On Dec. 7, 1941, my father was in Honolulu, Hawaii. He and a friend were sitting on the upper floor of the building they were in, when they saw what they initially thought were a large number of airplanes engaged in some kind of military exercise.

As it turned out, the airplanes were headed to Pearl Harbor, Kaneohe Marine Air base and Hickam Field to destroy America’s Pacific Fleet and prevent any American aircraft from responding to the attack. As the bombs fell and the smoke rose from Pearl Harbor and the other military installations on Oahu, Dad realized Japan had attacked our military forces.

My father and his friend were quickly drafted into a nightly patrol corps that patrolled the streets and neighborhoods of Honolulu and other communities on the island of Oahu.

America entered the Second World War, and the rest is history.

When I was in the fifth grade, my teacher asked us if we knew why Japan didn’t finish what they started and didn’t send their troop ships and carriers to invade California. The prediction from our military leaders at that time was that we might not have been able to stop them until they reached the Mississippi River.

However, those military leaders and analysts forgot something that the Japanese knew all too well.

After the war, the remaining Japanese admirals and generals were asked that question. Their answer was that almost every home in America had guns and that Americans knew how to use them.

Admiral Yamamoto who commanded the Japanese Fleet had visited and studied in America. He had always been impressed with the number of firearms in American homes and the skill that Americans had with their firearms. He knew that the Second Amendment to our Constitution gave the American public a tremendous capacity to repel foreign invaders.

Admiral Yamamoto had originally cautioned against attacking the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, saying that he believed that all they would accomplish was “to wake a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

It has been conservatively estimated that there are 2,308,000 hunters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan and Idaho combined. The hunters in those five states alone would comprise the largest army in the world. The number of hunters in Texas would be the largest standing army in the world all by itself. In addition, many American citizens don’t hunt, but still enjoy owning, shooting and competing with firearms.

The point of all this information is that every country around the globe knows that America is the most powerful country in the world. We have been able to fight the wars that we had to fight and still have more firepower at home than the standing armies of the rest of the world. Those countries of the world who choose to be against our way of life may hate us but won’t invade us because so many of us own firearms and know how to use them and constitute a force more numerous than their own armies.

Our friends, on the other hand, know we love peace and try to be good neighbors, as well as standing as a formidable deterrent to those who would invade our friends.

Today, there is a push by NATO to restrict the right to keep and bear arms in America. Our enemies are also recommending restrictions of our Second Amendment rights, and some of those enemies have been elected to Congress.

Right now, the public trust still rests in the hands of the people, where it rightfully belongs, giving us the power to remove politicians that don’t share our dream and tell NATO to mind their own business, and we will take care of America just as we have every time tyrants have dared to cast their eyes toward America.

It is hard work to stay vigilant at all times, but America will always be safe from foreign and domestic invasion as long as the public trust stays in the hands of the people and the Second Amendment is not infringed.

Smokey Merkley, who grew up in Pocatello, was a member of the Health and Kinesiology Department at Texas A&M University. He taught self-defense and marksmanship with rifles and wrote text books about self-defense and rifle marksmanship. He was also a Texas Department of Public Safety certified concealed handgun Instructor. After retiring from Texas A&M, he returned to Pocatello. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

In case you haven’t looked out your window, summer is waning. There are a lot of signs. It’s getting light later and later and dark earlier and earlier. And from the sounds of groaning around my house, school must have started. (My youngest daughter is in college and my wife is a school teacher.)

But despite all of the signs of impending doom, we still have a few weeks left for some prime backpacking. I know that I ought to be up in the mountains archery elk and deer hunting, but I find myself doing backcountry fly fishing trips later and later every year.

How can you not love late summer/early fall backpacking and fly fishing trips? Everyone else is focused on hunting and you’ll most likely have the woods to yourself. The rivers have dropped down and are easier to wade. The fish are congregated in holes. The fish have been feeding all summer and are big. To sum it up: It’s all good!

If you love to fly fish, then you need to start backpacking. It allows you to get farther away from people, so of course the fish are larger and there are more of them. You have the world pretty much to yourself, and the scenery is beautiful.

So what does it take? Here are a few basics. I still use an old school Kelty frame backpack. But you’ll also want to take along a daypack to carry your water, snacks, lunch and rain gear for your day hikes.

I take a light-weight sleeping bag due to the mild weather I’ll encounter, but I also throw in some base layers to sleep in. I just discovered a super compact and light-weight pad by Klymit and started using it this year.

