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I’ve been a fan of chain pickerel since I was a kid. That’s largely because where I grew up there weren’t any pike and even though there were some muskie haunts, those fish felt too unattainable. As an adult, I still believe the lowly chain pickerel doesn’t get enough respect. I’m betting some of you have them in your backyard and don’t pay them much mind. That’s a mistake, especially during winter. Unlike bass, trout, and bluegills, which can be very tough to fool once the water drops below roughly 45 degrees, pickerel are still eager to attack.
They also make exceptional fly rod targets for beginners and advanced casters alike. So, don’t tuck the long rod away until spring just yet. If you’ve never taken a crack at these underdogs, here’s how to catch pickerel in winter.
Slow Your Retrieve
During an ice fishing trip years ago, a buddy aimed an underwater camera on one of the live shiners dangling below a tip-up. In short order, a pickerel appeared on the screen. We were certain it would plow the bait seconds after it arrived, but the opposite happened. The predator just hovered in place barely flicking its fins, studying the shiner as it swam frantically in a circle. For five minutes nothing changed, and then, as if out of gas, the shiner went limp. This, we thought, would make the pickerel go away, but it stayed. Then, the tired shiner made one half-hearted tail kick and WHAM! The pickerel hit and up popped the flag. Similar scenes unfolded several more times throughout the day, and the experience taught me a lot about how pickerel feed in cold water.
Whereas an aggressive approach might get pickerel charged up during warmer times, subtlety pays off in the cold. Learning from what I saw on the ice that day, I began using unweighted streamers with a bit of bulk for catching pickerel in cold winter. Patterns like the Double Deceiver, Mini Drunk & Disorderly, and the Dirty Hippy are all good examples of streamers that can be manipulated to hover in the water column, or at least fall away slowly enough that they’ll linger in front of a fish’s face.
Use a Strike Indicator
Just because slow retrieves are often the most productive during the winter doesn’t mean weighted flies have no place in your cold season arsenal. They can be highly effective, but the secret is presenting them under a large, buoyant strike indicator like a Thingamabobber. In essence, matching this float with a weighted fly is the equivalent of casting a soft-plastic jig under a bobber with spinning gear. It can be downright lethal.
Some of my favorite flies for this method include the Clouser Minnow, Lunch Money Shad, and the Flash-and-Grab. All of them feature weighted dumbbell eyes that help keep them oriented horizontally when hanging below a strike indicator. My preference is a 1-inch Thingamabobber, as it can suspend a fairly heavy pattern. It can also be easily slid up and down your leader to adjust depth of your fly.
All you have to do is fire out a long cast and let the fly hang there in the middle of the water column. Don’t be afraid to wait a minute or longer before giving the line one short, fast strip to make the fly rise and fall again. You can milk a retrieve like this for a long time, as it will help keep the fly hanging around likely cover long enough to get a chilly, unwilling pickerel to make a move.
Read Next: Best Fly Fishing Combos for Beginners of 2023
Fish the Warm Spots
Whether you’re fishing from shore or have access to a boat, considering the time of day you’re fishing, as well as the depth, bottom content, and structure you’re targeting are critical. Quite often there is a short—but sweet—feeding window later in the day, which often correlates with an uptick in water temperate, even if only by a degree or two. Of course, an entire lake or river isn’t likely to bump up a few degrees in a single day during the winter, but certain areas will.
I like to focus on spots three to four feet deep in close proximity to deeper water. Areas with dark bottom will hold more heat from the sun, as will any downed trees or wood poking through the surface. Despite the cold, pickerel need to feed, and during that bite window, areas that check one or more of these boxes are prime. If you spend enough time on your local waters, winter patterns quickly emerge and before long you’ll figure out which banks and cover are worth beating to death because you’ll know a fish or two is likely holding there. Some days just may require more coaxing than others to get them to chew.
On Sunday morning, Montana hunter Jeff Hasbrouck set out to help his 10-year-old son Zayden harvest his first deer on some private land near the small town of Winnett. The duo had four tags to fill—two whitetail doe tags, Jeff’s special draw mule deer tag, and Zayden’s general deer tag which allowed him to hunt whitetail bucks in the area. They would end the day with all four tags notched, and Jeff’s tag was strapped to an especially strange mule deer buck.“We set out in the morning with the idea to get my son a buck,” Hasbrouck tells Outdoor Life. “I told Zayden we were going to knock out the does first thing in the morning, and that way we could spend the rest of the day looking for his deer. Then we could work on my tag. This was his hunt. He’d been on three other hunts with me without being able to shoot, so he was super excited about this one.”The duo drove around the property where they had access. It’s a piece of farm land that Jeff has hunted for the last five years. Tall rows of corn held the more skittish whitetails, while the mule deer stood out in the open. This presented an extra challenge for filling the doe tags and Zayden’s buck tag. But Jeff continued to drive and glass, dead set on putting his mule deer tag last.
Eventually, they ended up back near a group of mule deer they’d glassed earlier in the morning.
“There were just some mule deer does, a small 2-by-2, and then Mr. Corkscrew,” Jeff says. “I couldn’t tell what [his antlers looked like] at first and I just kept glassing him trying to get every angle I could.”
Jeff had never seen a buck with antlers like these before. Jeff Hasbrouck
“I said ‘Hey, I know this is your hunt, and I want you to get your first deer, but this is a very unique buck,’” Jeff says. “And Zayden looked at me and said ‘Just shoot it, Dad. Just shoot it.’ So I took one shot and lunged him.”
The buck walked about 10 yards before laying back down. Jeff knew he was a legal buck, but still struggled to see exactly what the antlers looked like from a distance.
“I could see some pins and curls, but I couldn’t really tell what the other side looked like,” he says. “When we walked up to him, Zayden says ‘He looks like a corkscrew!’ So that’s what his name is.”
Jeff isn’t quite sure why the buck’s antlers look the way they do, although lungworm can cause corkscrew antlers in other deer species, such as red deer and whitetails. They pass through the respiratory and digestive systems of deer and other ungulates and don’t impact the health of the venison. Deer often don’t even exhibit symptoms.
