Sightmark Photon RT

(MANSFIELD, TEXAS) – Sightmark is proud to introduce the highly-anticipated Photon RT. Successor to the Photon XT, one of the most popular night vision scopes ever, the new Photon RT series of digital night vision riflescopes improves upon the XT generation with an upgraded core and new, user-friendly features while maintaining the same simplicity and durability that made the Photon XT line so successful. The Photon RT series consists of 4 models: Photon RT 4.5x42S (SM18015), Photon RT 4.5×42 (SM18016), Photon RT 6x50S (SM18017) and Photon RT 6×50 (SM18018). Read more

Optics

Oklahoma: Girl’s First Elk Hunt Yields New State Record

On her first elk hunt when she was 14, Olivia Parry of Camargo harvested this bull elk that now is listed atop Oklahoma’s Cy Curtis typical elk records. (Courtesy Scott Parry)

Thanks to a little kindness and understanding from a softball coach, Oklahoma now has a new record typical elk in its Cy Curtis Awards Program. And the record-holder is just 15 years old.

Olivia Parry of Camargo was just 14 and on her first elk hunt when she bagged the bull elk on private land in Dewey County on Oct. 16, 2016. After the mandatory drying period, the 5-by-5 rack was scored at 377 6/8, shattering the existing Cy Curtis record by 39 2/8.

Olivia Parry Cy Curtis record elk Nov 2017
Olivia and her father, Scott Parry, who is the Northwest Region Wildlife Supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, began the hunt the previous evening. Olivia said that is when she first saw the big elk that would become the focus of the hunt, but shooting hours closed soon after.

The next morning, father and daughter were in the field again, and it was a dusky morning, Olivia recalled. As the morning brightened, she began using binoculars to scan her surroundings.

“And we were just sitting there waiting around, and he popped out on our hillside.” Nothing to do but wait, she thought.

“I thought he was a really nice elk,” she said. But the animal was at least 300 yards away, too far to get a good shot. “I wanted to shoot, but I didn’t want to mess it up, scare him off.”

By this time, the morning had slipped into afternoon, without any chance to take a shot. So Olivia and her dad decided to take a break, allowing Olivia to attend softball practice in Laverne with her team. But the elk hunt was still on her mind.

“I asked the coach if I could leave a little early,” Olivia said. The coach agreed, and Olivia arrived back in the field about 5 p.m. And it wasn’t long before the big bull ambled into the open, and the Vici High School freshman lifted her .270-caliber rifle and squeezed the trigger.

“I started crying because I thought I’d missed him,” she recalled. But her shot hadn’t missed. As they looked over the trophy, Parry told his daughter it could well be a state (Cy Curtis) record. But Olivia said she could not comprehend what that meant at the time.

Later, when they delivered the bull elk to be processed, the processor remarked how big the rack was, and that it might be a new record. That’s when the magnitude struck her.

“It was then I was thinking, ‘This could really be it.’ I was so excited. I thought that was crazy that I could have the state record!”

The score qualifies Olivia’s elk as a Boone and Crockett Club All-Time Record and will forever be listed in Records of North American Big Game produced by that organization.

Even though she is a seasoned veteran of deer hunting – she bagged her first doe at age 11 – Olivia has now decided she enjoys elk hunting most of all. Still, she is fond of deer, turkey and dove hunting, too.

As for her Oklahoma Cy Curtis record elk, the mount is hanging in the barn. “He won’t fit in the house,” Olivia said. But that’s OK for now, she said, “as long as he stays clean.”

NEWS CONTACTS:

Don P. Brown (donald.brown@odwc.ok.gov)
or Micah Holmes (micah.holmes@odwc.ok.gov)
Website: wildlifedepartment.com Telephone: (405) 521-4632

WHO WE ARE: The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) with its 350 employees is responsible for managing Oklahoma’s fish and wildlife resources and habitat. WHAT WE BELIEVE: The state’s fish and wildlife belong to all Oklahomans and should be managed so their populations will be sustained forever. HOW WE ARE FUNDED: ODWC does not receive general state tax appropriations. License sales and federal Wildlife and Sportfish Restoration Program grant revenues are the main funding sources. Every license dollar spent by sportsmen and women in Oklahoma issued to fund ODWC’s user pay/public benefit conservation efforts.

Hunting

Numrich Gun Parts Corporation Launches New Website


America’s Leading Supplier of Gun Parts and Accessories Improves Online Shopping ExperienceWest Hurley, NY — — Numrich Gun Parts Corporation, America’s leading supplier of obsolete and hard-to-find gun parts and accessories, announced the launch of its newly designed website and ‘notify me’ feature.

The updated site offers a cleaner design, enhanced search and navigation, and improved checkout process. With an inventory of over 300,000 products, users can now search for the gun parts they need with ‘shop by manufacturer’ and ‘shop by category’ options. Read more

Firearms

Defense Technology 40mm Blunt Impact Projectile Collapsible Gel Rounds


The newest addition to Defense Technology’s “point-of-aim, point-of-impact” less lethal solutionsONTARIO, California – Defense Technology®, a brand of The Safariland Group, today announced the release of its 40mm Blunt Impact Projectile (BIP) Collapsible Gel Rounds. Incorporating patented technologies, the BIP round is highly effective in law enforcement situations that require greater accuracy and delivered energy. This BIP round provides additional less lethal force options for law enforcement and military operators. The 40mm BIP Collapsible Gel Round will be on display at the 2017 International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference (IACP), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 21-24, booth #1515.

