Welcome to The Cold Bore – Park the Truck. Come Eat.
This is not a gear catalog. It is not a news feed. It is not written by a marketing department or optimized for clicks. It is a personal blog from a West Coast hunter and shooter with over twenty years in the field, written for people who care about doing this right: legally, ethically, and with some honest thought behind the choices they make.
The name has two layers. A cold bore shot is the first shot from an unheated barrel. One chance. Real conditions. No warm-up. That is how hunting actually works. A cold head is the same idea applied to gear, technology, and tradition: measured thinking, no hype, no decisions made in the heat of the moment because something looked good in a catalog.
One shot. Clear head. No warm-up.
Where It All Started
I was driving home after a pheasant hunt. My district, familiar roads, window down. Then I spotted him on the shoulder: a guy in an orange shirt, two German Wirehaired Pointers at his side, standing like he had nowhere to be.
I slowed down. Don’t ask me why. Maybe the dogs. Maybe something in the way he stood.
I pulled over, rolled down the window, said hello. We talked right there: me in the truck, him on the shoulder, both tired, both hungry, both with birds. Turned out we had hunted the same club that day. Just never crossed paths in the field.
We talked about the hunt, about the dogs, about how the day went. Then he looked at me for a second and said: park your truck, come inside, my wife already has dinner on the table.
I parked.
That was the day I met Valery and his wife Galina. They are the age of my parents. What they have meant to me since then goes well beyond that first meal. Mentors you don’t choose. They just show up at the right moment. We are still close friends to this day.
Three Generations Behind Me, One Country Ahead
I came to California carrying something most people here didn’t know I had. My father was a trapper. My grandfather was a trapper. Hunting and shooting were never hobbies in my family. They were just part of how life worked.
But the United States is a different country. Different laws, different culture, different conversation around everything connected to firearms and hunting. California especially: more restrictions, more nuance, more things that are technically legal but culturally require a guide to navigate.
My principle then and now: everything has to be legal and ethical. If a law seems wrong, work to change it through the right channels. In this country that actually works. That is one of the things that drew me here and still inspires me. The Second Amendment is not just a line of text. It is a philosophy about the relationship between a citizen and a state. I took it seriously from the first day.
But to operate within the law, you first have to understand the law. And to understand a hunting culture that isn’t yours, you need someone who already lives in it.
The People Who Taught Me
Alex
The first was Alex. We met by chance in the field. He started bringing me along on hunts. No lectures, no condescension. He simply showed me: this is what you can do here, this is what you cannot, this is what nobody will arrest you for but nobody does either. The difference between the letter of the law and the culture of hunting. That is rare and valuable knowledge, and he passed it on without making it a lesson.
Valery
Then came Valery with his dogs on the shoulder of the road.
Valery is an orthopedic trauma surgeon. Thirty-plus years in the operating room. Hands that have put people back together. A hunter with a depth of experience I couldn’t properly measure at the time because I didn’t yet know what to look for.
He taught me patience in the field. How to read a dog. That a good hunt is not measured in bird count.
But there is one thing he will never do. Valery refuses to field dress a bear. Flat out. He says it is too close to human anatomy. The proportions, the structure. Something about it crosses a line he has drawn for himself and he does not cross it.
We give him a hard time about it sometimes, the way you do with people you have spent enough time with in the field. He smiles and holds his position.
I have thought about that more than once. A man who works professionally with the human body drew exactly that line for himself. Not out of weakness. Out of knowing something most of us don’t. His ethics grew from his experience. That deserves respect, not an explanation.
Jim
Jim I met online, in a Jagdterrier group. It is a rare breed in the United States, especially on the West Coast, and the people who run them tend to know each other at least by name. We traded messages for a while. Then I found myself in Wyoming and we arranged to meet at a truck stop in Laramie.
Jim is a professional trapper. Old school in the most direct sense of the phrase.
We talked about hunting and I mentioned that pronghorn was a dream hunt for me. Always had been, never quite happened.
He didn’t talk around it. He said: put in for the draw, here is the zone. I put in. I drew. Jim invited me out.
What I found there was a different world. Not better or worse than hunting coastal California or the Sierra Nevada. Just different. Open country, different scale, different relationship to distance and time. Everything thought through. Everything tested by years of practice. No wasted movement. No gear for the sake of gear.
Jim gave words to something I had been feeling but couldn’t name. He doesn’t chase new marketing. His question is simple: do I actually need this, or did someone sell me the idea that I need it? Minimalism and practicality. A cold head about every choice.
I drove home with coolers full of pronghorn. But that wasn’t the most important thing I brought back. The most important thing was the kind of experience and feeling that stays with you permanently. And one more confirmation of something I had noticed before: the right people show up at the right time. You just have to stop the truck.
A Note on Hunting Cultures
A hunter from coastal California and a hunter from Wyoming look at shooting distance in completely different ways. Both are right. Different country taught them different things.
Ethics don’t come from nowhere. They grow from terrain, from tradition, from what a person has seen and survived. When you understand that, you stop arguing and start learning.
I am curious about how other people do things. Not just what they do but why. Where it came from. What is behind it. Every time I have understood the logic behind someone else’s approach, I became better. Not because I copied it. Because the picture got larger.
That is the spirit this site is written in.
What You Will Find Here
Right now The Cold Bore has two main sections.
Field Notes
Hunting stories, trip reports, upland birds, dogs, and the people and traditions that make this culture worth writing about. West Coast focus: blacktail and mule deer, black bear, pronghorn, quail, pheasant, grouse, chukar. Honest outcomes, real country, no manufactured drama.
Gear
Honest gear assessment after real field use. Optics, knives, packs, boots, clothing, electronics, trail cameras, dog gear, range equipment. The format is simple: here is what I paid, here is what I got, here is where it earned its place and where it didn’t. No more than three or four affiliate links per article, and only on gear I actually run.
What’s Coming
This site will grow. Shooting as a field skill. Ballistics from a hunter’s perspective. Handloading as a craft. And eventually a community section built around the idea that the best knowledge in this world travels person to person, the way it always has.
No timeline on any of that. This is a personal blog, not a content factory. When something is ready and worth writing, it will be here.
The One-Line Version
If you are at the beginning of your journey, this site has what I wish I’d had when I started. If you are already experienced, maybe you’ll find something that makes you nod, or look at something familiar from a slightly different angle.
Either way, welcome to The Cold Bore.
One shot. Clear head. No warm-up.
It’s good to be friends with you, and I’m glad we met before on the hunting field. I like how you told our story and put everything in a good order about Valeriy and me. We learned many good things from each other, and I hope we stay friends and meet again someday on a hunting field to have another good hunting experience together.
Alex S.