even keep extra tape rolled around the barrel just in front of the stock. Once I shoot through the first tape, I’ll eventually retape it with the extra roll. As a matter of habit, any rifle I have with me is taped from the time it’s uncased till I shoot. I simply shoot through the tape and cover it back up afterwards.

I’ve killed scores of big game critters with tape over my rifle muzzle and I’ve never had an issue. But still, I hear and read myths about how taping a muzzle can cause accuracy issues. In order to put these myths to bed once and for all, I conducted a simple experiment. I took four of my hunting rifles and shot groups with them taped and un taped.

Debris in a Rifle Muzzle

Our instructor told of a shotgun barrel that had been peeled back due to only cobwebs—supposedly. Most distinctly, I remember a poorly made video depicting an overweight turkey hunter belly-crawling through the mud, clogging his muzzle, and the video ended in an abrupt whiteout cut. The lesson? Always keep foreign debris out of your bore.

Even small obstructions inside your bore can cause catastrophic results. Your rifle barrel contains a small explosion every time it’s fired, and it’s designed to handle the high pressures of that explosion. But when foreign debris is in the barrel—and isn’t blown out by air pressure before the bullet hits it—it can cause enough of a pressure spike to peel open your barrel in dramatic (and dangerous) fashion.

Even when debris or obstruction isn’t enough to cause damage to your rifle, it can certainly affect accuracy. Simply having moisture inside the bore will affect your point of impact and accuracy, demonstrated in an article by Sierra Bullets Chief Ballistician Tommy Todd in 2016. World War II soldiers were sometimes given condoms to cover their muzzles during amphibious landings to keep saltwater and sand out of their bores, but for a hunting rifle, a bit of electrical tape is all you’ll ever need.

Superstitions About Taping Your Muzzle

It’s normal to at least question whether it’s even safe to shoot through a tightly taped muzzle. If you’ve been taught well, the idea of any barrier directly in or on your muzzle should make you think twice. The distinction though, is that when you put tape over your rifle muzzle, you are not placing anything inside the bore.

More common than safety concerns, is the idea that firing your rifle with tape over the muzzle will affect your accuracy or the point of impact of your bullet. I haven’t encountered anyone who would pick that theory as their hill to die on, but I’ve met plenty who say they either don’t tape their muzzle, or they remove the tape before firing if they can. For some it’s just a superstitious reluctance, others do seem to believe it will affect their point of impact.

The most detail-oriented hunter does have a point here: even the smallest variables can influence a rifle shot. However, most influences are so small that they get lost in the wash in any practical hunting situation. In other words, there’s more variation in your field shooting ability than there is in the smallest environmental influences. Muzzle tape over your barrel is one of those minor influences that will never make an accuracy difference in hunting scenario.

In fact, the bullet never even contacts the tape. The air pressure created by the tightly sealed bullet traveling down the bore blows the tape away from the muzzle long before the bullet ever gets there.

Debunking the Muzzle Tape Myth

I’ve been a proponent of taping muzzles and blasting right through it for years, and it’s about time I demonstrated that taping your muzzle (and shooting through it) will have no perceptible effect on your point of impact. I brought four rifles to the range for this little experiment: a Savage M25 in .17 Hornet, a Remington Model 710 in .30/06, a Browning X-Bolt Mountain Pro in 6.8 Western with their Recoil Hawg muzzle brake, and a Winchester XPR in 6.5 Creedmoor. I wanted to shoot a variety of calibers and include at least one hefty muzzle break so that if there was going to be a perceptible impact shift, it would show up in the mix.

For this evaluation, I fired two five-shot groups at 100 yards from each rifle at identical targets on the same sheet of paper. For one group, I re-taped the muzzle between shots. For the second group, I fired the group normally, with no muzzle tape. For the rifle with the muzzle brake, I covered the end with two pieces of electrical tape crossed perpendicularly, then tightly wrapped the entire muzzle brake to seal it. I wrapped the other three muzzles with two pieces of crossed tape then a single wrap of tape around the barrel to keep it secure.

After shooting all the groups, I measured each shot’s horizontal and vertical distance from a fixed reference point to triangulate the group center. I then plotted the group centers for both taped and un-taped to determine the difference. I expected some difference because of the sample size. Even with all variables equal, differences will still show up but will slim down as the sample size increases. Here are my results.

