2022-23 California Wingshooter's Calendar

I am obsessed with wingshooting, but as organized as I am, I have a hard time remembering all the season dates and limits for all the birds in California. So I designed this visual calendar that puts literally 25+ pages of California regulations for upland and waterfowl shotgun seasons into a single, easy-to-read poster. I threw in rabbits and squirrels too, because why not?

If you or someone you know is a wingshooter in California, check it out - you can buy a copy for $5. It's a PDF that you can store on a mobile device so you can find answers in the field, even without cell signal - just zoom to see the details you need. Or, you can print it as a 16x20 poster.

The poster features:

• Shotgun seasons listed both as dates and bars along a timeline to easily determine what's legal on any given day (waterfowl seasons use color blind-friendly colors)
• Youth and veteran waterfowl hunt dates and eligibility requirements, and youth spring turkey hunt dates
• Daily, possession and season limits (including exceptions)
• Legal shooting hours (there are four sets!)
• License/validation requirements
• End-of-daylight-saving-time reminder
• Full- and new moon phases
• Purchase includes license for the buyer to download PDF to three devices, and to print one poster for the buyer's home and another for their club, if applicable (Fedex/Kinko's can print at poster size).
• Purchase securely, then download PDF immediately from the website, or later from an email that will be sent to you.

    

 © Holly A. Heyser 2022

The ethics of how we kill

After the folks at Artemis Sportswomen read my To The Bone essay, "Killing How I'd Like to Be Killed," they invited me to be a guest on their podcast to dig into the topic a little more.

Wow, did we go deep!

Ashley Chance, Morgan Harrell and I had an INCREDIBLE conversation about hunting culture, the ethics of how we kill and thinking outside of our internal boundaries.

Click here to check out the podcast - show notes and links galore!

© Holly A. Heyser 2022

A new joint venture: To The Bone

It's been almost 10 years since I ended my old blog, NorCal Cazadora. While I have found many other venues for my writing since then, none have been the right place for a lot of the most serious stuff on my mind - the big questions about how and why we interact with nature as hunters.

Blogs as they were back then have either disappeared or morphed into straight-up websites. Facebook has become the place where discussions happen, but woe unto you if you write a blog-length Facebook post. Instagram is a place for pretty pictures, not intellectual discovery.

Then came Substack. Like traditional blogs, Substack is a platform for meaningful writing, but its delivery system is a built-in newsletter (not search engines), and its revenue model is subscriptions (not advertising or sponsorships). This, it turns out, is exactly what Hank and I had been looking for. Hank, too, used to enjoy putting thought-provoking posts on his blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, but that site is now more focused on the how-to of putting wild food on your table.

So, I'm excited to announce we have started a joint Substack newsletter called To The Bone. Click on over to check it out - there is a smattering of free posts to sample, and you can be a paid or unpaid subscriber. Subscriptions cost $5 a month or $50 a year.

 

Why should you have to pay for anything when I used to write at no cost to you on NorCal Cazadora? Two reasons: No ads is the obvious one. But the important one is that our writing requires experience, thought and time, all of which have value.

It's been so gratifying getting back to the writing I love. There is much to explore. I hope you'll join us on the journey.

© Holly A. Heyser 2022

Op-ed: Ammunition background check disaster in California

When the California Legislature enacted an ammunition background check law in 2016, they said it would be convenient and easy for law-abiding gun owners to go through the check.

The state had three years to develop the regulations for carrying out background checks.

So what happened? The state finalized the regs literally the week before the law went into effect last summer, and did such a bad job on them that literally tens of thousands of ammo purchases by law-abiding gun owners have been rejected.

Click here to read what I've got to say about that.

© Holly A. Heyser 2019

Baiting, sluicing and other no-no's ... or are they? A column for Shotgun Life.

United States: Baiting ducks, illegal. Sluicing ducks, legal (but frowned upon). And on the other side of the Equator in New Zealand? The opposite.

Hunting in another country is a great opportunity not just to hunt new animals, but to think about laws and ethics and beliefs - why they exist, what benefit they have. That, my friends, is the subject of my latest column in Shotgun Life.

© Holly A. Heyser 2015