The day carried on. Jeff harvested both does and tried to get Zayden set up on whitetail bucks multiple times before the deer would take off. But persistence paid off and Zayden eventually got to take his first shot on a 4×4 whitetail—with the same Remington Model 70 that his dad and older sister had taken their first big game animals with.
Zayden poses with his first-ever deer. Jeff Hasbrouck
“Luck was on our side,” Jeff says. “The buck was standing out among some haybales. Zayden made a good shot, one shot to the chest, and dropped the buck.”
Jeff plans on getting European mounts of both skulls and donated some of the meat from the does to the Montana Veterans Meat Locker. His search for strange bucks will continue next season.
Read Next: Ohio Hunter Tags Old, Famous Buck with an Antler Growing Out of Its Eye
“The people at the check station estimated that he was 5.5 years old,” Jeff says. “He looks quite healthy … but yeah, he is strange.”
Researchers from Oregon State University, the National Park Service, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game recently published a paper outlining the first known observations of wolves hunting harbor seals and sea otters in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. Biologists have widely accepted that seals, sea otters, and other marine species comprise much of a coastal gray wolf’s diet, but evidence that wolves actively hunt these critters (rather than just scavenging them) hasn’t surfaced until now.The paper, published on Oct. 3 in the research journal Ecology, draws on multiple observations made from 2016 to 2021 in Katmai National Park. The study was born in 2016 when a wolf clenching a sea otter in its jaws trotted past NPS biologist Kelsey Griffin and her colleagues. Griffin was eating her lunch while on break from studying marine debris and bird mortality at the time.
“I was just blown away,” Griffin told Phys.org. “I have never seen anything like that before … I just got lucky.”
She reached out to ADFG and got connected with researchers from OSU who were already studying gray wolf hunting and predation habits in coastal Alaska. Later in 2016, the group of researchers watched and filmed a wolf hunting down a harbor seal near the mouth of a creek. The wolf jumped into the water of Hallow Bay and grabbing the harbor seal’s tail, thrashing it around. It proceeded to feed on the harbor seal for a half hour after exhausting it in a fight.
For this team of researchers, there was nothing new about wolves eating sea otters. They published a different study in January 2023 that documented how the canines relied on sea otters for most of their diets after eviscerating the Sitka blacktail deer population on Pleasant Island in the Alexander Archipelago. Sea otter remnants first popped up in wolf scat analysis in 2015.
Read Next: How Do Wolves Hunt?
“This is really exciting documentation of behaviors we believe have never been directly observed by scientists,” OSU doctoral student Ellen Dymit said. “It kind of forces us to reconsider the assumptions that underlie a lot of our management decisions and modeling around wolf populations and populations of their prey, which often assume that wolves depend on ungulates, like moose and elk.”
Wolves across North America are notoriously generalist eaters, Yellowstone Wolf Project technician Taylor Rabe told Outdoor Life in August 2023. Whatever is on the landscape is fair game, whether they hunt down a living animal or sniff out a dead carcass. In coastal Alaska, they do both.
“Wolves are opportunistic,” Rabe said. “They will take something if the opportunity presents itself.”
Wolves and grizzly bears in Yellowstone have a way of putting on a good show for a camera. (But that’s no excuse for the people who attempt getting irresponsibly close to them.) On July 31, Yellowstone National Park wolf technician Taylor Rabe caught footage of a grizzly dragging a decaying elk carcass out of a river only to have the pack of Junction Butte wolves take it over as their own.
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A post shared by Taylor Rabe ⚯͛ (@taylorlrabe)
In the video, which Rabe posted to Instagram, the bear hauls the carcass by the rear end from the water and eventually dumps it on the riverbank. In the next frame, two wolves have emerged and are interested in the carcass, but the grizzly does its best to defend it. When the grizzly lowers its head and charges one of the wolves, a third wolf comes into the frame from the right side and bites into the carcass. It’s clear that the grizzly is outnumbered, and when it charges the third wolf, a fourth wolf emerges from the left side of the frame. The next shot shows the grizzly lumbering away from the carcass as six wolves descend on the meat.
In her caption, Rabe says that the participants in the morning’s feast actually numbered four grizzlies and 14 wolves throughout the morning, although the carcass’s proximity to people eventually drove away the predators.
Wolves vs. Grizzlies
Read Next: Watch What Happens When Two Rival Wolf Packs Meet in Yellowstone
That also means that wolves will protect kill sites and carcasses aggressively, even if they didn’t make the kill in the first place. A study published in the journal Ecological Monographs found that wolves in Yellowstone tended hang around carcasses for longer time periods when grizzly bears were nearby. Wolves seemed willing to defend their meal against poaching bears. And, as seen in this video, they’re sometimes willing to chase a bear off a meal, too.
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Rarely do we tout ways to spend time inside on the couch. But we’re a versatile bunch, and everyone needs rest and relaxation every now and then. If you’re going to have a movie night, of course we’re going to recommend films with an outdoor component—particularly ones that involve a bit of a suckfest. In this sense, survival movies are always the right choice.
Good survival movies, much like the best survival books, are hard to beat. But survival movies are really easy to screw up, too. With that in mind, we had to include a couple that really missed the mark. These movies and the stories they tell are good for a lesson on what not to do and how nature doesn’t work.
What Makes a Good Survival Movie?
Good survival movies require a few key components. Without checking these boxes, a survival movie won’t survive this room of tough critics.
Realistic interactions with and depictions of wilderness. Even with the best survival gear, staying alive in the wilderness in times of crisis often requires confronting painful realities—the most painful of which being that exposure to the elements can kill people. Survival movies that capture these truths win the day, and those that ignore or sidestep them don’t. It’s physically impossible to outrun a grizzly bear. Showing a protagonist doing so is just going to make us snort our beer.
Life-or-death decisions. Survival is all about making the right decisions. Sometimes those are big decisions, like when a protagonist has to choose between saving their partner or themselves. Other times they’re smaller choices, like whether to try eating something questionable at the risk of getting sick.
Learning moments. Any movie that can teach us a thing or two about primitive survival skills or other useful information is well worth the watch. Unfortunately, lots of movies give bad advice.