Group Center Shift Taped vs Un-Taped

• Savage .17 Hornet: 0.193 inches
• Remington .30/06: 0.184 inches
• Browning 6.8 Western: 0.170 inches
• Winchester 6.5 Creedmoor: 0.546 inches
• Average Group Center Shift: 0.273 inches

Variables and Observations

Group sizes and group center locations didn’t indicate any trends or notable changes across the rifles and the only real outlier in the group was the Winchester XPR in 6.5 Creedmoor with which I shot uncharacteristically poor groups. It’s outfitted with a 7X magnification scope making it a little more challenging to shoot for precise accuracy testing. A couple of outlying shots certainly affected the group centers, but the shift between the two groups is still within a reasonable margin of human error, considering it’s typically a one-inch gun, and the group centers varied by just over half an inch.

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Some shooters will be concerned about taping over a large muzzle brake, like the Recoil Hawg, but in my test it appeared to have no perceptible effect on the brake or rifle’s performance. All the tape was completely blown off the brake with each shot.

Even with one outlier, the average difference between the centers of only 2 groups was slightly over a quarter inch at 0.273 inches. For perspective, if you dropped two .30-caliber bullets onto spots with their points .273 inches apart, the holes would be overlapping. That’s well within the pattern of how groups from those rifles will fall. So tape your rifle muzzles to keep debris out, and go to the field knowing that shooting through the tape is one factor you don’t need to worry about.

Well, there went the whole night, I thought as soon as I heard the loud “huff” from the grizzly bear that was circling through the seemingly impenetrable alders and brush behind my tree stand. It was followed by a steady pounding lope through the timber. I couldn’t see the bear a mere 20 or 30 yards away, but I could hear each step as his soft, scarred foot pads pushed into the dry leaves.

I’d been listening to his approach for about a minute, hearing sticks snap as he lumbered closer. I hoped he would get on the trail that would take him directly to the bait and upwind of me. Instead, he pushed through the dense brush on a path that would take him downwind. I crossed my fingers and hoped that my Ozonics would keep him from smelling me. I’ve had many all-night sits and potential opportunities spoiled by a downwind bear. The grizzly bears that I hunt are as spooky as the cagiest whitetail. If you blow it, it’s over.

My ears followed each step as he crossed my wind—I’d lucked out. I quietly toggled the safety of my 6.5 Creedmoor to “fire.” But the bear’s direction would take him across the trail I use to approach the bait. When he hit the scent of my tracks, he blew, then barreled through the undergrowth. After careful planning and patient waiting, my opportunity had evaporated—as often happens when trying to hunt grizzlies over bait in interior Alaska—or had it?

The 6.5 Creedmoor: The Gift that Keeps Giving

“I knew it! You had to include the man bun cartridge!”

“It’s only popular because—marketing! Hype!”

“Hornady pays all you gun writers to lie about how good it is!”

“Needmoor!”

“Crudmoor!”

“I love lamp!”

Get the picture? It’s a truly involuntary response, and I love it. I’m fine with the Creedmoor just being an accurate, mild, good-performing cartridge, but responding to these kneejerk—and baseless—opinions is significantly more entertaining.

I do understand why so many folks are annoyed at the success of the 6.5 Creedmoor, and with anyone who has good things to say about it. We often get attached to the cartridges we like, and it’s annoying as hell to have some adult-onset hunter tell us how great their shit is when they really don’t know anything. Rather, they’re just regurgitating things that some other dimwit told them. When what we have works just fine, it just sounds like noise, and much of it is just that. Noise.

What gets lost is the simple truth that the 6.5 Creedmoor is a genuinely great cartridge—both within the context of what it’s designed to do across the course, and what it can do as a hunting cartridge. Yes, there are more optimal cartridges for a variety of purposes, and there are older cartridges that are similar in many ways. Good for them. Shoot what you like.

The “Needmoor” Delusion

One of the most common sophistries about the 6.5 Creedmoor is that it’s anemic and underpowered—unable to cleanly kill the daintiest of deer. It leaves poor blood trails, spilled kombucha, and the scent of patchouli in its wake.

But at reasonable distances, the 6.5 Creedmoor delivers plenty of penetration and terminal performance to kill any animal in North America cleanly. If you’re wanting something to blame for a poor result, you likely need to look no further than the nearest mirror.

