23-year-old nurse dies in tragic accident 🙏

Welcome to our first ‘almost Friday’ edition of your favorite newsletter.

With that in mind, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get this Thursday morning dispatch out the door.

Here's what's worth reading about today:

• Terrible loss - 23-year-old loses her life in hunting accident 🙏

• Oak nuts and deer - Lack of acorns affecting Missou deer 🌰

• Right on time - Vet gets pulled over, arrives just in time for trophy buck ⌚️

• Michigan hunters out of shape - Three men die of heart attacks so far 💔

ANOTHER TERRIBLE LOSS
23-YEAR-OLD NURSE DIES IN TEXAS HUNTING ACCIDENT

After a near perfect record in 2023, the state of Texas unfortunately has their first hunting death of the season. Recorded officially as the first hunting-related death of the season, the tragedy was confirmed earlier this week by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

According to reports, officials with the Texas Game Wardens, the U.S. Coast Guard and the Texas Department of Safety responded to a hunting incident involving a young woman in Kenedy County in southern Texas who later identified as 23-year-old registered nurse Hailey Jasso.

It was later determined that the 23-year-old victim’s father and her were walking back to camp when her father’s rifle accidentally “went off” and shot her. Texas Game Wardens and Texas Rangers are working in tandem to investigate the tragic accident that came only a few days following the reports of country singer Sundance Kid shooting himself in the stomach.

While Texas only recorded one fatality in 2023 - a record low for the Lone Star State - it’s since tied that record and is hoping at this point, not to break it.

Acorns playing havoc with opening of Missouri deer season: Jason Isabelle supervises MDC's Cervid Program, which focuses on deer and elk throughout the state. He attributed the low harvest numbers to three factors: Acorns, warmer temperatures and a calendar shift. Read the full story.

Ohio's youth gun season for deer hunting outperforms 2023 totals, more than 10K checked:  Hunters 17 and younger checked 10,449 white-tailed deer from Nov. 16-17, according to a news release from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) Division of Wildlife. Read the full story.

Veteran downs incredible buck after getting pulled over on his way to his stand: Veteran hunter Blake Treisch was driving to a friend’s farm in north-central Ohio when suddenly he got pulled over by a local policeman because he had an unlighted license plate. He did eventually make it to his stand and the rest is history.

DWR proposes changes to waterfowl, bear hunting in Utah, other items: The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources is proposing a few updates to waterfowl hunting in Utah, as well as the harvest rules for bears, cougars and furbearer species, and a few other recommendations. The DWR is seeking the public's feedback on the proposals. Read the full story.

Michigan hunters die of heart attacks while hauling away heavy deer: At least three Michigan deer hunters have died of heart attacks during the current 16-day season, including two men who were trying to haul away the heavy animals, authorities said. Read the full story.

CWD spreads to another Wyoming elk hunt area: The Wyoming Game and Fish Department says a hunter-harvested female elk has tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD) for the first time in Elk Hunt Area 23.  Read the full story.

🐅 The Original Tiger King: Heroes are ten-a-penny these days. Football players, singers, and actors are idolized on the strength of seemingly very little. Even I had the experience of being mobbed by an adoring crowd recently during my first visit to India. Fortunately, for the sake of my ego, it wasn’t my presence that sent them into a tizzy — it was the rifle I was holding. To look at, it is nothing remarkable: a Mauser-actioned .275 Rigby with no engraving bar the proof marks, the bluing all but rubbed off, several dents in the stock, and scratches on the barrel. Its one distinguishing feature is a silver plate recording the fact that in 1907 it was presented to Jim Corbett in gratitude for saving the local population from the dreaded man-eating tigress of Champawat. This 500-pound killing machine accounted for the deaths of 436 people during the early 20th century. She still holds the Guinness world record for the highest number of fatalities from a tiger, proving once again that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.  Read the full story.

🔫 John Wootters: The Complete Handloader: John was often called the “hunter’s hunter” and “Mr. Whitetail” because he was the consummate whitetail hunter, but I tend to think of him as “the complete handloader.” In fact, that’s the title of one of the many books he wrote. It was published in 1988. He had also written another book on handloading titled The Complete Book of Practical Handloading in 1976. Before that, he wrote about rifles and reloading for Shooting Times (from May of 1973 to April of 1978). During those years, he also penned the monthly “Precision Reloading” column, and one of my favorite columns of his addressed the topic of what he called “squib loads.” In essence, it was about handloading centerfire rifle cartridges with reduced loads in order to expand a rifle’s versatility. Read the full story.

🐕 A Musician Unleashes a Rescue Pup’s Bird Dog Soul: It had been many years since I’d had a dog in my house. I’d done the math a hundred different ways, but as a touring musician, I couldn’t quite get to a solution that didn’t rely on the kindness of friends and the expenses of kennels. But as I remember a writer once quipping, there was a hole in my life the size and shape of a “medium-sized brown dog,” and in the end I decided to fall back on an old tactic of mine in these kinds of situations: Just do the thing and figure out the particulars later. Read the full story.

Oh, and one more thing…