Before the advent of chemical tanning of hides to make leather, animal skins were subjected to all kinds of strange concoctions to degrease and soften them. Urine, wood ashes, tree bark acid, and even toxic substances like mercury have been employed over the centuries to tan skins into useful leather.
But few natural substances have had such a long and successful track record as animal brains. How does it work? Brain tissue is full of very fine oils that condition and soften the animal skin, if the skin is moving while it dries. If the skin just lies there and dries out, brains or no brains, the glues in the skin naturally set up and you have “raw hide” as the result—great to let the dogs chew on, but not so great for making clothes.
A couple from Oliver, Pennsylvania was attacked by a black bear this morning after the bear chased a dog into their home.
According to FoxNews.com, the couple's dog was outside in the yard and was chased inside by a bear. The man inside the home was scratched and bitten and a woman was also attacked and injured. Both were taken to a hospital in Harrisburg with unspecified injuries.
Here’s what we know: A small northern Russian village had an unpleasant visitor last week. A polar bear wandered through town and considered having a local woman for a snack. The name of the town hasn’t surfaced yet, nor has the woman’s name or the extent of her injuries.
In the clip you can see the animal clawing at her and flinging her body into the air like a rag doll before the polar bear is finally scared away. The bear retreats after one bystander makes a great shot, hitting the bear in the face with a can.
As we get ready for hunting season, it's time to consider the survival gear that we will be taking along with us. And as we wander off the beaten path, we should be carrying the equipment to handle the most common emergencies that we could face in the field.
1) If you need daily heart medicine, blood pressure pills, insulin or any other vital meds, bring an extra supply of them on all your outdoor trips. Also bring any event-related medications like asthma inhalers in case of an attack, or epinephrine pens if you are allergic to bee stings or certain foods.
2) A fully charged cell phone or 2-way radio in a waterproof container could be your ticket home.
3) Wear appropriate clothing and outer wear. Skip the cotton in most conditions, unless you are trying to activate your life insurance policy.
While securing shelter, administering first aid, signaling for help and performing a host of other chores rank as top priorities during an emergency, the first question that tends to pop out of most people's mouths is, "So what are we going to eat out here in the woods?"
A quick rule of thumb is that you can eat anything on land with fur or feathers, as long as it is properly prepared and cooked thoroughly to kill bacteria and other pathogens that would make us sick. That means mammals and birds are good to go, although palatability is never guaranteed.
It was just a few short weeks after the Pittsburgh Steelers had won the Super Bowl that I interviewed the game's most valuable player Ben Roethlisberger for Outdoor Life's new magazine feature, "5 Minutes With..."
The back page series of articles features celebrities who hunt and fish and the questions are an attempt to delve a bit into reasons why the outdoors are an important part of their lives. I don't fancy myself a celebrity chaser, but I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge that I got a charge out of interviewing folks such as Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry--he called me back four times as I kept losing my cell-phone signal--who struck me as being more of a regular guy than a guitar hero. Or, most recently, Captain Sig Hansen from the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch who conversed with me as if we were sitting around deer camp drinking a cold beer. There have been lots of other pretty cool interviews: Fox News' Chris Wallace admitted to being a newcomer to hunting and I thought that refreshing; NASCAR's Bobby Labonte seemed genuine when he explained that it was the outdoors that grounded him; Houston Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt probably knew more about quality deer management than I did and the list goes on. We have yet to publish some of the best interviews. On that list are: football coaching great Jimmy Johnson, Top Chef's Tom Colicchio and more. But I digress.
Spring turkey seasons have opened down south in places like Florida, Alabama, Georgia and elsewhere, with buddies in my broad turkey-hunting circle sharing tales of gobblers with hens, and the frustration that brings, but also 100% success. Hey, that's turkey hunting.
C.J. Davis just checked in from South Carolina, where the limit is 5 gobblers statewide, no more than 2 per day. He reported that he just got back from hunting the fabled Low Country. “Found plenty of gobbling turkeys, but they were henned-up and generally shut up by 8:30 leaving me to ponder life and admire the beauty of the Savannah River swamp. Two others in our party did better with one killing on the last day while another missed.”
In recent years The Sierra Club, the nation’s largest environmental membership organization, has gone to great lengths to appear supportive of hunting, fishing and scientific wildlife management in an attempt to distance itself from more recognizable—and radical—anti-hunting organizations.
It’s now a supporting member of a national professional organization of hunting and fishing writers and features biographies of its “conservation leaders” who hunt and fish on its Web site.
On Wednesday, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal signed legislation adopting an official Wyoming state code based on the tenets known in the West as “Cowboy Ethics.”
Although the historic Code of the West was unwritten, cowboys, trappers, hunters and others in the U.S. frontier knew it was about maintaining honesty, integrity and courage in a wide-open region where the affects of government barely reached and laws were not always enforced.
Before you answer, think about the last couple of years. Have you been jammed up on a shot opportunity because your variable-power scope was on the highest setting? Were you not able to find a close-in deer because you only saw hair at 12x?