Many people will thumb their nose at the Creed for being too little, but opt for the classic .30/06 with 180-grain bullets. Hell of a cartridge, no? Indeed. Two world wars. But do you really believe that .914 millimeters difference in diameter and 40 additional grains of mass is going to make a huge difference in how quickly you can kill a deer, elk, or moose? Larger, more powerful cartridges can deliver more damage and devastation—and they are generally more forgiving when it comes to impact with heavy bone and less-than-perfect shot angles. How much more? That’s debatable. As a baseline, if you’re choosing and taking ethical, careful shots, a good 140- or 143-grain 6.5mm bullet will kill stuff just as dead—often just as quickly as bullets that are a little bit larger, fired at similar velocities.

Back to Bears

“I already know the end of this story,” I told shooting editor John B. Snow, who was sitting across two stacks of shot-up targets and a bowl of salsa at our 2023 gun test. While measuring groups and voicing my anticipation of this year’s spring bear hunting, I’d half-jokingly said “I should shoot one with the Creed this year.”

“You have to,” was Snow’s reply.

I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to hunt grizzly bears every spring near my home in Alaska. After killing a brace of bears with my recurve bow and modern arrows, I killed a large grizzly with a longbow and knapped stone arrowhead. After that, I stepped into the 1800’s with a .50-caliber percussion muzzleloader shooting patched round balls. That ol’ blunduerbuss killed a big grizzly dead too. Last season, I was planning to hunt with my recurve, but a close encounter with a sow grizzly on the ground persuaded me to employ my .338 Win. Mag. I’d journeyed from the stone age of stick and string, to the modern Alaskan staple .338. It only made sense that I take the next step in this evolutionary journey and select the ultimate, most sophisticated cartridge for anything: the 6.5 Creedmoor.

“Getting the shot will be the tough part,” I told Snow. “After that, it’s gravy. I shoot it in the lungs, it’ll run maybe 50 or 60 yards and die.” That’s what happens when you shoot stuff through both lungs. With a smiling sense of purpose, I grabbed a few boxes of 140-grain Nosler Partitions that were left over from our accuracy testing and stuffed them in my suitcase. Partitions are an excellent legacy hunting bullet that aren’t bonded, but retain a good amount of their weight. Plus, I’ve got to disguise the fact that Hornady is paying me to write this story too. It’d be too obvious if I employed my favorite 143-grain ELD-X bullets.

I chose to use my well-used Winchester XPR for this task. The XPR is one of my favorite budget hunting rifles, and I’ve used a number of them. This particular XPR has become a traveling rifle of sorts. If someone needs a rifle for a hunting trip for whatever reason, that’s what I give them. In all, It has killed five Dall sheep, about a dozen caribou, several Sitka blacktail deer, and a moose too—if I remember correctly.

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Getting the Shot is the Hard Part

Although I’ve done a bit of spot-and-stalk hunting for coastal brown bears, most of my hunting for grizzlies in interior Alaska is over bait. It’s a relatively simple process, but likely the most time-consuming and persistence-intensive hunting that I do. Where I hunt, a grizzly will visit a bait site usually no more than two or three days in a row before moving on. They don’t usually come in to eat regularly like black bears will, and they might show up anytime between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. You’ve got to be there when they show and, no matter what, don’t let them smell you. If they get your wind, it’s over. Better luck next year. Usually it takes about a month of hunting for me to get a shot opportunity—sometimes longer.

Getting the shot is the most difficult task, killing bears is actually pretty easy. Even the biggest coastal brown bear can be killed quickly with a single shot through the lungs—though they won’t just drop instantly. Bears can become incredibly difficult to kill if you’ve really screwed up and wounded them with a non-lethal shot first, but that’s not their baseline. Bears have heavy leg bones, but if you pay any attention at all to shot placement, you’ll get excellent penetration with any good bullet or broadhead. The key to killing them quickly and cleanly is knowing where to shoot a bear—and I always try to shoot them through both lungs. With a double-lung shot, they almost never go more than 100 yards—even when taking off at a sprint.

The 6.5 Grizzly

I’d already sat a few fruitless nights so far this spring and, over the years, have come to have tempered expectations when waiting on a grizzly. I usually try to sit down at about 7 pm for a game of endurance and perseverance. A grizzly might come in at 11 pm, or 4 am. If I’m not alert and ready when he shows up, it’s all for nothing. More than once I’ve thrown in the towel at 5:30 or 6:30 am only to spook an approaching bear while getting down from my tree stand or loading gear back into my boat. This night, I had photos of a nice grizzly that shown up both of the previous nights between 2:30 and 3:30 am.