Complicated endings. The best survival movies don’t end with the protagonist escaping unscathed and walking into the sunset. Real survivors endure long recoveries, lost or dead companions, PTSD, or some other recurring reminder of the trauma they have survived.
Our Editors’ Favorite Survival Movies
After mulling over the countless options, our editors picked their favorite survival movies of all time based on how realistic, engaging, and stomach-churning they are. Disclaimer: spoilers ahead.
Alive (R, 1993)
In 1972 a flight carrying 45 people, including an Uruguayan rugby team, crashed in the remote Andes mountains at high elevation, surrounded by nothing but snow, rock, and sky. After two months of facing the elements, an avalanche, and starvation, only 18 passengers survived—largely by eating the deceased members of their group. Eventually, two of the survivors set out on a journey to find help, one that would take them 38 miles over a 15,000-foot peak. Alive is based on that true story. It’s a film that makes you consider what you would do to survive, and is a great example of the most important survival asset: the will to live. —Scott Einsmann
Jungle (R, 2017)
Based on the harrowing (and true) survival story of Yossi Ghinsberg, Jungle features Daniel Radcliffe as the adventurous backpacker, anxious to see the unseen and explore the unexplored. A shady guide offers to take him deep into the Bolivian jungle where the group is separated and Ghinsberg must find his own way out of the rainforest. Natural horrors abound and, eventually, our hero is forced to cut open his own forehead. I found the movie dark, realistic, and skin crawling. The film keeps you invested with every fresh hell Ghinsberg faces, and provokes disturbing thoughts about human nature, adventure tourism, and the lengths you might go to escape the mundane in pursuit of an authentic and extraordinary life. —Ashley Thess
The Revenant (R, 2015)
The story of Hugh Glass’ 200-mile odyssey is one of the great frontier survival tales of all time. Who cares if Leonardo DiCaprio’s portrayal of the story is largely fictionalized. The film’s scenery is stunning, the action is thrilling, and the bear mauling scene is brutal and iconic. If nothing else, DiCaprio does a good job portraying how horrible the whole experience must have been. If you want a more realistic retelling of Hugh Glass’ adventure, try reading Lord Grizzly. —Alex Robinson
The Way Back (PG-13, 2010)
The Way Back is one of my favorite survival movies. It’s based on the true story of a few Soviet prisoners who escaped a Siberian Gulag and adapted from the book, The Long Walk, and follows the characters as they walk south across the Gobi desert, communist China, and ultimately arrive in India. I know how bad it hurts to trek around the mountains of Alaska for two weeks at a time with all the modern backpacker’s comforts. This is an unfathomable story of persistence and survival. —Tyler Freel
Touching the Void (R, 2003)
I’ve seen a number of mountaineering documentaries and docudramas (go watch The Alpinist now if you haven’t seen it yet) but the one that lives rent-free in my head is Touching the Void. It reenacts the true story of two climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who were attempting a first ascent of the West Face of Siula Grande in Peru. They do make it to the top, but things go downhill (literally and figuratively) after that: bones are broken, storms ensue. At what appears to be the crux of the story, Yates is forced to cut the rope during a belay (lest both men be killed) and Simpson crashes through the glacier into a deep crevasse.
Yates, believing his partner dead, returns to their basecamp. But Simpson isn’t dead, simply too deep in the crevasse to call up to the surface for help. I won’t spoil what happens next but it’s a survival maneuver that still has me in awe 20 years later. —Laura Lancaster
Unbroken (PG-13, 2014)
Based on the true story and #1 New York Times Bestseller by the same title, Unbroken follows Olympic track star Louis Zamperini as he goes from fame and glory in the 1936 Berlin games to the lowest lows a human can endure. After enlisting in the Army Air Corps at the onset of World War II, Zamperini’s plane goes down over the vast South Pacific, forcing him and two comrades, Phil and Mac, to survive for weeks in a pair of scarcely-supplied life rafts floating over shark-infested waters in enemy territory. They survive by fishing with hooks baited with seagull meat, catching rainwater, and wrestling small sharks out of the water with their bare hands. After 47 days adrift, during which time Mac dies, Zamperini and Phil aren’t exactly rescued. Instead, their salvation comes in the form of capture, imprisonment, and torture by the Japanese military.
What makes Zamperini’s story one of the best survival tales of all time? Just when the harrowing wilderness survival component comes to an end, the real hell begins. —Katie Hill
The Worst Survival Movies
Into the Wild (R, 2007)
Based on a true story, Into the Wild is one of the worst survival movies, and not least because the hero dies. From a survival standpoint, Chris McCandless was horribly unprepared to survive independently on the Alaskan landscape, and he would have probably succumbed earlier had he not found the bus. Also, he wasn’t in a very remote area. My family used the bus as our hunting camp until 1972, and would drive their pickup trucks out there. Unfortunately for McCandless, he decided to turn back too late, and unfortunately for the bus, it was forever turned into a tourist trap and, ultimately, removed from the landscape. –Tyler Freel
Prey (R, 2022)
This prequel to Predator is set in 1719 and only worth watching if you can suspend disbelief. Cool sci-fi movie? Definitely. Interesting characters? Sure. Accurate survival movie? Absolutely not.
The protagonist, Naru, is a Comanche teen desperate to prove herself a hunter and warrior among male peers. The script, however, has her perform all kinds of super-human stunts. Naru spooks a buck she’s trying to kill with a tomahawk and proceeds to run alongside it at top speed through the timber. While chasing the deer, Naru’s dog somehow trips a double long spring foothold trap with the tip of his tail. The running buck sounds like a galloping horse, complete with a whinny and bull elk chirps. Any outdoorsman can spot the problems. Later, Naru attempts to kill a mountain lion by using herself as live bait, a creative interpretation of big-cat hunting tactics. Worst of all, she manages to outrun and outswim a charging grizzly bear—which can cover 20 yards in a single second—while calf-deep in a river.
