Many folks feel overwhelmed when they are hunting on public lands and they get a deer or elk down on the ground in a place that is a mile or more from the nearest road. At this distance, dragging an animal out is too much work and game carts are often impractical.
If, like most folks, you don’t have the luxury of owning livestock, you need to pack the animal out on your back. To do so, you must understand how to quarter an animal into manageable, packable pieces.
Watch and learn as Steven Rinella outlines the basic steps for getting the job done.
Steven discusses the potentially catastrophic effects of the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.
• At stake is an ecosystem that supports the finest wild salmon habitat on Earth. Each year, returning salmon transport millions of tons of nutrients from the rich marine environment to the nutrient-poor watersheds of the Pacific Rim, increasing production at all levels – from bacteria to brown bears.
• Strong runs of wild salmon are the biological and economic backbone of the Bristol Bay region, a place of internationally recognized importance for fish, wildlife and sportsmen. If the salmon are lost, so are the region’s abundant wildlife populations and commercial, subsistence and recreational fishing opportunities.
• The proposed Pebble Mine would threaten the world’s most productive salmon habitat and consequently the world-class hunting and $500 million commercial and sport fishery.
• Once constructed, the dam and 10-square-mile-wide containment pond could hold up to 10 billion tons of waste produced by the Pebble Mine – nearly enough to bury the city of Seattle. Due to the acid-generating nature of the mine’s ore body, the waste would require perpetual and intensive treatment to safeguard the region and its fish and wildlife.
I want to address the common questions that we get along the lines of, “Why hasn’t the TRCP taken a position on gun control?”
The TRCP was created in 2002 with a very focused mission: To guarantee all Americans quality places to hunt and fish. Our mission has been reaffirmed over the years and is being done so again this year.
Gun owners are very effectively represented in Washington, D.C. What was lacking before the TRCP came along was a single organization to pull together the disparate voices of the hunting and fishing community to work together on issues related to conservation and access.
Image courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress.
Very simply, others know far more than we do about the Second Amendment, not to mention school safety, the mental health system, weapons trafficking and other key components of the gun-violence debate today.
Mission drift is a concern for all organizations. That is why they create missions, visions and strategic plans to guide their actions.
The range of conservation issues in which the TRCP does engage is diverse and represents the interests of the millions of hunters and anglers in this country. From water quality, private lands conservation and marine fisheries management to responsible energy development and conservation on federal public lands, the TRCP works collaboratively with our partners to develop smarter natural resource policies – policies that promote the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitat, increase funding for responsive resource management and enhance public access for sportsmen.
There are a few issues important to sportsmen (in addition to the Second Amendment) that fall outside our organization’s charter. We do not engage in youth education efforts, in large part because so many of our partners, from the National Wild Turkey Federation to the International Hunter Education Association, do such a great job at this work.
We don’t do on-the-ground habitat conservation projects. That’s already being done by Ducks Unlimited, Trout Unlimited, Pheasants Forever and many others. And we don’t do electoral politics – we don’t have a political action committee and we remain fiercely nonpartisan. In short, we focus on what we do best: advocating for habitat, funding and access.
It is worth noting the important role that hunters and anglers play in funding conservation in America. For more than 75 years, the Pittman-Robertson Act, which created an excise tax on guns and ammunition sales, has thrived, providing more than $6.5 billion to state fish and wildlife agencies.
While the gun control debate has dominated the recent news cycle, conservation, funding and access continue to demand our attention and advocacy – and will do so well into the future. The TRCP will remain at the forefront of these issues and will persevere in our efforts to uphold opportunities to hunt and fish for this generation and those that follow.
Congratulations to Elise Goldstein, the lucky winner of our .22 Browning rifle.
Elise is a biologist with the New Mexico Game and Fish Department and was one of nearly 2,000 individuals who signed up as partners at the TRCP booth during one of the conferences and conventions we attended this year.
Theodore Roosevelt’s experiences hunting and fishing certainly fueled his passion for conservation, but it seems that a passion for coffee may have powered his mornings. In fact, Roosevelt’s son once said that his father’s coffee cup was “more in the nature of a bathtub.” TRCP has partnered with Afuera Coffee Co. to bring together his two loves: a strong morning brew and a dedication to conservation. With your purchase, you’ll not only enjoy waking up to the rich aroma of this bolder roast—you’ll be supporting the important work of preserving hunting and fishing opportunities for all.