The night was anything but boring. I had one black bear show up early and feed for an hour then, just before midnight, another one. It helped pass the time, but as time ticked into the early hours of the morning, it went quiet. The red squirrels settled their constant chatter and scurrying through the dry leaves to make way for flying squirrels who swooped silently in to eat bits of dog food. In the dim twilight of early June, I could see little brown bats silently swooping above the ground below me, swiping at the clouds of mosquitoes. The only sounds were the echoing songs of thrushes in the forest.

I grew tired, but stayed alert, hoping that the grizzly would make a third appearance at about the same time he had before. At 2:30 am, my heart stopped as I saw a bear’s hind leg move forward through a gap in the dimly-lit timber. I readied myself, but it was the second black bear returning. I can’t believe I’m not shooting this bear I thought as I watched the round-headed black bear feed. I held firm, reminding myself that shooting this bear was a sure way to spook that grizzly if he were around.

I’m calling it at 3:45, I decided. I’m tired.

At about 3:30, I distinctly heard something walk into the water down at the river, and it sounded like a bear. I listened to hear it climb back out, in case it was that grizzly swimming to my side of the river. I didn’t hear anything. Then I saw the black bear standing back in the timber once again. If it comes in, I’m just gonna shoot it and be done for tonight, I told myself. As if my thoughts were spoken aloud, the black bear turned and sprinted back into the brush. Immediately, I heard a branch break towards where I’d heard the bear in the river. That’s him.

My heart started pounding as the bear approached, then dropped as I realized he was going to pass downwind. He didn’t catch my wind, but surely it was over when he smelled my tracks and huffed. To my surprise, he continued circling through the brush around the bait and I could tell he was going to burst from the trees to my left. I readied my rifle. I usually try to take the first good lung shot I get on a grizzly bear at a bait site. They rarely hold still for very long, and are always on the lookout for danger.

As the bear stepped out of the trees at a slight quartering-to angle, I broke the shot, placing it just behind the shoulder to hit both lungs. The bear leapt into the air, spinning as I chambered another round. As he landed on all fours, I fired another shot through the lungs. He spun again, flinging himself around and growling. At the next opportunity, I fired a third shot, hitting him in the shoulder. He was on the ground before the echoes from the first shot had stopped ringing in the trees.

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The first shot had sealed the bear’s fate. The second and third were simply because that’s what you do when you shoot a bear and he’s still up and moving—I’d have shot him twice or three times with my .338 or .375 too. Two of the three shots were pass-throughs and the third was through the shoulder. I found it under the skin on the off-side, peeled back just as a partition should be.

Remarkably Un-Remarkable

I’m not shy about expressing my opinions on bear hunting cartridges—and the why behind those opinions. Through experience, I’ve seen that medium-sized cartridges like the .243, 6.5 Creedmoor, and .25/06 Remington are excellent choices for black bears and even larger game. The 6.5 Creedmoor isn’t at the top of my list for grizzly bears or brown bears, but that doesn’t mean it’s a wimp. Frankly, the only remarkable or surprising thing about killing a big grizzly with a 6.5 Creedmoor is that people think it’s something special or remarkable. It’s not. I know more than a handful of folks who have done it before, and they weren’t surprised that it worked either.

Larger calibers can certainly offer more forgiveness and do more damage—the Creedmoor is far from my first choice for backing up a brown bear hunter or tracking poorly-hit bears into the alders. If your use of the rifle is likely to be at very close range and defensive in nature, sure, go big. But within a couple hundred yards, with good shot selection, even the soy espresso mocha latte of the cartridge world is perfectly capable of killing the biggest bears quickly. I’d wager that it killed this bear just as quickly as my .375 Ruger would have in the same scenario—though I’m not equating the two.

If you’re annoyed by the Creedmoor’s popularity, I’ve got bad news for you. It’s not going away. It’s established itself as a shootable, accurate, and potent game killer worldwide. Even in the Mongolian steppe, if you have to borrow a rifle like John B. Snow had to on his remarkable Argali hunt, don’t be surprised if it’s a Creed. And don’t be surprised when it gets the job done.

Crucially the agreement made public on Dec. 14 is not a decision to breach the Lower Four Snake River Dams (LSRDs), nor does it support legislation to authorize dam breaching. The dams are owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and removing or redesigning them would require an act of Congress.