The newest addition to existing “point-of-aim, point-of-impact” Defense Technology less lethal solutions, the 40mm BIP Collapsible Gel Rounds’ collapsible gel nose technology enables the projectile to engage the target with higher kinetic energy across the operational range, while remaining less lethal at the minimum engagement range. Read more

Ammunition

Fierce Fury Named 2017 Ultimate Bolt-Action by ScoutLook

Gunnison, UT. – The Fierce Fury rifle has been named EDITORS CHOICE by ScoutLook.com in their 2017 review of Bolt-Action Rifles. The Fierce Fury features a proprietary 3-lug bolt action. The one piece machined bolt and wire EDM raceways provide added precision and accuracy. The 3-position safety ensures security and safety. The Fury guarantees ½” accuracy group (three shots – 100 yards). You will be hard pressed to find or build a custom rifle with the same features and benefits that come stock on the Fury. Check out the full video review of the Fierce Fury by ScoutLook.com
https://www.scoutlookweather.com/hunting/scoutdoors/posts/9290/scoutlook-2017-ultimate-bolt-action-rifle-field-test-winners

For more information regarding the Fierce Fury rifle, please contact:
Fierce Firearms 435-528-5080 info@fiercearms.com

Firearms

Browning Trail Cameras and the NEW Dark Ops HD Pro

The 2017 Dark Ops HD Pro camera is the newest addition to the best-selling, smallest high-performance no-glow trail camera line in the hunting industry. The 2017 Dark Ops HD Pro cameras feature an incredible .3 second trigger speed and .5 second recovery time and users will enjoy the remarkable high-end performance and 18MP picture quality along with a new video processor that produces incredible quality 1280 x 720 HD video clips with sound.

The Dark Ops HD Pro game camera also takes nighttime pictures using Browning Trail Camera’s innovative adjustable IR flash technology which gives users the flexibility to set the camera in a Power Save mode or extend the no-glow illumination to an amazing range of 80-feet at night. Additional features include a Smart IR video detection system, which allows the camera to continue recording video footage for up to 5 minutes during the daytime and up to 20 seconds at night as long as the game continues to move in front of the camera, and an SD card “memory management” option that allows users to simply overwrite older images on the SD if the memory is full. And as if all of that were not enough, new for 2017 the Dark Ops HD Pro is able to work with 512 GB SDXC memory cards and has an impressive 1.5″ color viewing screen.

For more information regarding the new series of Browning Trail Cameras and the full line of trail cameras accessories, please visit www.browningtrailcameras.com. Read more

Hunting

Boone and Crockett Club Vice President: How We Are Loving our Forests to Death

MISSOULA, Mont. (October 17, 2017) – James L. Cummins, vice president of the Boone and Crockett Club, has released an Op-Ed on the mistreatment of our public lands with special attention on the negative effects on our national forests. The Boone and Crockett Club and its founder, Theodore Roosevelt, developed and nationalized the concept of conservation in the 19th century, and secured our federal public lands trust that makes up our national forest system. The Club continues to promote and educate responsible conservation and sustainable use of our natural resources.

