If you hunt, sooner or later you are going to get stuck. It is a fact of life almost as guaranteed as death and taxes. While sometimes unavoidable, having the equipment and know-how to get yourself free can make the difference between a good day and a very bad one.

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Techniques

Barring using any tools, there are some basic techniques to get unstuck. To start with, if it is a case of tires just not getting traction, think creatively on how to solve this. An easy solution is to cut some tree boughs, pull some grass, or shovel some gravel from the roadside under the offending tire. Failing that, think about dropping the tire pressure. This is a standard technique for offroaders in snow or sand and by doing so increases the tire’s footprint where it meets the ground. Remember, if you do this you will need a means of re-inflating the tires once unstuck.

Unless you have a portable air compressor (which we have covered in the past), deflating is a last-ditch effort. If these simple techniques don’t work, it is time to break out some gear. Here are some essential items we don’t leave home without:

Nevertheless, a Chino Valley, Ariz., man grabbed his cast-iron pan — his closest weapon — to fend off a cougar after it attacked his dog earlier this month.

According to The (Prescott, Ariz.) Daily Courier, Brandon Arnold, 24, was camping with his girlfriend, Tessa Gerdes, and seven other friends — including three children — early in the morning on May 4 in the Tonto National Forest when a mountain lion attacked Arnold’s dog, Apollo, a 90-pound lab-pit bull mix.

Arnold’s friend, Donald Jones, grabbed the cougar by the neck thinking it was another camper’s dog, then (wisely) let go once he realized what he had grabbed. The puma high-tailed it into the woods, with Apollo giving chase, so Arnold and Jones gave chase with whatever weapons they could grab; Arnold grabbed a cast-iron frying pan, and Jones grabbed a table.

Arnold reached the animals first, and once he got a clear swing, he took it, smacking the cat in the head.

“The first time I had a clear shot I just swung the pan and hit him right on the head,” Arnold told The Daily Courier. “It was like a cartoon — he just kind of stopped and I hit him again. He got stiff and fell over.”

Arnold walloped the stunned cougar again, knocking it to the ground, then popped it several more times for good measure before another friend shot it a couple times — just to be sure.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department reported Monday that the cougar tested positive for rabies. Luckily, none of the campers were scratched or bitten. Apollo suffered a few wounds, but thankfully had his rabies shots and should be released after a 45-day quarantine.

Whether or not you’re for hunters using ARs in the field, no one can pass on the chance to shoot at good-looking semi-auto when the opportunity arrives — if you have time, that is. These days, we’re just so bogged down with chores around the house that it’s hard to get out and do some shooting. Well, if you pick up the assault (nail) rifle found by the folks over at There, I Fixed It, you can knock out home improvement and get a little target practice in the process.

While the isolation is great, I’d love to be able to give my friends and family a sneak peek at the steaks they’ll be gobbling come fall.

Thanks to Meopta, the Czech maker of high-end optics, I can now send them tasty teasers. Meopta has come out with a unit that attaches an iPhone to your spotting scope or binoculars. They call it the MeoPix iScoping Adapter.

Simply put, it is a bracket that holds your iPhone 4 or 4S centered against the ocular lens of your spotting scope.

In addition to capturing 8-megapixel images, my favorite feature is that multiple people can view the image simultaneously on the iPhone’s screen. No more wasted time struggling to find and refocus the image on a shared spotting scope. To test this feature out for ourselves, we took the MeoPix down to our parking garage overlooking the Illinois River.

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For more kicks, we switched the iPhone’s camera to video, and we weren’t disappointed; just like the photos, we got great quality from our shots of the nearby bridge.

Conservation snow goose seasons had barely started across their southern range when the Albanian Goose Mafia showed up at the door of my house in Peoria, Ill., moments after my wife’s doctor had announced that A) those were indeed her early contractions, B) yes indeed she was nine months pregnant, and C) yes, she’d begun dilating.

But the birth turned out to be weeks away, and the Albanian Goose Mafia is not to be taken lightly. Only two of my Chicago buddies showed up, Phil and Chris, two of the loudest, most brash guys you could ever meet, ringleaders of a group of Albanian brothers and cousins I met goose hunting in Alberta, who proved to be the overbearing, sarcastic, hilarious, close-knit band of brothers I’d always wanted.

They threw me in Chris Vangel’s truck-mousine, a swank black new Chevy that probably cost more than my first house, along with my Beretta A400 Xtreme, a Remington Versamax and as many boxes of new Federal Snow Goose Black Cloud and Winchester Blindside BBs as I could carry.

I would need them all. Nine hours of driving and five hours of sleep later, one of the easiest, best goose shoots I’ve been on commenced near Jonesboro, Ark.