The idea of breaching the four dams is deeply controversial, since they provide several benefits to our modern, energy-hungry society, including hydropower, barge transportation, and irrigation. According to many experts and fisheries managers in the Northwest, however, they’re also driving huge declines in wild anadromous fish stocks and hastening their extinction. Some of the fish native to the Snake River Basin are returning at less than two percent of their historical abundance, while other stocks native to the watershed have collapsed altogether. These declines have continued in the 50 years since the dams were built, even though the dams’ operators have spent roughly $17 billion in taxpayer dollars to try and compensate for their interference.

Proponents of dam breaching say the eight dams these fish must pass through on their migration to the ocean and back are four too many. As proof, they point to the lower number of fish that return to the Snake each year when compared to the fish that return to other Columbia River tributaries, which migrate through four or fewer federal dams on the mainstem Columbia. Advocates also view the Snake River’s high-elevation tributary streams as the last stronghold for anadromous fish in a warming Lower 48, and contend that restoring a free-flowing lower Snake River is the best way to ensure that Pacific salmon, steelhead, and other native fish species can access these coldwater streams to spawn.

“The science is clear,” the agreement reads, “and now so too must be our path forward.”

That path forward will include millions of dollars in federal funding to develop a plan for replacing the hydropower generated by the dams with other sources of renewable energy. It establishes a Pacific Northwest Tribal Energy Program, which will help the four Columbia River Treaty Tribes — the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon, and the Nez Perce Tribe — develop and deploy these “clean, renewable socially-just energy resources.” It will also provide federal funding and guidance for how the current irrigation and transportation systems could be replaced and/or redesigned should Congress ever decide to authorize dam breaching.

Congressional authorization remains a political long shot because the LSRDs are located in eastern Washington’s deeply red voting districts. While some lawmakers in the Northwest have come out in support of breaching — some have even floated their own proposals for how to replace the benefits provided by the dams — most of the other congressmen and -women representing the region have either stayed silent or opposed the idea.

Some members of Congress have even gone so far as to block the Biden administration’s proposed path forward. On Nov. 29, Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) leaked a confidential document from the administration that included some of the terms of the Dec. 14 agreement. In a press release, Newhouse also included a letter addressed to Biden from him and three other members of Congress. Their letter brings up several questions about dam breaching and represents a scathing rebuke to the announcement.

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“We have numerous questions about provisions in the document that require clarification,” reads the letter signed by Newhouse, along with Reps. Cathy McMorris Rogers (R-WA), Cliff Bentz (R-OR), and Russ Fulcher (R-ID). “It is imperative that our constituents, whose livelihoods depend on the Columbia River System, have a comprehensive understanding of this document’s contents so they can anticipate and prepare for the wide-ranging impacts that will inevitably be felt across the region should the commitments detailed in this document be realized.”

Although today’s announcement falls short of calling for dam breaching, it helps define the Biden administration’s stance around a key conservation issue. It could also represent a turning point in the long-standing controversy, as it doubles down on the administration’s past commitments to restore one the most productive salmon fisheries in North America.

“Many billions of dollars and decades have been wasted by past federal administrations trying to undo the near-extinction disaster the Lower Four Snake River Dams have inflicted on this once world-famous fishery,” executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Glen Spain said in a press release. “This plan finally pulls us out of gridlock by focusing on true salmon restoration rather than continuing a blind march toward salmon extinctions.”

Still, 2024 is an election year, and a different administration in the White House could indefinitely delay any progress toward breaching the LSRDs.

This story was updated on Dec. 14, 2023 to include comment from Kyle Smith.

“​​The Department of Wildlife Resources is aware of the situation and we are conducting an investigation,” says DWR Lieutenant Frank Spuchesi, the Region 1 manager overseeing the officers on the case.

“We’ve gotten so many [tips] now that I’m not really sure which one was the very first one,” Spuchesi added. “A lot of our cases are high profile, but this one does seem to be getting a little bit more attention due to the fact that some of these deer were seen by a lot of people in the public, and photographed a lot. They were out in the open. They weren’t elusive like a lot of deer are when they get to that age. Urban deer have a tendency to be seen a lot more.”

Although Spuchesi could not identify Jason Walters as a person of interest “at this time” to Outdoor Life, he did confirm the investigation includes multiple bucks.

