Livin' the Dream

Throughout the course of a year I get to work on a lot of cool projects and one of my all time favorites has been Nikon's Livin' the Dream magazine. In printed form the magazine is bound with the 2011 Nikon catalog and available at dealers across the country. But we wanted to do something special and expand on the content and interaction..... So Livin' The Dream digital was born.

Livin the Dream digital

There are hotlinks to products, advertisers and web addresses. We also linked videos to almost every article title. It's located on nikonhunting.com. Check it out if you have a little down time.

Happy 100th Post!

I think everyone in the Chevalier Advertising headquarters in Oregon has finally recovered from whatever crud followed us home from the 2011 SHOT Show. I usually try to scout out the coolest/most unusual stuff at the shows. Remember ATA 2010?

As a waterfowl nut, I am totally stoked for Winchester Ammunition’s Blind Side! Watching Winchester Ammunition’s own Brad Criner demonstrate the capabilities of Blind Side at the Bass Pro Media Day was pretty neat.

The tightly packed and stacked Hex shot hit the ballistic gel like a ton of high-velocity tumbling bricks. The channel was massive on the gel from the Hex shot. Since the Hex shot is stacked, you’ve got 15% more shot pellets in a shell.

The math for me is simple:

More shot + Hex Shot + Massive Wound Channels = Happy Hunter!

Unstrung bows

This morning I crawled out of bed early, not to carry my bow into the woods for a hunt....only to unstring it. That act always means the closing of a hunt or a season, and in this case it was both.

Fortunately I did extended my season by hunting a friend's property in Alabama. It's a beautiful place that's loaded with deer and it gave me my first deer with a longbow. Something that has been much harder for me than tagging deer with my recurve. Not sure why as the mechanics of shooting both are very similar. However, the stars aligned and a healthy doe got a little too close.

But of course I'm bummed that deer season is officially closed for me now and I have no more options until this fall. Guess I'll have to make do hunting pigs until turkey season gets here....

Tis’ The Season Of Tradeshows

January marks the end of deer seasons across the country. For manufacturers in the hunting and shooting industry, January means trade shows, and lots of them.

January 6-8, 2011 hundreds, if not thousands of bow-geeks invaded Indianapolis for the Archery Trade Association Show (ATA).

I hung out with my buddy Carrie Z from Bowcast. If you have never heard of her or Bowcast, be sure to check them out! Carrie and I set out on a quest to find the latest and greatest the bow industry had to offer.

Carrie and the crew from Bowcast put together the video below, it gives you a small taste of what ATA 2011 offered. Stay tuned for coverage from the 2011 SHOT Show!

Finally Filled a Tag

I finally filled a tag this year! With a zip tie in hand, I tagged a nice Abies Procera, more commonly known as the Noble Fir.

Every year the USDA Forest Service offers Christmas tree permits for $5. I always wanted to try “the Griswold family Christmas tree” outing, but procrastination gets the best of me year after year and I usually end up getting a tree from a local U-cut.

We loaded the truck Sunday afternoon; a good handsaw, warm clothes, water and survival gear. We stopped at the Estacada ranger station to purchase a permit for the Mt. Hood National Forest.

The ranger gave us a topo map of the area, pointing out units where he saw good Douglas and Noble fir trees. After coming up with a game plan we got in the truck and started our trek to the wilderness. I made one last call before we got out of cell service:

“Hi Mom it’s me, we are going to the Mt. Hood National Forest to get our Christmas tree. We are going to be along fire road 4016, if you do not hear from me by 9 o’clock tonight, call the search party. No, really, call the search party.”

We zigzagged what seemed like forever on logging roads. The higher up we went, the hairier the road conditions got, thank goodness for four-wheel drive! We finally made it to our location circled on our topo map. No trails and knee-deep snow, we found ourselves in a winter tree-hunting wonderland.

I realized that when at a U-cut place or a Christmas tree lot, much time is spent finding the “perfect” Christmas tree. You usually narrow it down to two or three choices and do a side-by-side comparison.

When out in the wilderness, the first one that meets your criteria is the one that gets the axe! Finding the tree is the easy part, packing it out and getting it on your vehicle is the hard part!

After setting the tree up in the house last night (it touches our 18-foot ceiling), I had a sense of pride similar to that when I hunt. I didn’t go to the store to buy my tree; I scouted in on a map, went out in the wilderness and cut it down with my two hands.