The movie is set in the northern Great Plains but shows sweeping landscapes of the Canadian Rockies. (Since I don’t know what kind of tech the Predator was working with, I’ll overlook how his thermal imaging was foiled by metabolization of a flower that “cools the blood,” rendering a warm human body invisible to heat signatures in mere seconds.) I can set aside realism to entertain most any sci-fi world, but this movie takes place on Planet Earth, with real wildlife and real people. Indeed, the whole plot hinges on human resourcefulness. True wilderness survival is in the details, and Prey gets them all wrong. —Natalie Krebs
Survival Movie FAQs
Why do people like survival movies?
Research has shown that we get hooked on survival movies and shows because we experience adrenaline-inducing situations without the negative emotions of being in immediate danger. In this sense, watching survival movies is sort of like seeing great white sharks from inside an underwater cage or soaring in a skydiving simulator. Plus, survival movies usually come with a healthy dose of character development, nail-biting action, and occasional romance.
What was the first survival movie?
While it’s difficult to track down the first survival movie, films like The Sea Beast (1926), Five Came Back (1939), and Lifeboat (1944) are some of the earliest survival films ever made. The Sea Beast was the first movie ever based on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Five Came Back is about an airplane with a varied mix of passengers that crashes in the Amazon. Lifeboat is about, well, a lifeboat, and its passengers who must survive on emergency rations in the wake of a Nazi U-boat torpedoing and sinking their passenger ship.
What do survival movies teach us?
Survival movies can teach us many lessons. We can learn from the mistakes protagonists make that land them in difficult situations and we can learn from their ingenuity that ultimately leads to their rescue. These movies also inform us how to gear up for our next adventure (or, at least, what to look for in the best survival kits). We can also consider our own actions in similar situations and learn a thing or two about our own abilities and morals. How far would you go to survive in these situations?
Final Thoughts on Survival Movies
Nothing compares to a really good survival movie. They can take you from the highest highs to the lowest lows and back again, all within a few hours. The next time you’re trying to choose between the same old horror flicks or true crime docs, take a walk on the wild side and pick one of our favorite survival movies instead. Ration your popcorn accordingly.
It’s the look that still haunts me, the hungry stares of my fellow castaways as I shuffled into our squalid, sodden camp, a freshly killed stag conspicuous by its absence. Their eyes followed my every step, wide with unspoken questions.
Why hadn’t I brought them meat? What had happened during those hours that I was gone and they had listened through the North Sea wind for the sound of my rifle shot? What would we eat? What kind of hunter was I, anyway?
The author, preparing to hunt. Tweed Media
“Couldn’t get it done,” I mumbled lamely as my campmates parted to admit me to the center of our makeshift camp, a bus-sized rock that we used for a windbreak, and until our tarp blew away in the middle of the tempestuous night, the centerpiece of a serviceable shelter. A smudgy peat fire was sputtering below the protective overhang of the rock, and on the fire a vile-looking liquid simmered in a dented metal chocolates tin as the weak flame spumed and smoked.
“C’mon, then, have some broth,” consoled Kate Gatacre, an English magazine editor, the only woman of our crew, and, at this particular moment, my favorite person on earth. Sometime during the previous evening, as the remnants of Hurricane Joachim lashed our naked rock with wind-driven rain, Gatacre had proven herself as the spiritual center of our multi-national group of journalists, strangers to each other until this week. She held down a corner of our wind-whipped tarp, she was quick with a joke and a pull of “bramble,” as she called her fruit-laced vodka, and she comported herself in the way I imagined stiff-lipped Brits of previous generations might have behaved during the Blitz.
Serving seaweed soup. Tweed Media
As I slurped the broth, I reflected on the past 24 hours.
A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT IN HUNTING
Yesterday morning, we had looked northeast from our comfortable lodge on Scotland’s Isle of Harris toward the craggy island called Taransay. Steve Woodhall, the keeper of the lodge and our hunting guide, or ghillie, said that during the old days, Taransay had been a Viking outpost stocked with sheep and potatoes to sustain Norse raiding crews. Later, sheepherders and religious sects set up short-lived settlements. No one lives on Taransay now, but a dozen-plus years ago, it was the setting for Castaway 2000, a popular reality-TV series that followed the tribulations of a group of strangers who tried to outlast each other on the barren island.
Gathering driftwood and rope.
Taransay is now home to several hundred sheep and about 120 red deer. Our group—which included writers from Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, and England, in addition to myself—had been invited here to hunt stag. Simon Barr, who manages media relations for Sauer rifles, Hornady ammunition, and Leica optics, wanted us to field-test the companies’ new products. “We have a little surprise for you, too,” he hinted as part of the invitation. “I do hope you’re up for it.”
The first day was to feature a boat ride to Taransay, followed by product testing and stag hunting. We’d be back at the lodge for supper, I figured, so I left behind my warm clothes, snacks, and water bottle, packing only a knife, a Leica binocular, a Sauer .308 rifle, and my basic survival kit containing a headlamp, a fire starter, wound dressings, and some aspirin.
Rigging a tarp for shelter. Tweed Media
It wasn’t until we had set foot on Taransay’s rocky shoreline and watched the boat that delivered us motor away that I became aware something wasn’t quite right.
“Well, then,” Barr puckishly announced. “That boat won’t be back for another three days. You have your rifles. Your job is to survive until then by hunting or whatever other means possible. There’s a storm blowing in. You’d best make yourselves busy.”
We were all now castaways. And as castaways must have done for centuries the world over, we looked at each other with a mixture of anxiety and solidarity. We’d have to rely on each other to get by.
GATHERING RUBBISH
Our first order of business was to inventory our gear, and the list was short and inadequate, consisting of my headlamp, several knives, and a blue tarp. So we looked to the land and found it full of useful trash. As one of the outermost landforms in the Outer Hebrides, islands on the northwest shore of mainland Scotland, Taransay collects a dismaying amount of flotsam—debris that has floated across the North Atlantic and washed up on her shore. We found lumber of all sizes, milk jugs, fishing net, water bottles, spent shotgun shells, rubber boots, and even plastic scoop shovels. We collected driftwood, the most serviceable plastic bottles, wire, lengths of poly rope, and a chocolates tin that might serve as a cooking pot. Then we hiked a couple of miles to the interior of the island, where we hoped to find protection from the hurricane that was forecast to strafe the coastline.
