Category: Fieldcraft
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TRAUMA KIT FOR THE HUNTER
My dad wasn’t loyal to any one rifle manufacturer. He shot them all, and he shot them well. At the tail end of his hunting career, though, he decided he liked Winchesters.
Come deer season, the first rifle out of his gun safe was a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight chambered in 7×57. After he passed away this spring, my brothers and I divvied up dad’s Winchesters. I wound up with the 7×57.
Designed by Paul Mauser of Mauser fame, the 7×57 traces its origins all the way back to the late 1800s. The Spanish Army was the first to take a chance on the new cartridge, and they loved it.
So much so that they awarded Mauser the Grand Cross of the Spanish Military Order of Merit for his efforts. The cartridge’s flat trajectory and ability to shoot heavier bullets, along with its mild recoil, endeared it to soldiers and sportsmen alike.
Along with the rifle, I also inherited a couple of boxes of my dad’s handloads, complete with notecards detailing each load’s particulars. He was getting great velocity out of his 7×57, shooting over 2,800 feet per second with a 140-grain bullet, all with that mild recoil.
That kind of performance is perfect for the whitetail that I hunt close to home here in Oklahoma, and I looked forward to carrying my dad’s rifle into the deer woods.
The Legend of the 7×57
But I make annual trips to the Oklahoma panhandle for mule deer and elk, too, and both of those species are significantly bigger than the whitetail close to home.
Even the whitetail in the panhandle can weigh 300 pounds on the hoof. I was fairly certain the 7×57 could handle the whitetail and mule deer, but I didn’t think I’d chance it for elk. Besides, I have rifles chambered in other calibers that are more suited to that task. No sense in asking a ball peen to do a sledgehammer’s work, right?
About the time I was having that thought, I was reading the biography of a hunter in Africa named Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, a man who carried a 7×57 not for whitetail or mule deer or elk, even, but for elephant. Here I was debating the cartridge’s effectiveness on mule deer, and Bell was using it on elephant. Never has my manhood been called more into question.
Also known as WDM, a better option than Walter Dalrymple Maitland, I’m sure we’d all agree, Bell was born in Scotland to wealthy parents and a life of privilege.
But he was destined for adventure. He was riding the high seas the year he became a teenager and hunting lions for the Uganda Railway by the time he could get a driver’s license. The gold rush sent him to North America and the Boer War brought him back to Africa, where, after the war ended, he finally heeded his life’s calling and became an ivory hunter.
In so doing, he earned himself another sobriquet, and it may well be the coolest nickname of all time: Karamojo Bell.
Karamojo Bell & The Bell Shot
Bell made a name for himself by regularly walking into a parade of elephants with nothing but his 7×57, a John Rigby and Co rifle, and shooting either the herd’s bull or its matriarch, and then, as cool as a cucumber, picking off the rest of the herd one by one as they ran circles in confusion.
Having made a habit of dissecting the elephants he killed so that he could study the structure of their skulls, Bell’s research led him to conclude that the surest way to dispatch an elephant was with an oblique shot from the rear, angling his bullet through the back of the neck and up into the brain.
Eventually, this became known as The Bell Shot. You know you’re a serious rifleman when the hunting world names a shot after you. The man killed over 1,000 elephants in his career, more than three fourths of them with the 7×57.
Bell’s calm in the midst of pachyderm panic, his prowess with a rifle, and his fondness for the sweet shooting 7×57, earned him a reputation as a larger-than-life adventurer, and rightfully so. He absolutely deserves every ounce of respect he’s been given for his exploits on the Dark Continent.
The man in me just wishes he had done it all with a different cartridge.
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Hydrate or die! By Will Dabbs MD
Water, H2O — the universal solvent — the elixir of life. It makes up about 3/4 of your body
mass and roughly the same percentage of the planet is covered with the stuff.
Water, H2O — the universal solvent — the elixir of life. It makes up about 3/4 of your body mass and roughly the same percentage of the planet is covered with the stuff. Second only to air, clean water is the substance most critical to life. No matter your circumstances, you’ll not go much more than three or four days without it before succumbing to a most unpleasant demise.
Those three tiny atoms bound together at an angle are the most fundamental component of life on our planet. In a solid blow the collective egos of physicians everywhere, more lives are saved worldwide each year by clean water than by all medical efforts combined. No matter the circumstances, climate, season, or threat, clean water is always at the top of anyone’s list of critical commodities in any survival situation.
