bernie kuntz

People have been bickering for years about the pros and cons of drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but last weekend President Obama stuck a thumb in the eye of those in favor of drilling by announcing that he plans to declare part of the refuge a wilderness...

Hunter safety begins outdoors

One thing is for sure. People, who love to do certain things, attract the interest of others who like similar things. Artists migrate to “art communities,” sports enthusiasts cluster together and bump bellies in support, and nature lovers meet to discuss birds, plants, weather...

Bernie Kuntz talks about hunting.

(Last of two parts) John Thorp leaves me in the corner of a horse corral late in the afternoon, sitting on a folding chair and partially obstructed from view by the poles that make up the fence of the corral. I glass with my 8 X 32 Liecas and at 5:18 p.m. I see the first pair of...

This is my 2,000th column published in the Jamestown Sun, and without a lot of fanfare, I thank the Sun management for publishing my articles all these decades, and for you loyal readers for reading the column every week. You may be interested in knowing how this all started. In...

I think about the place now and then, many times on October 31, the date when there is a 98 percent chance of precipitation there — Juneau, Alaska where I lived from April 1983 until I “escaped” in July 1986 and moved to Montana. Like a good many times in my life, I acted impulsively....

“A rooster right there in the road!” We have just entered Carl’s property, I have wrestled the gate open and closed, hobbled back to the Suburban while using my diamond willow walking staff. But now, just as quickly, I exit the Suburban, shotgun in my right hand, walking staff...

Today’s hunters certainly like their gadgetry. Once in a while I peek at a hunting forum where mostly young guys “chat,” and almost all of them have their GPS devices, laser rangefinders, bipods mounted on the forearms of their rifles, enormous telescopic sights more suited...

My partner, Randy and I, spot the white pickup from afar while we are hunting pronghorn antelope in western New Mexico in August, and later in the day we happen upon the truck parked on a road, the driver glassing pronghorns in the distance. In the back seats of the crew-cab pickup...

If there is a game bird species representative of the wide open spaces of the Dakota prairie, it is the native sharp-tailed grouse, a bird dear to my heart and one I have chased for more than 50 years. When I was a youngster, sharptail hunting was a late September ritual that my...

September always makes me think of mountain sheep hunting, because this is the time of the year when the high country is at its finest — insects are remnants of what they were six weeks ago, autumn snows have not arrived in any amount, and the arctic willow is a splendor of colors...

“He didn’t want much to see them, with years in their faces and aches in their bones and the past in their heads so that all they could talk about, while whisky stirred dead fires, was this and that of long ago.” — The Way West, A. B. Guthrie And so it has been one of the...

Having long fit the description of “old geezer” and “curmudgeon,” I have made certain observations over the decades that relate to the out-of-doors. Following are some “Kuntzisms” that you may or may not agree with. *Shotguns with longer barrels do not “shoot harder.”...