For cooking gear, I take a small aluminum coffee pot and an old Army mess kit or Boy Scout kit. I do 99 percent of my cooking over an open fire but if there is a fire ban, I take a Camp Chef backpacking stove.

For meals, I eat flavored oatmeal for breakfast and make PBJ sandwiches for lunch. Take some Lipton tea to flavor your water, and I use motel packs for coffee. They’re light-weight and free. Then for dinner, I splurge and buy some MRE backpacking type of meals. I just discovered a new company named Bushkas Kitchen, which has a variety of freeze-dried meals. I’m going to be testing these out next week.

Take a flashlight, and I just discovered SneakyHunter Bootlamps, which will be great for hiking in the dark. I’ve done it quite a few times, but it’s not real fun hiking in by yourself in the dark. Once on a 3-mile hike in, my light went out 500 yards down the trail.

Always take a pistol. There are just too many wolves, bears, cougars and moose not to. 

For fly fishing, I don’t pack in waders. They’re too bulky and heavy. I just wear some Chaco sandals or hiking boots. Although with the slippery rocks, you could justify wearing some wading boots. I wear some nylon shorts that will dry out fast.

This time of year, I expect to catch some lunker bull trout, so I’ll be throwing some black bead head wooly buggers. I’ll also use Elk Hair Caddis for the late evening hatch.

Writing this article has me excited. I’m ready to go. Usually my daughter goes with me but as mentioned above, she has already started school. Ugh. I also had a cow fall on me three weeks ago and crack my knee cap and break a rib. But a guy has to do what a guy has to do, and the show must go on, so I’ve gotta go.

If you see me gimping along, stop and carry my pack for a couple of miles. If this works, I may milk it for a while.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

Last year about this time, I wrote about my concern regarding teaching youth to shoot and hunt with rifle calibers that recoil hard enough to discourage them from shooting or hunting.

It seems many of us try to teach our children using the calibers we already own, which may have recoil that intimidates them and makes them close their eyes and flinch in anticipation of being pasted in the shoulder and jaw.

At the range, I have heard a couple of fathers tell their sons that big game hunting is done with high-powered rifles and they need to get used to the recoil of a high-powered rifle. I have also heard some smaller youth complain that the recoil of a .270, .308 or 30-06 Springfield hurts their shoulder and face.

I realize that all youth are not small in weight and size. I’ve seen my share of kids that are well over 100 pounds who seem to love .30-06s and also enjoy shooting dad’s .700- and .300-caliber magnums. However, I worry about youth who are intimidated by 20 foot-pounds or more of recoil and are being told to just get used to it. No one who is intimidated by what he or she is shooting is going to shoot that caliber very well.

Besides, there are calibers that will do a really good job on deer-size game but don’t make the shooter feel like he just went a couple of rounds with “Smoking Joe” Frazier.

In this column, I would like to suggest some calibers that will effectively harvest deer, pronghorn and even elk or moose at reduced ranges and are comfortable enough to shoot so that they don’t really intimidate smaller youth who want to hunt with their parents.

The .243 Winchester was introduced by Winchester in 1955 and has been a popular deer rifle for youth and adults because of its accuracy, retained energy at 250 yards and its relatively mild recoil. With a 100-grain bullet, a 7.5-pound rifle in a .243 Winchester recoils at 8.8 foot-pounds of energy and retains enough velocity and energy to harvest deer or antelope at 250 yards.

A 6mm Remington fires a 100-grain bullet out of the muzzle of an 8-pound rifle at 3,100 feet per second and recoils back at the shooter with 10 foot-pounds of energy.

A youth hunter in his mid to late teens might do very well with a .240 Weatherby Magnum firing a 100-grain bullet at a muzzle velocity of 3,406 feet per second. The .240 Weatherby Magnum does extend the effective range of the 100-grain bullet, but also recoils at 17.9 foot-pounds of energy, which is about the recoil energy of a .270 Winchester and may intimidate smaller youth.

The .257 Roberts is a very accurate and effective caliber in the hands of a good marksman.

An 8-pound .257 Roberts has a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second with a 120-grain bullet and recoils at 10.7 foot-pounds of energy.

The .25-06 Remington is popular among youth hunters and fires a 120-grain bullet at a muzzle velocity of 3,000 feet per second, while generating 12.5 foot-pounds of recoil. The .25-06 will retain adequate energy for deer and pronghorn out to 400 yards or a little more.