At a minimum you will require two quarts per person, per day, of decent drinking water to keep the human machines running smoothly. At times when water is scarce, drink infrequently. But when you do drink, try to drink your fill. This will squeeze the most mileage out of a limited supply.
In most places save the desert, water will be readily available in the environment. The rub is we are not the only organisms who value it. An awful lot of microscopic creepy crawlies like the stuff as well. The only thing worse than trying to survive a catastrophic event is trying to do so while managing a raging case of infectious gastroenteritis with its nausea, vomiting and explosive diarrhea.
Once you have your water, there are three broad techniques for rendering it safe for human consumption. In each case let your untreated source sit for a while if possible then decant the clearest quantity off the top to minimize contamination as your
starting point.
The heart of the DIY water filter kit is a ceramic filter core containing activated charcoal. The cloth sock fits over the filter and secures with a food-grade rubber band to exclude gross contaminants. The filter may be back washed and cleaned with pure water for extended use.
This may look like a discarded water bottle filled with old socks and some generic household cleaning supplies. It is actually several thousand gallons of drinking water if used appropriately.
The resulting water will likely make you feel queasy but remains safe to drink.
Sterilization
Sterilization is the simplest approach and requires little as regards supplies. In this case the microscopic bugs remain in the water but are rendered inert by either heat or chemicals. You harmlessly drink up their little miniature deceased corpses at the end of the process. However, before you think this unduly objectionable, just ask somebody in the know what you are ingesting along with that yummy pork sausage you enjoyed for breakfast. Sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss.
Cut the bottom out of a water bottle and stuff it full with clean white socks. Run your raw water through this improvised filter to get as much of the particulate matter out as possible before you get started. Obviously the less foreign material you have at the outset the better.
Boiling water to sterilize it requires nothing more than a proper container and a heat source. Bring your water to a vigorous boil for a few minutes and then let it cool. Boiled water never tastes very good; let it sit for a bit then shake it up to introduce a little air and the taste improves.
Clear water can be treated with fresh unscented bleach at the rate of 8 drops per gallon to render it safe for drinking.
Bleach is a dilute solution of sodium hypochlorite, about 6 percent by volume as you get it from the store, and is an indispensable and inexpensive survival staple. Treated water should be left out in the sun for a half hour or so before use and should smell very faintly of bleach. The resulting treated water will sometimes make you feel a bit queasy but should be safe to drink.
Bleach has a shelf life and should be stored in a dark cool place. More concentrated solutions can be used for camp tasks such as dish washing. While dilute treatments do indeed produce safe drinking water, straight bleach is terribly poisonous if ingested. Military water purification tablets are also effective and I have used them before, but the resulting taste can be sub-optimal.
Distillation
Distillation produces the absolute safest drinking water. In this case the liquid water is evaporated and then subsequently condensed away from the original source. This process actually physically removes the water from the impurities so it can be used safely. While this mechanism produces the cleanest water, it can also be time-consuming or expensive.
A factory distillation machine runs off of electricity and produces a steady supply of drinkable water from literally any source, to include seawater. These marvelous devices work like a champ but can set you back a thousand dollars or more. The same process can be improvised with nothing more than a sheet of plastic and some sunshine, but the yield is very low.
Dig a hole in wet ground and place a pot or cup in the center of the hole. Then cover the hole with a sheet of plastic anchored and sealed around its edges. Drop a rock in the center such that the plastic forms a cone leading down into the pot. In bright sunshine water will evaporate out of the ground and condense on the plastic before running down into the pot. The water you collect by this process is perfectly pure, but even under ideal conditions this method is a full-time job to make enough water to keep yourself alive.
It can take a while for the untreated water to make its way through your improvised filter. Be patient and the resulting product is a good starting point for subsequent purification techniques.
Filtration
Water filters represent the most convenient method of harvesting drinking water from an austere environment. Filters come in a broad array of sizes, capacities and prices. They are both simple to use and effective. I have lived for weeks on filtered water taken from a variety of sources to include silt-filled glacial melt while suffering no ill effects.
Water filters work by excluding contaminants while allowing pure water to pass. Most filter units are ceramic and are silver-impregnated or include activated charcoal.
The simplest sort is likely the Lifestraw. The Lifestraw is usually around $20 and is but a click away on Amazon. This remarkable little device rides around your neck on a string. Just dip the end into most any conceivable bilge and give it a slurp. Clear, pure water comes through the good end with trivial effort. For individual use it really could not be simpler.