Tending a driftwood fire. Tweed Media
We based ourselves at the large rock and rigged a crude shelter with the tarp. Then we endured one of the longest nights of our lives, as wind blew away our tarp, and cold rain soaked all of us, causing us to question our own wisdom and the intentions of Barr.
At daylight, bleary, wet, and hungry, we hatched a plan for hunting.
“Only stags are legal here,” explained Woodhall, “and the roar [rut] is just starting. We’ll hunt two at a time.” Then he picked me and Danish hunter Jens Ulrik Høgh to take the first shift. The rest would find potable water and keep the fire going with peat delved from around our rock.
Survival expert Conrad Allen builds a driftwood fire. Tweed Media
I was honored to be chosen as one of the castaways’ first hunters, and eager to provide for my mates. A red-deer haunch roasting on our fire would certainly raise everyone’s spirits.
It turned out their confidence in me as a hunter was misplaced. Høgh and I made stalk after stalk on small groups of stags, but each time we got within 400 yards, fog would descend and obscure them. When it lifted, the stags would be gone. It was the same story later in the day, with Florian Standke, a German gun writer, as my hunting partner.
Glassing distant stags. Tweed Media
The stags were flighty with pre-roar jitters, and they flitted around the island in little herds. Every time we got close to a group, they either disappeared into the gloam or scattered like grouse. The series of near-connections with stags escalated. With each failed stalk, we became overeager and rushed the next one. I’ve long maintained that to hunt with an appetite is to hunt with sharpened senses. But at our point of desperation, hunger became an impediment. We became clumsy with weakness and impatient when we should have waited. A starving hunter is a careless hunter, I realized with a grumbling stomach.
That afternoon, we watched a group of stags ascend a distant stony ridge. The wind was right, and I knew we could ambush them in the high rocks. “Can’t risk it,” Woodhall concluded after long consideration. “We might get up there at sunset, and we might kill a stag. But what then? It would be dark by the time we got him out of there. The rocks are slick and steep. Someone might fall. We can’t afford an injury. And what if we don’t get one…?”
He was right. I had rarely before been required to think about the worst that might happen while hunting. But in survival mode, every action becomes a caloric and physical risk. Finally, Woodhall called it. We marched back into camp, avoiding those hungry stares, and tucked into the limpet-and-seaweed soup.
A RUINED COTTAGE
Late in the day, we held a powwow. With the disappearance of our protective tarp, the rock had lost its appeal as shelter. There was a ruined fishing cottage on the other end of the island, Woodhall said. It doesn’t have a functional roof, and its walls will barely hold back the wind. But it has a fireplace and chimney we might get to draft. The vote to relocate was unanimous.
We gathered our sodden possessions, as well as that precious blackened chocolates tin, and slogged across the peat bogs and rain-slick rocks of the island. The minute we spied the shattered “bothy,” we quickened our pace. After the rock, its three walls and rock chimney made it look palatial. We might be hungry, but we’d likely be dry.
Dragging a stag to the beach. Tweed Media
In the evening, the weather began to clear, and another pair of hunters failed to bag a stag. I had been without solid food for 48 hours, but strangely, I wasn’t hungry. There was too much to do to dwell on my condition.
We found water that hadn’t been spoiled by sheep. We collected wood for our fireplace. We wove hammocks out of discarded fishing net. I discovered that the focus on these mundane tasks took my mind off my privation and gave me a sort of clarity. Collect wood. Build shelter. Carry water. Feed fire. Our needs were stripped to the most elemental, and we found ourselves functioning as a small, capable community. Despite another meatless night, we were dry, and strangely euphoric.
Gutting the stag. Tweed Media
That night, as I rocked in my fish-net hammock, watching the stars from the roofless bothy, I heard the first roar of a stag. The guttural urgency of it was answered by another stag on the other side of our cottage. Maybe tomorrow…
MEAT AT LAST
For the second night, I did not sleep, and when I noticed the stars start to dim, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Woodhall. “Don’t make a sound. Gather your gun and meet me outside.”
Steve Woodhall (left) and Julien Gingembre with Gingembre’s stag. Tweed Media
Waiting with Woodhall was Julien Gingembre, a French hunter whose campfire stories of Bordeaux boar hunts had enthralled me. As the eastern sky started to lighten, we heard roar upon roar just over a hill from the shack.
“We must be quiet,” Woodhall whispered. “They are just over that rise.”
Halfway to the crest, I looked back. Our fellow castaways were outside the bothy, watching our stalk. At the final rise, Woodhall and Gingembre went on. I stayed back. If the stags were there, there would be no need for a second rifle.
The quartered stag. Tweed Media
I can’t recall giving more genuine thanks than I did when I heard a single rifle shot. When Woodhall waved me over, Gingembre was standing beside a stag, weeping like a child.
We dragged the deer to the beach, and like a tribe of butchers, started taking it apart, everyone working on a different piece. Someone got a driftwood fire started on the white-sand beach, someone else removed the heart and liver. I cut out the backstraps. Soon, we had liver charring on the fire and tenderloin roasting in the coals. We were laughing and smiling with meat juices running down our chins.
A bite of tenderloin. Tweed Media
Hours later, when the recovery boat rounded a point of the island and chugged into our bay, no one was overjoyed to see it. Yes, we were ready for baths and beds, but we weren’t eager to return to a world of predictability. We were castaways, and despite being gathered back up from our social experiment in hunting, probably always will be. But even more important, on Taransay we had been reminded of the elemental basis of hunting, and the life-giving—and cheer-lifting—gift of meat.
In a classic conflict from Down Under, an Australian man was forced to intervene when an aggressive kangaroo threatened to drown his dog in a river Saturday.
Mick Moloney was walking his dogs along their normal route near his home in Mildura, Victoria, on Oct. 14 when he noticed one of his dogs was missing. They were walking along the Murray River at the time, which forms the northern border of the town. As Moloney looked around on the bank for Hatchi, the dog suddenly emerged “gargling” and “getting drowned by this monster,” according to a Facebook post written by Moloney. A tall kangaroo with rippling muscles stood in hip-height water in the river and held Hatchi around the neck, threatening to drown the dog.