In August 2017, over 650,000 acres were burning in the western U.S. Most of these fires were on public lands, particularly federal lands. By September 1, seven hundred wildfires raged in the state of Montana alone, ravaging some 1 million acres of public and private lands. California currently has more than a dozen fires consuming homes, wildlife and human lives.
National forests comprise a large segment of the ecosystems in the western United States. Most have evolved with fires, insect and disease outbreaks and blow-downs to retain biodiversity and forest health. But, times have clearly changed. More people are living farther out into wild-land urban interfaces. To protect lives and homes this has logically led to a forest policy of suppressing natural fires and insect outbreaks. This intolerance of fires combined with decades of relying on our forests for timber production and then dramatically scaling this back, have helped produce very “unnatural” conditions of fuel build up ripe for the wildfires we’re seeing today.
More than 60 million acres of national forests are at high risk of wildfire or in need of restoration. In the past 10 years, over 65 million acres have burned. Federal foresters estimate that an astounding 190 million acres of land managed by the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior are at an unnatural risk to catastrophic wildfire.
At the heart of this matter is a public misconception that forests unattended will somehow return to a natural state, and this misconception is driving lawsuits to block conservation actions. Conservation focuses on using and managing natural resources to benefit both habitat and people. Nationally acclaimed wildlife biologist, Dr. Bruce D. Leopold, once said, “Nature just can’t take its course because frankly, there is no location on Earth where humankind has not had an impact. From radioactive materials and dust in polar ice, to ever-expanding distributions of invasive species, the evidence is clear that disruption of natural processes is a global phenomenon. Humans are a significant component of natural ecosystems (contributing the good and the bad) and the notion of suddenly removing their influence is both illogical and impossible. Natural ecosystems are just too altered to be left alone.”
Conservation practices can reverse these “unnatural” conditions through a variety of actions, such as harvesting trees and using controlled burns to mimic natural disturbances. These management actions reduce build-ups of forest litter (fuel) and overgrowth to encourage a variety of successional stages for wildlife, biodiversity and the prevention of larger, hotter, more devastating fires from occurring that can destroy even old-growth forests. A “letting nature take its course” hands off approach seeks to halt management actions and multiple use on the mistaken assumption the forests can and will return to their former “natural” condition.
Forest management eliminates or reduces the impact of catastrophic wildfire; protects riparian areas important for stream health (shade, filtering, etc.) and fish species such as trout and salmon; and protects water quality due to fires followed by rains with sediments washing downstream and damaging important drinking water supplies.
Using 21st century techniques by land management professionals – and not direct mail specialists and environmental litigators – we have the technology and know-how to restore America’s cherished landscapes to a healthy, natural condition. Through the use of environmentally smart thinning, prescribed burns and other scientifically validated management practices, overstocked forests can be returned to a natural balance, reducing the risks of catastrophic wildfire and insect and disease infestations along with the associated expenditure of taxpayer dollars that should be used to manage forests instead of fighting more frequent and hotter fires.
Cummins’ full Op-Ed can be read in its entirety here.
About the Boone and Crockett Club
Founded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887, the Boone and Crockett Club is the oldest conservation organization in North America and helped to establish the principles of wildlife and habitat conservation, hunter ethics, as well as many of the institutions, experts agencies, science and funding mechanisms for conservation. Member accomplishments include enlarging and protecting Yellowstone and establishing Glacier and Denali national parks, founding the U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service and National Wildlife Refuge System, fostering the Pittman-Robertson and Lacey Acts, creating the Federal Duck Stamp program, and developing the cornerstones of modern game laws. The Boone and Crockett Club is headquartered in Missoula, Montana. For details, visit www.boone-crockett.org.
Wildlife

SCI Opposes Ballot Effort To Stop Mountain Lion, Bobcat Hunting In Arizona

Safari Club International opposes efforts by the Humane Society of the United States and other anti-hunters to end the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats in Arizona by way of the ballot box.

HSUS and other anti-hunters currently are circulating petitions, hoping to place their deceitfully draconian measure on the ballot in 2018.

“This is just the latest move by anti-hunters to end all hunting,” said SCI President Paul Babaz. “They have made it clear that their strategy is to go state-by-state, species-by-species, if that’s what it takes for them to end all hunting. Please join SCI’s fight to block this attack on our freedom to hunt.”

As they attempt to gather signatures to qualify their initiative, the anti-hunters no doubt will be raising money and using those funds in emotional appeals to fool voters.

SCI and other hunter groups are launching an aggressive campaign to educate voters in Arizona about the benefits of having wildlife managed scientifically by the Arizona Game and Fish Department, and not by emotionally-driven political initiatives.

In addition to ending hunting for mountain lions and bobcats, the initiative measure also attempts to heighten emotions baselessly by prohibiting the hunting of ocelots, jaguars and lynx, which is already illegal.

And, what follows are some little-publicized facts about the Humane Society of the U.S from www.Humanewatch.org.

While most of the country enjoys the temperate fall weather, snow has already fallen in many areas out west. Those looking for warm retreats as the weather cools are already looking at places in the Caribbean. We might suggest the Cayman Islands, where the Humane Society of the United States is keeping donor money tanned, rested, and ready—and away from the animals it is supposed to help.According to HSUS’s most recent (2016) tax return, the organization has $51,469,167 sitting in “investments” in the Caribbean. In the past, HSUS has disclosed that these millions are sitting in specific funds in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

Meanwhile, HSUS continues to engage in predatory fundraising. The past few weeks have been replete with pleas from HSUS and its highly compensated CEO Wayne Pacelle, begging for donations to fund its disaster relief team. However, we’ve seen this script before. After Hurricane Sandy, HSUS raised several million dollars but only spent about one-third of what it raised on Sandy relief.

The rest might have made a nice addition to HSUS’s Cayman funds. Much like we suspect money raised after the three recent storms will end up. Read our report, “Looting in the Aftermath,” for more evidence of how HSUS exploits high-profile events.

Safari Club International – First For Hunters is the leader in protecting the freedom to hunt and in promoting wildlife conservation worldwide. SCI’s approximately 200 Chapters represent all 50 of the United States as well as 106 other countries. SCI’s proactive leadership in a host of cooperative wildlife conservation, outdoor education and humanitarian programs, with the SCI Foundation and other conservation groups, research institutions and government agencies, empowers sportsmen to be contributing community members and participants in sound wildlife management and conservation. Visit the home page www.SafariClub.org, or call (520) 620-1220 for more information.
International Headquarters Tucson, Arizona · Washington, District of Columbia · Ottawa, Canada
www.SafariClub.org
Animal Rights, Hunting, Wildlife
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