Local landowners, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) volunteers, and the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources have worked for decades to bring elk back to the Old Dominion State. That work has paid off. For the first time in at least 166 ...
Big Game
A Conversation With Big-Game Hunter Britt Longoria
Some people are born with an untamable wanderlust and thirst for adventure, such that no conventional office job or traditional nine-to-five will ever satisfy them. Britt Longoria embodies this mentality. Raised on the southern coast of Maine, she ...
Get Dialed In on OTC Tags While Waiting for That Dream Draw Tag
The bugling just didn’t stop. I’m not exactly sure how many bulls there were altogether, but there were a bunch, all competing for volume. Throughout the morning I saw two bulls and almost had as many shot opportunities. I chased bugles until noon ...
Grizzly Bear Lured by Improper Food Storage, Camper Fined $6,000
Close encounters between campers and grizzly bears rarely end well, especially when food and garbage are involved. On July 20, an Idaho woman, Belinda J. Arvidson, was fined almost $6,000 after it was determined she “failed to properly store food and ...
750-Pound Bull Moose Removed From Colorado Parking Garage
What happens when a moose decides a parking garage is its new hangout? Well, for this 750-pound bull, it meant getting a free ride to a new location about 130 miles away. Why? The young animal — estimated to be between 2 and 3 years old — was ...
How To Make Bear Brats
We sat under an old blue tarp trying to stay dry in a stout rain while glassing a narrow drainage in the Bitterroots. I had just killed a good bear in Idaho a few days before and pressed on into Montana hoping to tag No. 2. “What are you going to do ...
New Jersey Effectively Shuts Down Bear Hunting for 2021
Anti-hunting activists have won their long battle to ban bear hunting in New Jersey, at least for this coming 2021 season. New Jersey, known more for turnpikes and urban sprawl, has the densest black bear population in the country, according ...
WATCH: Grizzly Bear Versus Wolves
As far as who-would-win fights go, a scrap between a big-ass grizzly bear and a pack of wolves rates right up there at the top. Except we know the answer to this one. Bears and wolves generally don’t mess with each other unless food forces their ...
6% of Incorrect Americans Say They Could Beat a Grizzly Hand-to-Hand
I'll admit, after a beer or two, my perception of my own strength and toughness can get a bit inflated. But I can recall no time in my life when I’ve ever considered myself more than a would-be morsel to a 600-pound fur-covered battering ram with ...
1st Female Grizzly in 40 Years Collared in Washington
When it comes to playing hard to get, female grizzlies in Washington state are pros. In 40 years of tracking grizzly bears as part of recovery efforts in the Evergreen State, US Fish and Wildlife Service officials have captured and collared four ...
Montana Grizzly That Pulled Woman From Tent and Killed Her is Dead
A 65-year-old California woman was pulled from her tent in the middle of the night and mauled to death by a grizzly in Ovando, Montana. Officials reported Friday morning that they have located and killed the bear. According to The Associated ...
Search Continues for Suspect Who Decapitated Yellowstone Grizzly Bear
If you stumbled upon a dead grizzly, would you chop off its head and paws? Someone did just that, and state and federal authorities are trying to determine who. In June, a 25-year-old male Yellowstone grizzly bear dubbed No. 394 was found dead ...
Alaska Seeks Volunteers for Moose Roadkill Program
Starting Thursday, you could help clean roadkill moose off Alaskan highways and fill your freezer at the same time. Since the Alaska Moose Federation closed in November 2020, Kenai Peninsula charities and other organizations have been tasked with ...
Confessions of a First-Time Mountain Hunter
I thought I’d trained and prepared enough for this hunt. I was very wrong. Like many outdoorsmen, I’ve long entertained aspirations of hunting big game—elk, bear, sheep—in the mountainous backcountry. I envisioned loading up my pack with a week’s ...
The Bear: Hunting Ursa Major in the Idaho Wilderness
We saw him the first night. Kurtis sat with his bow. The bear stood motionless in the alders. Quarters like tree stumps anchored him to this steep side of the mountain. His rough coat cut a saw-blade silhouette in the dying light. He had no neck and ...