“​​And then yesterday, he sent me that [nontypical] buck,” says Phillips, a realtor with Whitetail Properties. “Although when he sent the buck to me yesterday all he said was, ‘Post this up bud.’ And I saw how nice it was, and I was like, ‘Please include some details, this is a beautiful deer. Where’d you kill it?’ Just like anybody who sends me pictures, I always ask the county.”

Walters complied. Although Phillips was aware of a famous nontypical often seen and photographed near the Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, its antlers this year didn’t look familiar.

“It was a nationally known deer, but that deer has declined significantly rack-wise, believe it or not,” says Philips. “When he sent the picture in I just thought, ‘damn, that’s a beautiful deer,’ but I did not see or think of any association with that particular deer at the Hollywood Cemetery.”

Richmond-based wildlife photographer Bill Draper made the connection instantly. Draper takes photographs for the Hollywood Cemetery and Maymont Park, and enjoys private access to grounds that the public can’t always visit. For years Draper has photographed deer along the James River in Richmond, including the so-called Hollywood buck which he called a 22- or 24-point, depending on the year.

“I know this deer better than I know my three daughters. I can tell you every little nub on the antlers, I’ve got every different angle — front, back, side, right, left,” says Draper, noting that many photographs of the Hollywood buck that appeared in the Facebook comments were pulled from his pages. “It was starting to look a little haggard and run down. It’s an old deer. It had huge, unbelievable, world-class antlers four years ago. Obviously this is another four years later and it’s still phenomenal.”

Draper took his last photos of the Hollywood buck on Oct. 13 in Richmond. Although he’s always been careful to avoid posting any photos or information that would reveal too much about the deer’s location — for fear someone might poach it — Draper says he could find the animal if he looked hard enough. Especially lately, since the buck has been moving less.

“He’s lived for the last four years in that particular vicinity between Maymont Park, Mount Calvary Cemetery, Riverview Cemetery, Hollywood Cemetery, and James River Park North Bank Trail area,” Draper says. “I have pictures of him at Hollywood, on the North Bank Trail, at the edge of Mount Calvary, outside of the fence at Maymont, and inside the fence. He has not moved very much, he’s stayed pretty close around that neighborhood. The people who live there know that very well.”

While Draper has photographs that clearly show the buck among headstones and at recognizable Richmond locations, he declined to share them for this article, citing his working relationship with the Hollywood Cemetery. He had also encouraged the cemetery to refrain from posting his photos of the deer on their social accounts to avoid hotspotting the buck.

In addition to the big nontypical, Draper says he photographed the dark-antlered 8-point in Richmond that Walters claimed to have shot in Chesterfield on Nov. 20.

“That 8-pointer used to come through a hole in the fence at Hollywood like clockwork,” Draper says. “When the rut came in he was a little less consistent, obviously chasing does around. But still you’d see him in the cemetery.”

Draper also says that his buddy and fellow photographer Ben King has documented another Richmond deer that Walters claims he killed in Chesterfield, which is roughly 13 miles southwest of Hollywood Cemetery.

While there are carefully regulated urban bow seasons in Richmond, no hunting is allowed in Hollywood Cemetery and certain surrounding properties. Deer in the area are conditioned to humans and tolerate human activity better than most wild whitetails in more rural areas. Still, Draper says the buck was more careless this year.

“[The big Hollywood buck] had been a lot less wary this year. It would be near people’s yard, in Maymont Park it would bed down beside the fence where cars ride by. A week or so ago somebody posted a picture of him on the Virginia Wildlife Facebook page and said exactly where he lived and where you could see him. And there was a big uproar. I don’t know if that was the cause of [the buck’s death].”

Based on in-person sightings and photograph history, most sources estimated the Hollywood buck to be about eight years old.

“When I last looked at [the Hollywood buck] I said, ‘It may not last through the winter.’ But I hate to see it go that way,” says Draper. “It’s a shame. I would like people to know that you can’t just go out and shoot a deer like this and think you can post it and no one’s going to know about it. It’s really stupid. Hopefully it will make people think twice before they poach a deer.”

Despite the urban location, good cover and forage exists in the area.

“He had plenty to eat, plenty to bed, plenty of water. He didn’t have to go nowhere,” says Brandon Overstreet, a Virginia hunter and one of the first Facebook commenters to make the connection between Walters’ photos and the Hollywood buck. “He would never leave more than a mile away. [The Hollywood buck] was very odd in a sense too when the rut came. There are so many deer in that area, he never really rutted. His neck never swelled up. He always had a thin neck, didn’t have to go chasing and trying to find deer, because he had 30 girlfriends.”