The .257 Weatherby Magnum with recoil of 15.1 foot-pounds of energy with a 120-grain bullet may intimidate smaller youth. However, I’ve seen those in their mid and late teens handle it very well. It is accurate and hits hard out to 400 yards or more.

Several years ago, my son showed me a 6.5 Creedmoor he bought for his wife. It is very accurate and recoils about 3 to 9 foot-pounds more than the .243 Winchester. Last year, I saw a young boy who weighed about 90 pounds shooting a 6.5 Creedmoor rifle his father bought him for his first season deer hunting. He kept nailing the center of his target time after time with little noticeable recoil. His father told me that he was ready to have the boy sight in to hit about an inch high at 300 yards so he could place his shot in the vital area with a center of mass hold out to 400 yards. I think recoil was pretty close to 11 or 12 foot-pounds of energy from the muzzle of a 7.5 pound rifle and this youngster was really having fun with it. Commercial ammunition for the 6.5 Creedmoor is pretty expensive, though, so that might be something to consider.

Up until the 1960s, Winchester was advertising the .30-30 Winchester as America’s favorite deer rifle. The little lever-action .30-30 probably was America’s favorite deer rifle until close to 1960, but things started to change. I believe other calibers such as the .308 Winchester started to replace the .30-30 as America’s favorite deer rifle. Still, the .30-30 firing a 170-grain bullet at 2,200 feet per second muzzle velocity remains a very effective 250-yard deer rifle and recoils with 11 foot-pounds of energy. Hornady recently came out with a more efficient 160-grain bullet in their “LeverEvolution” series of bullets that should make the .30-30 more effective out to 250 yards. A lot of young hunters, including yours truly, shot their first two or three deer with the old lever-action .30-30 Winchester.

The .308 Winchester as mentioned above is a very popular deer rifle. When shooting 150-grain bullets out of a 7.5-pound rifle, muzzle velocity is about 2,800 feet per second at the muzzle and recoil is close to 15.8 foot-pounds of energy. Going up to 165- or 180-grain bullets increases recoil energy to 17.5 and 18.1 foot pounds, which is probably the upper limit of recoil that won’t intimidate some youth.

Felt recoil, or the shooter’s impression of how much recoil they are experiencing when shooting their rifles, is pretty subjective. However, youth that are being introduced to big game rifles will generally really be aware of the recoil the rifle is generating, and may complain if recoil is much over 12 foot-pounds of energy. By the time they are in their mid to late teens, most youth hunters will have become pretty comfortable with .270s, .308s and .30-06s.

The 20 foot-pounds of energy generated by the .30-06 is often as much recoil as most adults can stand. I have about three grandchildren in their late teens who can handle my .300 Weatherby Magnum very well, as well as several that won’t shoot anything that recoils more than a .30-06. Felt recoil is an important issue with most youth, as well as most adults.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

Last week, my wife, Katy, and I ran over to northwest Colorado to check out the Wild Skies Flat Tops Cabin, which is a couple of hours southeast of Craig. If you want to be off the grid, you ought to check them out. They do have Wi-Fi, but everything is solar charged. There are no electrical lines running back there.

Thirty years ago, I blackpowder hunted a lot north of there but never in this particular area. Proprietors’ Chip and Lisa Bennet claim that the Flat Tops are home to the largest herd of elk in America. I’m trying to figure out how I can go back archery elk hunting in a couple of weeks, but I have gotten slammed with projects worse than ever. It’s a scary world when you have a hard time fitting in an elk hunt!

When Katy and I arrived, we were greeted by Lisa and her family. They have three delightful, well-mannered kids who were a joy to be around. We unloaded and then sat around the table strategizing for a bit. Then I whipped out some rib-eyes that I’d brought, and we grilled them with corn on the cob, and Lisa heated up a pan of yams. We had a great meal and a pleasant evening.

Their family is very much into working with ways to preserve the wild mustangs, and they shared a lot of those ideas with us. Lisa is in hopes that Bass Pro Shops will build a store in Craig and preserve the local museum and incorporate it with a mustang project.

It soon got dark and they had to head home and back to their lives. The next morning, Katy and I dropped down to the river below the cabin. Even though it is a pretty large river, like a lot of mountain creeks and rivers, it was brushy and you had to mainly fish the holes. I was wanting to teach Katy how to fly fish, but it would have been a tough river to learn on.