Moloney immediately took action and waded into the river, yelling at the kangaroo to let his dog go.
“I’m gonna punch your fucking head in,” Moloney says to the kangaroo. “Let go of my dog.”
Moloney swings at the kangaroo, and while it’s hard to tell if he lands the punch in video, it’s clear the kangaroo reacts, lunging at Moloney and sending the man and his phone into the water.
“I got a few (scratches),” Moloney told Sunrise. “My forearm was killing me for most of the day. It was a bit of a punch on.”
Kangaroos are herbivores and don’t predate on any other animals for meat. It’s possible, however, that when they stand in the water, they might be trying to lure their own predators in so they can drown them, University of Melbourne kangaroo ecologist Graeme Coulson told ABC News.
“There’s a very strong instinct—kangaroos will go to water if they’re threatened by a predator,” Coulson says. “In the case of a big male [kangaroo], they can definitely drown dogs. If the dog swims out to them, they’ve got strong arms and big claws and they can drown [the dog].”
But this behavior is more likely a defense mechanism than an active attempt at killing predators, Coulson explains. And it’s not unique to kangaroos, either. Other herbivores around the world use a similar tactic.
“I’ve seen wild dogs chase impala into dams. I’ve seen buffalo waiting in water surrounding by hyenas. But they tend to just wait [in the water] until the animal gets bored. I don’t think it’s about trying to drown them,” he says.
Coulson even recalls a neighbor losing two terriers in situations identical to Moloney’s.
“It was a bull terrier that went in and it was drowned. Then he got another dog, another bull terrier, and it died the same way,” Coulson said. “So he got a third dog, and he kept it locked up.”
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Moloney’s social media followers commented on the video with condolences and well wishes for Hatchi.
“Poor Hatchi hope he is ok,” one commenter wrote. “Hope you gave that roo an ass whooping.”
“I tried,” Moloney wrote back. “We’re calling it a draw.”
Catching big fish in the dead of winter isn’t usually easy. I don’t really care where you live. Florida Keys, you say? Sure, it’s much warmer there in February, but it’s still winter, which means it’s often windy and rough. Gulf Coast? Same problem. There are plenty of bull redfish there for the taking, but in my experience if you book three days of fishing, you’ll be lucky to get out for one. Some of you, of course, have the means to travel to far-flung warm destinations in winter, but many of us—myself included—don’t.Still, if you live in the northern half of the country, there’s no need to hang up the freshwater gear. There are plenty of options for giant fish between Christmas and spring. If it’s genuine trophies you want this time of year, these three species offer the best odds. Not only do they maintain peak weight in winter, buyt in some cases they’re easier to catch now than during tank top season.
Lake Trout
Top Destinations: Niagara River, New York (open water), Lake Granby, Colorado (ice fishing)
In the summertime when every ski boat and jet ski is ripping across the water, catching big lake trout can be a chore. These fish prefer cold water, which means during the warmer months they’re hanging out in the middle of lakes and reservoirs at serious depths. Catching them often requires trolling with downriggers just to get lures in front of their faces. But come winter, that all changes.
As water temperatures drop, lake trout will transition to shallower water. In fact, the biggest one I ever caught through the ice—a 44-incher—was hooked in only 3 feet of water. When I looked down in the hole, I could see the rocks on the bottom. Our guide explained that this shallow area was where all the small rainbow trout in the lake hung out, and that there was a steep drop-off not far away. The heaviest lakers, he explained, would shoot up from the depths, snatch a trout in the shallows and retreat. He was right. The fish we hooked in this location were huge, and they nearly dumped our spools after slamming 9-inch soft-plastic jigs.
Read Next: Best Lake Trout Lures
Blue Catfish
If blue catfish only make you think of summer, you’re missing out on a great opportunity for colder months. NOAA
Top Destination: James River, Virginia
Catfishing is synonymous with summer. You camp out on the bank with a cooler, perhaps a radio, and enjoy a July evening waiting for rods to start bucking. The three most targeted species in this country are channel cats, flatheads, and blue cats. But while the first two can be difficult to catch once it gets really cold, the heaviest blues often come in the dead of winter.
Dedicated blue cat fishermen tend to prefer the cold season to the summer months. While the elements might make a day less comfortable, the fish become more predictable when the mercury drops. They’ll gravitate to deep holes and depressions within shallow flats, and while they’ll move around minimally, they’ll feed heavily. Because food sources become less available in winter, if you drop a fresh piece of cut shad in front of a laid-up blue cat, it likely won’t pass on the meal. Whether you have access to a boat or not, this winter pattern and behavior can make it easier for you to score a fish weighing 50 pounds or more.
Read Next: What Do Catfish Eat?
The trick is having electronics or a paper chart that shows you the bottom contour of the lake or river you’re fishing. This becomes critical in winter, especially from the bank, because location is everything. Ideally, you’ll have a milk run of spots to hit within close proximity, as bites usually come fast when you land a bait in front of the fish. Look for areas with channel edges or sharp drop-offs within casting range. Likewise, don’t be afraid to target areas where holes or depressions with as little as 5 feet of water are surrounded by a foot of water or less.
Muskies
Luke King with his record-breaking, 51-pound muskie from the Little Kanawha in Virginia. Luke King photo
Top Destination: New River, Virginia/West Virginia
Let’s get one thing straight: Muskies aren’t any easier to catch in the dead of winter than they are at other times of year. You can pinpoint their location within a moving water system much more easily right now, which is a major advantage. But that does not mean they’ll be eager to chew. What it does mean is that your lures, baits, and flies will have a stronger chance of landing in front of their faces.
While muskie seasons close in many parts of the North, southern states like Virginia and Tennessee remain open and become hot winter locations since their climates aren’t as frigid as other parts of the country. Waters in these regions also don’t ice over. But like many fish, muskies slow down significantly in cold water. They’re not as likely to travel far or burn a lot of energy to chase down your offering. The game largely consists of targeting eddies and any soft spots within the river where there’s little to no current.