Overstreet says he found one of the Hollywood buck’s sheds two years ago, which scored right at 100 inches and was later auctioned to a prominent collector. Although he lives in Bedford, Overstreet says he travels through Richmond every few weeks and often visits Pumphouse Park and other locations near the James River to watch the buck. Although the deer had many nicknames, most often just “Hollywood” or the “Hollywood buck,” locals sometimes called him “Prince” (“because they called his daddy the King,” says Overstreet). By his best guess, anyone hoping to poach deer in the area would have to do it at night.

“There are workers that work there during the day, they are constantly making rounds,” says Overstreet. “Everyone has expected someone to come poach him.”

Next Steps in the Poaching Investigation

When Phillips realized the buck he posted to Star City Whitetails Thursday morning looked the same as the Hollywood Cemetery buck, he messaged Walters on Facebook again.

“I sent him back a text that said ‘somebody just sent me pictures of the Hollywood Cemetery deer, and that’s it.’ I think he said, ‘huh lol.’ I said, ‘What does that mean’? He said, ‘This buck was killed at my hunting club in Prince Edward County.’”

Phillips says he received that final message from Walters at 10:52 a.m. on Dec. 14. Walters’ personal profile disappeared from Facebook shortly after their exchange, and Phillips updated his own post to reflect the new information. Both Walters and Draper have since been contacted by law enforcement. Spuchesi was unable to provide a timeline for when the public might learn further details about the case.

“I would hope [we can resolve this] in the near future,” Spuchesi says. “Some investigations last years, some last hours.”

“After all the chatter after my second one, I wanted to make sure that the game warden came with me to recover the deer,” says Kukral, a pro bass angler who competes in the National Professional Fishing League. “I have not heard one peep of poaching since I did that.”

It’s easy to see why people thought Kukral must be up to something. Three 200-plus-inch free-ranging deer in three years is all but unheard of, and to Kukral’s knowledge, it’s never been done before he pulled it off. So what are his secrets to success? Outdoor Life caught up with Kukral to learn how he tags such impressive whitetails, year after year. Here are six keys to his recent run of success in the whitetail woods.

1. Be All Kinds of Patient

Kukral, who lives and hunts in Ohio, points to a small parcel of family land that was clear cut in the 1990s as an example of how long-term patience can reward the hunter and land manager. Through careful management, strategic development of food plots, and two decades of patience, Kukral and his family have stewarded the land into what it has become today.

“It turned into a buck producer,” Kukral says. “These [200-plus-inch] deer in particular were not off that property, but it has produced multiple Boone and Crockett bucks.”

In the mid-term, he points to the deer he dubbed “Diesel,” which kicked off his three-year run of 200-plus-inch whitetails back in 2021.

“That deer was probably 2.5 [years old] when I first saw him. He was 160, then 180, then the next year 210,” Kukral says. “[When I first saw him] he looked like a puppy with a huge rack on his head. I shot him when he was probably 5.5.”

As for short term patience, Kukral says it all comes down to picking the right days to hunt.

2. Hunt with Intention

Kukral doesn’t hunt just to hunt. He picks his spots and goes in with the intention – and often the expectation – of being successful. It’s this intersection of patience and strategy that’s paid dividends.

Kukral’s 2022 deer, one that he calls “Drop Tine,” is a case study in picking your days. Despite having a good sense of where Drop Tine spent most of his time, Kukral gave the deer space for most of the season until the buck started showing up on his trail camera.

“I didn’t hunt that area [for most of the season],” Kukral says. “I had 170-inch deer walking past my stand every day, and I didn’t sit until Nov. 13 when I finally had that deer coming by.”

With a cold front in the forecast and a couple pictures of the buck in hand, Kukral knew it was finally time to make his move.

“The biggest key to my success was that a front had just come through and I felt like that kicked him into gear,” Kukral says. “I knew that day was going to be special. I went into that stand at about 2 p.m. and as soon as I got in, I started seeing deer. At about 3:45 he came in.”

The buck scored 232 inches, according to the Buckmasters scoring system. (All three of his 200-plus inch bucks were measured by official Buckmasters scorers using BTR’s “Full-Credit” system, which adds up every inch of antler and does not recognize nontypical features or make deductions of any kind.) He killed it by hunting with intention on the right day under the right conditions. He made a plan and then executed it.