Our goose guide, Roy Rametta (618-944-1694), is as good old boy as it gets and has hunted these birds since the ‘80s, a pioneer in decoying the huge flocks of white geese that until then had only been shot at by ditch-divers.

A south wind and sunshine, perfect conditions, he said, excited for his first big snow hunt of the year.

I’d anticipated hours and hours of putting out dekes on the way down, but Rametta not only had the spread of nearly 1,500 already set, all we had to do was walk up and get in a pit that would have held six guys or more. We didn’t even wake up until 5:30 a.m.!

Small flocks trickled in, a dozen or so birds were dropped, and the day was already a success, when the first of a ginormous group started to work in on us.

Which in turn sucked every bird for miles, as they started criss-crossing and trying to land on our heads. Chris shot some short video, but couldn’t resist setting it down and shooting once the birds were within 20 yards.

I can honestly say I had trouble breathing and had to force myself to take slow deep inhalations to calm myself down as the noise grew deafening. I thought they were going to blot out the sun. Rametta gets so excited he hyperventilates as well, so the two of us were a comic wreck as the geese circled on down.

“Better gitcher blood goggles on, Skipper, it’s about to get ugly,” he’d hiss as the dropped to the spread by the dozens, telling me for the 50^th time “get ready” because he was about to wet his pants.

Three times we were mobbed like that, and two to four smaller flocks came in range every hour or so. We killed 68 birds, just the four of us (and Roy didn’t shoot a lot) and two hunters in our group in a different blind shot three dozen more to bring the day to well over a hundred. We quit at 11 a.m., with birds still flying, and only hunted an hour in the evening before I stopped everyone for a photo shoot, during which more flocks wanted in.

The birds never quit flying; I’m pretty sure we could have doubled our take if we’d hunted all day.

Rametta says about every third or fourth day it gets like that. Sunshine and a south wind are key, for some reason. Most days he’ll still scratch a few dozen. The next day, it poured rain and everyone had had enough by 11 a.m., not a single shot fired! What few birds flew came in low, got us excited — and stayed 70 yards or more out.

I called him the next week and he’d had two slow-ish days followed by another spectacular day of south wind, sunshine, and eagerly decoying birds.

Look for a full feature on this and other snow goose hunts in Wildfowl soon. Snow populations continue to be characterized as grossly exceeding biologists’ goals, severely destructive of the arctic tundra where they breed, and are generally regarded as badly underestimated even by those who count them.

All I know is, we are surely blessed to live in a time of this kind of abundance, when hunters can go out and enjoy no limits shooting while still doing right by the resource. And with four veteran guys, it still took two hours to clean that many birds — that’s all the success I ever want!

Rametta owns Arkansas Waterfowl Freaks, based in Johnston City, Ill.

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But for the over-achieving sportsman not content with that situation, here are eight ways to turn PETA’s efforts bassackwards and use their tactics against them.

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Harass a Nude PETA Model

It’s fun times when a nude model shows up to paint her body and nether regions like the hide of a tiger and then crawl in a cage to protest zoos, circuses or anything else PETA decides it’s against that week. Go eyeball the hottie and after you’ve had your fill, start to work on her psychologically. We’re not talking yelling at her for her ignorance or why you disagree with her. Nope, that would be too easy. Instead, simply pick out her imperfections and begin discussing them with a buddy within earshot i.e., “yeah, that tiger make-up really makes her butt look big” or “Is her left breast hanging a little lower than her right?” It won’t take much to have most of those vain little beasts weeping in their cages and begging for a moo-moo with which to cover themselves up.

In the past century the 1911 has undergone all sorts of transformations under the guise of “improving” John Browning’s original design. Some modifications are actual improvements, while many others are simply the equivalent of gun bling for the sake of bling. However, a classic remains as classic, and many folks are starting to appreciate the quality and functionality of the original. Good luck finding one in great condition! And if you do, it costs so much it will spend more time oiled up and riding a rack in your safe than riding on your hip.

Enter Turnbull Manufacturing: THE premier restoration company for all things classic from Winchester lever guns to Colt pistols and nearly everything quality in between. Turnbull has quietly been restoring classic firearms for decades. While you can send your original 1911 there to be restored, you now have another options — the Turnbull 1911. Starting with a new forged frame, the good folks at Turnbull kept to the original specs and quality as seen generations ago. Hand polished, then Carbonia Charcoal blued, their 1911 looks like it is still dripping wet when finished. Other period touches such as a lanyard loop, early-style slide stop, two tone magazine and correct sights round out the package.

All models are stamped United States Property as the original and of course can be had in  U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps variations.

I have been lusting for one of these since they announced the limited edition run a year ago. I just heard from Doug Turnbull today and they only have a handful left.  Wants versus needs, wants versus needs…hmmm. I harp this mantra to the wife all the time, surely she will understand I need a Turnbull 1911 and a she just wants a new car…right?