So we soon decided to hike up the mountain and look for signs of elk. We hiked around a while and then decided to go exploring. We headed up the road through the Routt National Forest, and I assume towards the Flat Tops, but I didn’t have a map so I’m not sure.

We had a great day just being together in the high country. I’ve been gone a lot lately, and it looks like it’s going to get worse, so it was good to get away with my little bride. We didn’t get to stay near as long as we would have liked to have.

I had ordered some Bushka’s Kitchen freeze-dried meals for lunches while we were hiking, but they didn’t make it in before we left. I’ve got a backpacking trip lined up in a few weeks, so we’ll test them out then. It’s good to see another backpacking meal company hit the market.

There are a lot of high mountain lakes, rivers and creeks I’d like to have fished. To adequately fish the high mountain lakes, you need a canoe or small jon boat. Or what else works great are float tubes. It is hard to wade a lot of the lakes because they have a soft silty bottom and you sink down pretty deep before you can get out very far.

Then there are a million trails to hike, mountains to scout and all of the high mountain adventures to hit. I took my Riton Optics binoculars and got to do a little glassing but not near as much as I wanted to. I was hoping to be able to do some serious scouting for elk but we just ran out of time.

If you want to take your family on a getaway to a super nice lodge you ought to check out Wild Skies. More information can be found at wildskies.com. The Flat Tops Cabin can sleep up to 14 people. It’d be a great cabin for family vacations, snowmobiling, fishing or elk hunting. It is a super nice cabin and a great place to use as a base camp.

To elk hunt, it would be a self-guided hunt. I think the smart thing would be to do a family vacation in July or August and combine it as an elk scouting trip. Then run back to elk hunt.

Well, our time soon ran out, and we loaded up and had to run over to Malad and visit Ron and Betsy Spomer for a few days on their Dancing Springs Ranch. That was a fun, kicked-back time to see our old friends. We did some shooting, filming and doodling. Then it was time to head back home and pound on the keyboard and crank out some articles. Don’t let the summer slip away before you do one more backcountry trip.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

I have never hunted with a licensed outfitter or guide in Idaho because I grew up hunting with my father and two of his brothers: my uncle Floyd and uncle Veral. My uncle Floyd owned a sporting goods store in Blackfoot when I was growing up in the mid-1950s and early ’60s. My father bought our .22 rifles and our big game hunting rifles as well as our 12-gauge shotguns from uncle Floyd’s shop.

My father and uncles hauled me all over Idaho hunting different areas each year. One of the most important things I learned was the need to scout possible hunting areas during the months before hunting season arrived so I knew where game could be found and where I wanted to set up a camp.

My favorite trips during those years were generally to the central mountain regions of Idaho. In the years since, I have scouted and hunted areas in south and Southeast Idaho also, using the skills that were taught to me by my father and uncles, who learned the skills from my grandfather Merkley.

Today it seems that many hunters feel too busy to spend time scouting, so they get what information they can from other hunters, many of whom haven’t scouted either, but remember seeing deer somewhere. They then head for their chosen area and hope they will luck into a deer or elk. Some may very well get lucky, but my impression is many come home disappointed.

If that sounds anything like your experience, maybe hunting with a outfitter and one or two of the guides that work for the concession is just the thing you need to find and fill your hunting tag.

If so, you should look up the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association website and get a list of outfitters and guides that work in the area or unit you want to hunt.

With the most square miles of wilderness hunting in the lower United States, Idaho has more public land for hunting than any other state except for Alaska.

IOGA has registered outfitters in every part of Idaho who have been guiding people from all over the United States and many foreign countries on big game hunting trips. They can certainly do the same for busy Idaho hunters also.

IOGA member outfitters will provide all equipment necessary for getting into the hunting area, food during the trip, tents or shelter, as well as guides that know where to find game and how to cape an animal in preparation for taxidermy services. The hunter usually provides his own rifle, ammunition or bow and arrows. What the guide won’t do is shoot your game for you. The guide’s job is to put you in a position to shoot your game yourself.

Interestingly, women make up 25 percent of the guiding industry. Most guides are white water guides, or fishing guides, with hunting guides coming in third in terms of what guides like to specialize in doing. Most guides in Idaho are full time for two to 10 years, who work six to 10 weeks a year and make 50 percent of their yearly income guiding. Two-thirds of the Idaho guides are registered Idaho residents.