Larger filters usually incorporate a small hand pump and are sufficient to produce plenty of water for individual use and cooking needs at a trivial weight and space penalty. These devices will usually set you back $50 to $100. Good ones will last for extended periods though operational life is a function of how funky your starting material might be.
Large family-sized water filters are also readily available but they can be expensive. These devices look like institutional coffee urns and are gravity-driven. Just pour the untreated water in the top and potable water comes out a spigot at the bottom. These units are sufficient to produce enough drinking and cooking water to keep a decent-sized family going but can set you back $400 or more. There is, however, a very cost-effective alternative.
Several companies offer kits that convert a pair of standard utility buckets from Lowes or Home Depot into an institutional water filter suitable to supply a family in a crisis. Mine cost me $39 from Amazon. The buckets were $3 each from our local home store. In this case you drill a pair of holes in the buckets per the instructions and install the included fittings. I found standard spade bits were the best tools to bore the holes.
Once the filter assembly is installed and the buckets are stacked you simply fill the top bucket with untreated water and gravity does the work. Be careful, the ceramic filter is fairly fragile and should not be handled roughly. The resulting device will produce a prodigious quantity of sparkling drinking water for less than the cost of a meal out with your family.
The hole for the spigot is located 2″ from the bottom of the collection bucket. This allows clearance for the tap. A standard spade bit bores the hole painlessly.
The filter is secured with washers and a screw fitting between the bottom of the top bucket and the lid of the bottom bucket, resulting in a single watertight assembly.
Once the filter is in place the rest of the device just snaps together. Ceramic filters are brittle and should be handled carefully.
Filtration
Water filters represent the most convenient method of harvesting drinking water from an austere environment. Filters come in a broad array of sizes, capacities and prices. They are both simple to use and effective. I have lived for weeks on filtered water taken from a variety of sources to include silt-filled glacial melt while suffering no ill effects.
Water filters work by excluding contaminants while allowing pure water to pass. Most filter units are ceramic and are silver-impregnated or include activated charcoal.
The simplest sort is likely the Lifestraw. The Lifestraw is usually around $20 and is but a click away on Amazon. This remarkable little device rides around your neck on a string. Just dip the end into most any conceivable bilge and give it a slurp. Clear, pure water comes through the good end with trivial effort. For individual use it really could not be simpler.
Larger filters usually incorporate a small hand pump and are sufficient to produce plenty of water for individual use and cooking needs at a trivial weight and space penalty. These devices will usually set you back $50 to $100. Good ones will last for extended periods though operational life is a function of how funky your starting material might be.
Large family-sized water filters are also readily available but they can be expensive. These devices look like institutional coffee urns and are gravity-driven. Just pour the untreated water in the top and potable water comes out a spigot at the bottom. These units are sufficient to produce enough drinking and cooking water to keep a decent-sized family going but can set you back $400 or more. There is, however, a very cost-effective alternative.
Several companies offer kits that convert a pair of standard utility buckets from Lowes or Home Depot into an institutional water filter suitable to supply a family in a crisis. Mine cost me $39 from Amazon. The buckets were $3 each from our local home store. In this case you drill a pair of holes in the buckets per the instructions and install the included fittings. I found standard spade bits were the best tools to bore the holes.
Once the filter assembly is installed and the buckets are stacked you simply fill the top bucket with untreated water and gravity does the work. Be careful, the ceramic filter is fairly fragile and should not be handled roughly. The resulting device will produce a prodigious quantity of sparkling drinking water for less than the cost of a meal out with your family.
It can be illuminating to peek into a drop of untreated lake water with a microscope. Water from
raw sources is usually teeming with microscopic life, most of which can make you sick.
Commercial water filters are lightweight, portable and reasonably priced. Such devices will ride in a rucksack or bugout bag and are sufficient to keep one person hydrated.
Preparation Is Key
There is a great deal of uncertainty in the world. The more our society evolves the more dependent we become upon technology and infrastructure. As a result we become all the more fragile as a species. Whether the precipitating insult is a hurricane, societal unrest, currency collapse, terrorist attack or something on the order of zombies or aliens, we are never more than one headline away from a fairly feral lifestyle.
Where once preparing for such stuff was the obsession of the lunatic fringe, nowadays survival prepping is both mainstream and big business. Capitalism being what it is, the market now allows us to do a bit of sensible prepping at reasonable cost. In the case of water, the most critical of all commodities, the means to secure an adequate supply of the stuff is now portable, reliable and inexpensive.
A little shelf-stable food, a proper firearm, and an inexpensive DIY water filter can transform a crisis of terrifying proportions into a fun family adventure. As is typically the case, the key to success rests in a little forethought and planning.