Read Next: West Virginia Angler Catches (and Releases) Record Muskie from Shore
The best analogy I ever heard for muskie fishing in the winter went like this: If you put a tub of cheese balls next to someone and said, “help yourself,” they may or may not grab a handful. But if you yell, “think fast” and throw a single cheese ball at their face, they’ll probably try to catch it in their mouth. With that in mind, success in the winter muskie game is often about making lots of casts until you get in front of the right face. When you do, the fish will positively hammer that lure or bait.
Dr. Kim Thorburn is an unlikely hunting advocate.An MD who practiced internal medicine and worked as a prison physician before turning to public-health administration, Thorburn describes herself as a “hippie doctor” and avid bird-watcher. The Spokane resident was as surprised as anyone when Washington’s governor tapped her to serve on the state’s Fish and Wildlife Commission.
“I think I was the token non-game representative, considered [for the commission] because of my long work monitoring and advocating for prairie grouse and grassland bird habitat,” says Thorburn. “I’m not a hunter.”
But her professional background in medicine and public health prepared her well for the commission, which considers the public policy, social implications, and the science of wildlife management decisions. She threw herself in the volunteer work on the commission, developing an appreciation for the balance between recreational opportunity and species conservation, and participating in the give and take of managing limited public resources.
Thorburn is now a former wildlife commissioner. She was not reappointed by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in the latest round of selections. Her tenure overlapped a high-profile decision in November 2021 to end a long-standing limited spring bear hunt, and opposition to a conservation policy that de-emphasizes the role of hunters and emphasizes the importance of ecosystem health. Thorburn has been publicly critical of commissioners she says are ignoring science as they pursue an anti-hunting agenda.
America’s hunters and wildlife managers are well into the feral hog war. More than 6 million wild pigs roam the country, gobbling down native flora and outcompeting native fauna. They’re also hell on agricultural crops. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, hogs cause $1.5 billion of damage annually.“Researchers think that number may be closer to $2.5 billion now, but more research needs to be done to determine an accurate figure,” says Ben Westfall, the National Deer Association’s conservation coordinator.
There are massive efforts by government agencies and private landowners to cull feral hogs and stop their spread. Whitetail deer managers are at the tip of the spear, because pigs can also have a negative impact on deer.
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a lot of formal, university-led research on how pigs impact whitetails. But a lot of anecdotes from the field are currently being gathered and analyzed by large-scale land managers. Here’s what the experts say about how hogs impact whitetails, how possible it is to remove hogs from deer habitat, and how deer react once hogs are gone.
Hogs By the Numbers
Wild hogs have invaded Louisiana swamps, the farms of Missouri, and everywhere in between. Anita Komuves, Getty Images
READ NEXT: Wyoming and Montana Brace for Wild Hog Invasion from Neighboring States and Canada
States Without Reported Hog Populations
Alaska
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Idaho
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Montana
Nebraska
New York
North Dakota
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Vermont
Wyoming
On the flip side, 14 states have hog populations of at least 100,000 animals.
When hogs first appear on the scene, whitetails tend to avoid them, meaning they settle for lower quality bedding areas and food sources. This is even truer for mature bucks, which seem to have less tolerance for hogs than younger bucks, does, and fawns do.
However, in areas where hogs have been present for years, deer seem to get used to them.
“Based on my observations, deer do adapt to hogs if they’ve been present a long time,” says, Dr. Grant Woods, a renowned deer biologist and founder of Growing Deer TV. “I see deer in South Florida ignoring hogs unless they get within 30 yards or so. I’m sure where hogs are new neighbors, deer give hogs more space. There’s certainly more food for deer if hogs are removed, and I suspect they’d be a bit calmer.”
Still, whitetails can be forced to move out of areas if hogs over-browse habitat and dominate resources. The higher the hog densities, the worse this problem gets.
“Deer and wild hogs share many of the same resources, especially during the summer when deer rely primarily on forbs,” Westfall says. “Forbs provide deer with the protein necessary for antler growth, milk production in lactating does and overall increase in body size which can all be directly impacted by the presence of hogs.
“Research suggests that up to 64% of a hog’s diet is mast, which is in direct competition with deer and other wildlife during the growing season,” Westfall continues. “Agencies spend a lot of time and money managing the habitat to stimulate the growth of preferred forage for deer and other wildlife, and hogs directly impact those efforts.”
Hunters are also seeing this dynamic play out on the properties they hunt. Kinion Bankston of Southern Boyz Outdoors has been dealing with hogs for decades.
“It’s more about the food sources in the area,” he says. “If the hogs eat all the food, the deer will move to a new food source and return once the food source is available.”
The good news is that when hogs are removed (or severely culled) from the landscape, deer seem to bounce back. Anecdotes from the field are somewhat mixed but they are mostly promising. According to most deer managers I spoke with, whitetails generally return soon after hogs are removed. This can take longer in areas where the habitat is seriously degraded, but under average conditions, whitetails often return rather quickly. This is especially true in areas that offer adequate bedding areas, along with food, water, and security cover.
Is It Possible to Eradicate Hogs?
While trapping is the best method to remove entire sounders, sometimes hunting is the only option for large, solitary boars, or problem pigs that shy away from traps. Kyle Barefield
Once feral pigs become established, landowners can remove most of the hogs from their property. However, management is often very costly, and if neighboring landowners aren’t applying equal or greater management efforts, hog populations will continue to grow.
Hogs are incredibly difficult to eradicate because they are intelligent, they eat a wide range of food sources, and sows have approximately two litters of three to eight pigs each year.
“One of the biggest issues is their incredible population growth rate,” Westfall explains. “Populations can spread locally at an alarming rate due primarily to their adaptive nature, human assistance, and their phenomenal reproductive capabilities. Sows reach breeding age at six to eight months and can produce two litters per year. This rapid reproduction makes it extremely difficult to remove them from the landscape and limit their spread to new areas.”
But that shouldn’t stop landowners or state game agencies from trying to reduce hog numbers.
