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As many of you know, a few years ago I wrote about a hunt I wanted to do, and called it the North American Grand Slam, which was to take a gray squirrel, a fox squirrel, and Abert’s squirrel, and a black color phase of any of them. This is an infrequent natural color phase to all three, though not common in any. However, the likelihood of finding one is higher in some areas where there seem to be population pockets. I’ve found them in areas of Michigan, but nowhere else with such a high prevalence. I was getting ready to do the 14 hour drive to Michigan, think I mentioned I like squirrel hunting, to try to get this one off my grand slam list early. I mentioned the upcoming trip for a black squirrel when one of my channels subscribers Jonathan sent me a message and said, we have the all over in N. Wisconsin….. only a 3.5 hour drive from home. Ironically, I’d plan to hunt my way across WI on my way to MI, calling a halt when I got my squirrel. Jonathan sent me a map with a couple places to try, so off I went. I will release a video from the trip, but I have to apologize in advance that the hunting footage is limited. My gun mounted camera failed on me, and I hadn’t realized until arriving home today. However there is some good travel footage and I hope you will enjoy.Read More →

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If you follow my videos or writing you know that I love squirrel season. I’ve been gearing up for the first hunt, and this morning was day. I’d been planning a 2-3 day hunt, however family plans required a change, and I needed to postpone departure on that trip until later in the week. But I wasn’t bummed, I figured I could still get out for a couple hours in the early morning, and be home by 10:00….. so everybody would be happy! I rolled up to a public land wildlife management area (WMA). It’s great that we have these available to us, but finding access without trespassing on private land can be a task. I lost about a half hour trying to figure this out, but finally after a 20 minute hike managed to get into the woods. My plan was to hike in, find some hardwoods with cuttings on the ground, and set up at the base of a tree and wait. I give myself about 20 minutes before moving on. The first set nothing happened. The second set nothing happened…until I was getting ready to move when I hear some noise. I stayed put an a minute later a fox squirrel came running by with a little red squirrel nipping at his heels. I’ve never seen this, and watched as the two squirrels raced by. Turning slowly, I saw the fox squirrel up a tree less than ten feet behind staring right at me. I slowly mountedRead More →

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I had a note from Tim Smith, the editor and an old friend over at Airgun Hobbyist, telling me about this months issue. Some of the content comes from a discussion we had at the SHOT Show awhile back. This is our only dedicated airgun magazine in the USA, have a look then think about supporting them, they are doing a lot of good for our sport. Here’s what Tim has to say about this issue:     In this issue, you notice a few more hunting articles than normal. There’s a reason for this. Over the summer, our daily internet news-feed popped up an articles discussing the top airguns for hunting. After reading the post, what was discovered was that they author suggested using airguns that produced less than ethical energy levels to quickly and humanly dispatch the game. In the shooting sports, we need to promote safe, ethical, and responsible use of the power that we posses.    For the fall issue, we’ve assembled “subject matter experts” including Jim Chapman, who has years of airgun hunting experience. Jim travels throughout the U.S. and abroad to hunt with airguns. He’s a regular on American Airgunner TV, authors articles for various publication in the USA and UK. In 2016, we met up with Jim and had a long conversation about hunting and airguns. A memorable quote from Jim was “These days however, when I use one of my centerfires to hunt, I almost feel like I am cheating. This is not aRead More →

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When I first move to the midwest about 18 years ago, I had hunted a lot in the US, Europe, South Africa, for a lot of different game. But I’d not done any real squirrel hunting. What I mean by “real” squirrel hunting is I hadn’t hunted tree squirrels. I’d shot literally hundreds of ground squirrels growing up in Southern California, but the closest I got to a tree squirrel was when one of these climbed up into the desert brush. When my wife and I moved back to the States after many years away, we were back in Cali for a couple years before my work took us to Indiana. As I looked for hunting options in my new home, and started scoping out deer hunting areas, the potential for squirrel hunting became clear. I read up (not much online content in those days), but didn’t have stellar success at first, taking a squirrel or two after a hard day in the woods. But at the same time I started getting first hand experience and (I hope) learning from it, I meet Randy Mitchell through one of the early airgun forums. He invited me to drive down to Kentucky to go squirrel hunting with him new years day, I think it was 2004 or 2005. And it turned out this guy knew what he was doing. I watched and learned more! I think I’m a pretty good squirrel hunter these days, and while I get to hunt a lotRead More →