If you can hit it in the right spot, then you will get a strong maybe from me! Grumpy
For years, deer hunters across parts of the Midwest had to study cartridge case dimensions before heading into the woods. Straight-wall cartridges like the .350 Legend and .450 Bushmaster grew popular in no small part because they gave rifle hunters legal alternatives in states that heavily restricted traditional bottleneck cartridges.
That landscape keeps changing.
Michigan, Indiana, and Iowa now give hunters considerably more flexibility than their old regulations allowed — though the rules, and when they changed, differ in each state.
Michigan Drops the Limited Firearms Deer Zone
Michigan made the biggest change for the 2026 season.
The Michigan Natural Resources Commission eliminated the Limited Firearms Deer Zone in the Lower Peninsula. Beginning September 12, 2026, hunters can use all legal firearms across the Lower Peninsula — including bottleneck-chambered rifles.
Michigan defines a legal rifle during applicable firearm deer seasons as one firing any caliber larger than .22 rimfire.
For hunters who spent years selecting cartridges specifically for the zone, that’s significant. Straight-wall cartridges are still legal; they’re just no longer required simply because you’re hunting the southern Lower Peninsula.
One capacity restriction is worth remembering for AR-platform and other semi-auto hunters: a semi-automatic rifle or shotgun can’t hold more than six shells in the barrel and magazine combined.
(Michigan DNR 2026 deer regulations: https://www.michigan.gov/dnr/managing-resources/laws/regulations/deer)
Indiana Standardizes Rifle Rules
Indiana took a different approach.
The state now permits centerfire rifles firing a bullet at least .219 inch, or 5.56mm, in diameter on both public and private land.
That public-versus-private distinction matters because Indiana previously maintained different rifle-cartridge restrictions depending on where you hunted. Senate Enrolled Act 280, passed in 2025, eliminated that distinction.
The state still prohibits full-metal-jacket bullets for deer and limits hunters to carrying no more than 10 cartridges for each such rifle while hunting deer.
In practical terms, Indiana hunters now follow a much simpler standard: centerfire, .219-inch bullet diameter or larger, with an appropriate hunting projectile. Meet the diameter and it’s a legal rifle — which puts a common AR-15 in 5.56 or .223 on the table, loaded with expanding bullets.
Iowa Is Still Different
Then there’s Iowa.
Iowa allows both straight-wall and necked-down cartridges during its youth/disabled and first and second shotgun seasons — but that doesn’t mean you can grab your .308 or 6.5 Creedmoor and head for the stand.
The cartridge must fire an expanding bullet measuring from .350 through .500 inch and generate at least 500 foot-pounds of muzzle energy.
That makes cartridges such as the .35 Whelen, .350 Legend, .358 Winchester, .450 Bushmaster and .45-70 Government legal options.
It excludes common smaller-diameter bottleneck cartridges — the .308 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, .270 Winchester and 6.5 Creedmoor — from those seasons. Note the reason: Iowa cares about bullet diameter and energy, not case shape. A bottleneck round that clears .350 (the .35 Whelen, for instance) is fine; a .308 isn’t, because it’s too small.
There’s another important distinction: this isn’t a new Iowa rule for 2026.
The framework allowing these rifles dates to legislation passed in 2020 and administrative rules effective in June 2021. Hunters may be hearing more about expanded Midwestern rifle options this year because of Michigan’s change, but Iowa has operated under its current rules for several seasons.
(Iowa DNR deer hunting page: https://www.iowadnr.gov/things-do/hunting-trapping/types-hunting-trapping/deer-hunting)
Straight-Wall Isn’t Dead
None of this means the Midwest’s straight-wall boom is over.
The .350 Legend, .450 Bushmaster, .45-70 and their kin still make plenty of sense for whitetail, particularly in timber and where shots are short. Plenty of hunters already own rifles chambered for them, know their holds, and shoot ammunition that performs.
The difference is that regulations increasingly give hunters more choice. Michigan effectively removed case geometry from the equation in the Lower Peninsula. Indiana uses a minimum bullet diameter requirement rather than restricting hunters to straight-walled cartridges. Iowa allows necked-down cartridges, but only inside a fairly specific caliber, projectile and energy envelope.
Three Midwestern states, three different sets of rules.
As always, check current state regulations before heading into the field. The fact that your deer rifle is legal on one side of a state line doesn’t mean it’s legal on the other.
Scott Witner
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Gun? What Gun!?!
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Two quarters Huh!