In a recent survey, most guides indicated they would like more training in entertainment skills and more training in emergency medicine. In the same survey, most guides listed conservation as their top priority.

You can even join IOGA as an individual associate member for $25 even if you aren’t an outfitter or guide. The benefits are free listing in the IOGA directory, annual meeting with educational sessions, update on issues, exhibitors, fun and camaraderie, and information on IOGA activities related to state and federal agency and legislative issues, group marketing and all relevant topics.

I realize that joining IOGA won’t be of interest to many, but I thought I might as well mention it in case there was some interest.

If you would like a free full color directory of IOGA member outfitters, You can request one from their website, ioga.org, or by calling 1-800-49-IDAHO.

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

My daughter and I just got back from an awesome fishing trip at Plummer’s Arctic Lodges up in the Northwest Territories. Lorane Poersch introduced me to Chummy Plummer four or five years ago when I was conducting some seminars at the SCI Convention in Vegas. I liked Chummy right away. Lorane wanted me to do an interview with him and write an articles. So that’s how that I met him.

Chummy started guiding when he was 13 years old — and realize, this fishing isn’t on your friendly neighborhood crappie fishing lake. It is up in the Northwest Territories, which, as you can imagine, is some remote country.

Chummy’s granddad and dad Warren owned several businesses in Flin Flon, Manitoba. (Uniquely, my father-in-law fished north of Flin Flon for over 20 years and took my wife there every summer as a kid and later took me there as well.) Later they happened to fish on Great Slave Lake. They got there by a canoe and a 2 ½ horsepower motor. They fell in love with the spot and later built the Plummer’s Great Slave Lake Lodge, which is where we fished this week.

They’ve expanded, and now they own the Plummer’s Great Bear Lake Lodge, Plummer’s Great Slave Lake Lodge, Plummer’s Trophy Lodge, Plummer’s Tree River Outpost and the Plummer’s Artic Circle Outpost, which is a self-guided lodge. The Tree River Outpost is home to the largest Arctic char on the planet and flows into the Arctic Ocean.

So, there’s a little history and facts. Now for the fun stuff. We flew into Yellow Knife, which is the capitol of the NWT and grabbed a room. The next morning, we jumped on a plane and got to the lodge in time for a hot breakfast. We then bought fishing licenses, met our guide and took off fishing. The whole organization is super efficient, and the staff is over-the-top friendly. Kolby and I drew Darrel Smith for our guide.

Our main target was lake trout, which is what the lake is famous for, but there were plenty of graylings and you can also find some Northerns, which I love to fish for. Of course, Kolby caught the largest Northern and lake trout.

Big spoons are popular and work well up there. I took some jigs and plastics, but they weren’t big enough. We also had good luck on a lure called a Bondy.

The lake trout fishing was unbelievable. I do not know how many we caught and at least three times had double hook-ups. Needless to say, the fishing was everything we could have hoped for.

The week before, it had been cold, which you’d expect for being up near the Arctic, but for us the weather was great — in fact, we got sunburned every day! I did not expect that but was pleasantly surprised. Of course, the mornings and evenings were cool, especially when zipping out 15 miles to our fishing holes. We used Frogg Togg Pilot Pro Jackets and Pilot Pro Bibs to block the wind. Then to keep warm under the Frogg Toggs we wore XGO base layers. We had originally taken some Fish Monkey Pro 365 Guide Gloves to protect our hands while fighting and handling big fish, but a side blessing was that they also helped keep our hands warm while zipping around in the boat and protected us from getting sun burned.

Canadian shore lunches are legendary as discussed in a previous article.

They say it gets dark two hours per day this time of year, but that was long after I went to bed, so I never saw it. Needless to say, you could fish yourself to death. Some kids caught plenty of graylings off the dock. In fact, one kid was fighting a grayling and a lake trout crashed the party and spooled him.

I could talk about the trip forever. Seeing a big gray wolf on the bank that sprawled out and looked at us. Or one of the other groups saw some musk ox. But to summarize, if you want to catch a boatload of fish, check out Plummer’s Lodges. It was a great father-daughter bonding time. We discussed and solved a lot of the world’s problems!

More information can be found at plummerslodges.com.

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.

One of the biggest mistakes I made growing up was to not take a couple of my paychecks and buy a .270 Winchester rifle for hunting deer, elk and moose.Many of my friends had purchased .270 Winchesters, and I thought they were excellent rifles, but I ha…