3. Use Pressure to Your Advantage

Kukral knows as well as anyone that one of the most frustrating challenges in killing a megagiant is that everyone else is trying to kill him, too. When a 200-inch deer turns up in an ag field day after day, word gets around. Kukral says his hunt for Trifecta was a perfect example.

“I would have guys literally walk out into fields the next property over during prime time and all the deer would blow out,” he says. “I met another hunter on a neighboring property who told me like a dozen people knew about [this] deer.”

Kukral knew he had to adapt, so he bypassed the obvious features that most hunters would gravitate toward. Instead he thought about the features the deer would use to avoid those hunters.

“My key tactic is to figure out how the deer are gonna get around these guys,” Kukral says. To that end, he set up on a ridge where thick cover and topography gave the deer just enough confidence to exploit. Kukral’s strategy paid off when his target buck showed up in the middle of the day just 20 yards from his setup.

4. Put in the Offseason Work

Kukral is whitetail obsessed, and that obsession manifests itself in hard work. Whether he’s knocking on doors, setting cameras, logging windshield time, or glassing bean fields through the summer, Kukral never turns it off.

“Two days after harvesting Trifecta, I was already back hanging cell cams and mineral sites,” he says. “There is no offseason.”

Kukral believes it’s this mentality that’s helped him tag big deer year after year. All three of his giant bucks were killed on private land, and he says that putting in the offseason effort and building relationships with landowners is crucial to his success.

“A lot of people don’t do the door-knocking, or offer to put in sweat equity. People really appreciate that,” Kukral says of gaining access to new private parcels.

After that, it’s all about doing the recon work to pattern the buck. For Kukral, finding the acreage a buck is living on isn’t enough. He wants to know exactly how the buck uses it. The kind of bucks Kukral goes after have few weaknesses, but there are some.

“I’ve had a lot of deer duplicate their exact pattern … a year or even two later.”

Kukral stresses that cell cameras are the most important tools in his arsenal when it comes to figuring deer out. Once he’s put the work in to find a buck, gained access to the property, and patterned the deer, in Kukral’s mind, the game is already won.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Get Aggressive

Big bucks are not like little bucks, and Kukral believes that if you want to have success, you have to learn how to take some calculated risks. Kukral isn’t afraid to break what many of us know as the cardinal rules of deer hunting, like giving a deer your wind if it puts you in a better position.

“You’re gonna have some sort of odor, but particularly with urban deer, you can get away with more,” Kukral says. “A few times, the wind was blowing into the bedding [area] when I got into my stand. I was okay with that because I had the best scent control and the freshest doe pee I could have. Guys will say that’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard, but it’s working for me. You gotta have a good program.”

Aside from cheating the wind, Kukral isn’t afraid to make non-traditional moves in the Ohio whitetail woods – moves that by some standards are more Western than Midwestern. In one of his first encounters with Trifecta on Nov. 2, he nearly sealed the deal by moving in aggressively on the buck.

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“I drop my [rattling] antlers out of the tree, slide my bow down, and I’m on a mission to cut this deer off while he’s working across the field,” Kukral recalls. “I was 30 seconds too late to get a shot at him, but I put myself in position by doing the thing that made me uncomfortable and getting aggressive.”

Kukral acknowledges that even with the risks he’s taken, he’s been fortunate. He knows the odds aren’t always in his favor, but even if he does blow out a deer here and there, he believes the risks and occasional consequences are worth it in the long run.

“The reality is that in order to put yourself in position to shoot a deer of a lifetime, sometimes you have to get into their face or core area a little more than you want to.”

6. Stick with It

In recounting his weeks-long hunt for Trifecta, Kukral offers one final tip: You just have to keep grinding. After dealing with all the hunting pressure and missing his opportunity to close the distance on foot, Kukral hung one more stand on the forested ridge the buck had been using to avoid the other hunters.

“I just said, ‘Okay, I’m not leaving here until this deer is on the ground.’”

On his eighth day in a row hunting the spot, the buck finally showed around 9:13 a.m. Kukral grunted, stopped the deer in a basketball-sized shooting lane, and threaded the needle. The hunt for Trifecta – and the trifecta itself – was complete.

“You sit out there for days and days, you put in all this work,” Kukral says, “and it just comes together in a matter of ten seconds.”