Wild Goats: Four Feral Hunts for the People
Ibex in Spain. Markhor in Pakistan. Tur in Azerbaijan. Hunts for Capra are some of the wildest, rarest, most expensive, and most sought-after mountain adventures on Planet Earth. Tags are limited. Logistics are complicated. Costs can rival the price ...
Global Initiative Is Set To Map Big-Game Migration Routes
Every winter, migratory ungulates searching for forage travel distinct pathways ingrained in them since birth, traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles as they move between their summer and winter ranges. Man-made obstacles, such as roads and ...
Yellowstone Grizzly Attacks: The Future of Hunting Western Brown Bears
The iconic Yellowstone grizzly bear is charging back into the news — and the halls of Congress. On April 17, a backcountry guide fishing north of West Yellowstone National Park died after being attacked by an old boar grizzly protecting a ...
Alaska Might Close Caribou and Moose Hunt to Nonresident Hunters
A new proposal could close two game units in Alaska to caribou and moose hunting for anyone not considered a subsistence hunter. This Friday, April 23, the US Department of the Interior will hold a public information hearing about the proposed ...
Catching the Bug: Ike Eastman Explains His Love of Antelope Hunting
The Eastman name is synonymous with Western big-game hunting. Gordon Eastman, the family patriarch, was an avid hunter and the original pioneer of the outdoor film industry. Through his early productions, he introduced much of America to the ...
How to Make A Slow-Cooked Pulled Venison Roast
When speaking of venison recipes, tenderloins and backstraps tend to be the heroes, with some version of sausage or stew meat not far behind. The good-old venison roast simply doesn’t get the love and attention it deserves. In the slow-cooked meat ...
6 Crazy Facts About the Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo
The sounds of drilling and blasting amid the big rock cliffs over the Tsavo River for the Kenya-Uganda Railroad didn’t scare off the big cats of Africa — it did just the opposite. At night when the bridge construction stopped, and the laborers ...
The Experiment: A Late-Season Ohio Whitetail Hunt
The plan was laid in August. To mark the launch of Free Range American, we’d give away a world-class whitetail hunt on one of the largest contiguous farms in the Midwest — and swag out two readers with piles of gear and goodies from Black Rifle ...
Back from the brink: The fall and resurgence of the American bison
The American West once had its own sea: A great, sweeping, endless ocean of waving grasslands, expanding across the western United States from Canada to Mexico. It was a vast land of pristine and fertile ground, stretching off from horizon to ...
St. Patrick’s Day Moose Meat Shepherd’s Pie
North America is full of large and — if dealt with properly — tasty ungulates. One of which is the grand ole dinosaur of them all, the moose. Moose is a main staple at my table because of the incredible amount of meat from the big Canadian bull I ...
A Beginner’s Guide to Shed Antler Hunting
Spring is my second favorite season. The winter weather is finally loosening its grip. The rivers are breaking up, the grass is starting to poke through the snow patches on south-facing slopes, and bears are crawling out of their dens. Yet my ...
How ‘Dances With Wolves’ Changed Westerns Forever
The evolution of a film genre usually happens gradually, with different films offering incremental innovations or outside-the-box thinking until they all add up to a significant gear shift. After all, genre fans are genre fans for a reason: They like ...
How To Stay Safe in Bear Country
Like most wild animals, bears have an innate and healthy fear of humans. If you’ve ever hiked through the Appalachian Mountains, the Northern Rockies, or the Alaskan bush, odds are you crossed paths with wild bears but never knew it. Bear attacks are ...
Bison Sliders With Air-Fried Sweet Potatoes
The American buffalo — or yanasi in Cherokee, tatanka in Lakota, and scientifically Bison bison — has provided food for native North Americans for millennia, as well as served as the wildlife icon for the continent itself. In the not-so-distant past, ...
No Fences: Hunting Lions in Tanzania
International hunting videographer and photographer Dallas Hemeyer recently sat down with Evan Hafer on the Free Range American podcast to discuss the thrill of hunting lions in Tanzania. While all lion hunting is exciting, Hemeyer explained how ...