Culling Hogs on Private Lands
Feral pig managers have a mighty steep hill to climb. Typical hunting tactics have proven to be mostly useless as management tools. Sure, hog hunting is fun. And it might remove a porker or two from the property. But on a landscape population level, it doesn’t accomplish much, and it can make pigs even warier. Even when running dogs, hunting doesn’t remove enough hogs to decrease overall population densities.
Furthermore, fertility control isn’t in heavy use yet. The heavily debated toxicant called Warfarin isn’t permitted in any state, and there’s a chance it won’t ever be.
Gunning hogs from helicopters is another common tactic, especially in open settings like Texas and Oklahoma. However, pigs are smart, and if they survive a helicopter attempt, they become nocturnal quickly. That said, new technologies are increasing the efficiency of this tactic.
“Some states are beginning to implement drones with thermal imagery into their aerial gunning efforts,” Westfall said. “Justine Smith, a graduate student at the University of Georgia found that aerial gunning from helicopters tends to drive hogs to use more wooded cover and to become nocturnal, making it difficult to find individuals that separated from the group, causing the cost per pig to go up as they scatter. The thermal imagery allows a drone pilot to locate the holdouts and direct the helicopter to the exact location to dispatch the hogs, rather than having the helicopter fly around searching.”
READ NEXT: Best Thermal Scopes
For effective hog management, mass trapping has been the most proven tactic that is in widespread use today.
“I assist a few landowners that keep hog populations at bay [in areas with lots of hogs],” Woods says. “However, this requires a lot of time and resources. It almost always [requires] trapping.”
While smaller box traps aren’t ideal, larger traps designed to catch numerous hogs simultaneously are quite effective. Corral traps with trap gates or drop traps paired with remote triggering are very capable of snaring entire sounders, which is the ultimate goal.
Generally speaking, it’s easier to trap pigs when food is scarce in the winter and early spring. This is when bait is most effective. It’s also best to trap when the most sows are pregnant. (This is easier than trying to trap sows and their piglets together.) Capturing the entire sounder is the goal—from the biggest sows down to the smallest members of the group. Of course, hogs like to stay closer to water, so bottomlands, marshes, swamps, and other lowland areas are all good locations to try.
“The best thing the average land manager can do is cooperate with their state wildlife agency and familiarize themselves with the management efforts taking place as well as various programs that may be available to them,” Westfall said. “Many states have hog specific or cost-share programs in which they will work with landowners to help control the problem. It is our responsibility as landowners, managers, and hunters to know what our state wildlife agency is doing, understand that their efforts and methods are based on scientific research, and do our best to assist with their efforts in any way that we can.”
Pig Management Programs
Hogs negatively impact the state wildlife agencies in 36% of states. Because of all the issues wild hogs create, nearly half of all U.S. states have dedicated feral hog task forces.
“A dedicated task force or committee is specifically allocated to feral hog eradication efforts,” Westfall says. “It is extremely important that states allocate the necessary resources such as funding or manpower to focus solely on wild hog efforts.”
Missouri and Tennessee are two examples of states that are taking aggressive management measures. The Missouri Department of Conservation created the Missouri Feral Hog Elimination Partnership, which encourages landowners to report hog sightings to the agency rather than shoot them. They employ approximately 40 full-time professional trappers who come out and set traps to remove entire sounders (at no cost to the landowner). The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has a similar program.
“It has also helped reduce wild hog impacts, particularly in the central region of [Tennessee] by issuing a statewide ban on transport and release,” Westfall said. “They reclassified hogs as ‘a species deemed destructive,’ which allowed them to dedicate a task force specific to eradication efforts.”
Without a doubt, wild hogs are taking away management resources from important native species.
“Wild hogs impact state agencies in a variety of ways,” Westfall says. “They destroy habitat, spread disease, and directly compete with native species. According to our 2023 Deer Report, eight states suggested that wild hogs are negatively impacting their agency’s deer management programs specifically. This can include pulling staff away from other responsibilities, financial impacts, habitat destruction, destroying access roads and fences, and even damaging equipment due to their wallowing behavior creating large mudholes.”
It’s clear that more funding for wild hog management will likely have to come through federal programs. “Fortunately, as part of the 2018 farm bill, the USDA Feral Swine Eradication and Control Pilot Program has allocated over $75 million over the life of the bill,” Westfall says. “This program was designed to help states fund wild hog control and eradication efforts through a joint partnership with the USDA APHIS and NRCS.”
How to Know If You Have Feral Pigs
Rooting is an obvious sign of wild hogs on the landscape. National Deer Association
There are numerous wild hog signs to watch for. Tracks, scat, rubs, rooting, and wallows are all telltale signs of their presence. Identifying sign can sometimes clue you in more quickly than spotting one during the day, or catching one on trail camera. This is important, because you want to begin managing (eradicating) them as soon as possible.
Hog Tracks vs. Deer Tracks
Hog tracks might initially look like whitetail hoof prints, but they are distinctly different. First, the toes are more rounded than pointed. The heel is more rounded, too. And third, a hog’s dewclaws sit further out to the side than a whitetail’s, which fall more in line with the heel. Tracks from a hog’s dewclaws are also pointed, while a whitetail’s are more rounded.
More Hog Sign
Hog excrement can take on multiple forms depending on the time of year, foods they consume, and overall state of health. That said, hog scat is usually tubular, and can contain signs of grasses, grain, hard mast, and more.
Wallows are just what they sound like—areas where hogs wallow in the mud. If you see a wet, swampy area with a lot of exposed mud and hog tracks, it’s likely a wallow. Hogs use these to mitigate insects and heat.
Tree rubs are also indicative of hogs. This is where mud is discarded from hog sides and backs onto the lower portions of tree trunks. Typically, hogs rub against trees after visiting wallows. A well-worn tree will eventually have smooth bark.
Rooting is the classic sign that hogs have arrived. Oftentimes, it appears as if someone used a tiller to churn up the ground. Hogs do this in search of food, and it can leave wakes of destruction over large areas.
If you find rooting or other hog sign on your property, don’t think you can eradicate the hogs just by hunting them. Instead, work with your state agency to trap the hogs and remove them quickly. Whitetail deer and the other native animals on your property will benefit.