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I’ve been in South Dakota for the last few days with my FX Dreamline .25 caliber rifle after prairie dogs. A video on the trip just posted, and will be adding some more detailed information here on the website. YouTube is demonetizing and failing to recommend my videos, so please share, I appreciate the support!Read More →

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Right before SHOT Show 2018, I had the opportunity to travel to North Texas on a hunt. I’m in Texas several times every year, as this is one of my favorite airgunning venues. I hunt hogs, predators, small game, and the occasional exotic, so coming to Texas to hunt is not out of the ordinary for me. However, the objective of this trip was going to be something special! Umarex intended to release their new .50 caliber Hammer precharged pneumatic air rifle at the SHOT Show and had invited me down to Bowie Texas to hunt with it! Was I available? Oh, heck yeah I was! The fact that this was Umarex’s long anticipated entry into the big bore market segment was exciting enough, but I’d been talking with the developers for over a year and had used the Hammer a couple times while we were filming segments of the American Airgunner. It was Impressive on many levels, and I was itching to get some field time with this rifle! When talking about big bores, power is always the first topic that floats up, and this rifle generating an honest 700 fpe over three shots was something to talk about. The Hammer uses Umarex’s proprietary Lightspeed Valve system, which on a 4500-psi fill provides three regulated shots at 3000 psi. This is a very important feature: most big bore air rifles are not regulated and utilize a significant volume of air with each shot, reducing the pressure with each successiveRead More →

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Hunting the Aberts tree squirrel in the Arizona mountains! I do a lot of squirrel hunting and have done, ever since moving to the Midwest almost 20 years ago. Up until that time, about the only squirrel hunting I had was ground squirrels in California, Arizona. And New Mexico and this is more like prairie dog hunting than being in the woods after tree squirrels. But once I got to Indiana, I really started to focus on this tree dwelling small game species! My first couple years I did alright, but not great……. then I met Randy Mitchel on one of the airgun forums and he invited me to hunt with him in Kentucky. I drove down a few times to hunt with him and picked up quite a few hints that started to improve my game significantly. As a matter of fact, I started to limit out so regularly that I placed self-imposed bag limits because I didn’t know what to do with the quantity of squirrels I was harvesting. It quickly got to the point that I was traveling all over the Midwest and Eastern states to hunt squirrels, fox, grays, and I even started going after specific color phases. On a backpacking trip with my son in Colorado I ran into the Aberts squirrel for the first time, and thought they were an incredible looking little animal, the coloration and tufted ears made them about the coolest squirrel I’d ever seen. A few years later I wasRead More →

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I was on a deer hunt earlier this year in Texas, the first season in which game animals could be taken with an airgun. Eventually I ended up taking a buck and a couple does, but one day earlier on I’d passed on a couple small deer when a flock of Rio Grande turkeys walked in. I wanted a Rio Grande with an air rifle, and thought I’d take the opportunity being presented. I was hunting with the AirForce .357 and took the shot at about 35 yards using an archery-oriented shot placement up front and low. The turkey shot up in the air and came down about 30 yards away, piling up where he landed and not moving a twitch after. A couple things to comment on, the shot placement and the gun I used. As far as the shot placement, I’ve taken a lot of turkey with an airgun now, with about half taken with head or neck shots and about half with a body shot. Initially, I only used headshots, and when the bird is close and locked in on a decoy this is a good option. What I found worked better was placing my pellet at the base of the neck, especially when the bird was facing away. A friend down in Virginia, that’s taken more turkey with an airgun than anyone I know, told me he started using body shots with good results. His provision being that this placement worked better using a .25 caliberRead More →

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Ten years ago I wrote a booklet for Crosman on hunting small game in South Africa with the Marauder. At the time the company was going through some changes, and they ended up never moving forward with it. My relationship with Crosman broke down, and I ended up scraping the project. Those days are over, the people I disliked dealing with are no longer at Crosman, and I came across this PDF as I was cleaning up my hard drive. Its a bit out of date, but still (I hope) interesting. Feel free to peruse or download!Read More →

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I’ve had this very cool and unusual lever action rifle out for a couple hunts this year, and just edited a video from a pickup hunt for rabbits during down time on a hog hunt down in Texas a couple months ago. Have a look and let me hear what you think about this rifle.Read More →