No animal embodies the spirit of the American West like the pronghorn. Though tawny in build, these fleet-footed plains dwellers are hearty critters, and thanks to sound management practices across the Western US, populations are thriving. Their ...
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‘Rona Deer: USDA Study Finds COVID-19 in Whitetail Population
A disturbing number of whitetail deer are testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a study done by the Department of Agriculture. So far, the CDC has not declared mask mandates for wildlife. Even though it ...
Elk Hunting on Public Land: How To Build a 3-Year Strategy for a New Area
Public-land elk hunting is hard. The average success rate is below 10%, yet more and more hunters head West to give it a shot every year. Some find success in year one, but most don’t. That's why I like to utilize a three-year strategy when ...
Upland Hunting Starter Kit: Gun, Boots, Vest, and Skills
Upland hunting requires learning two skills: walking and shooting. You should already know how to walk. Then you give yourself over to the nose of a dog. That’s all there is to it. Get the gun and boots right, add a blaze orange vest to carry ammo ...
Davy Crockett: The Silver-Screen History of a Frontier Legend
Davy Crockett was one of the biggest characters to come out of the American frontier and one of the few to achieve national fame while still alive. While many stories circulated about the bear hunter from Tennessee amounted to tall tales, his actual ...
How to Trap Critters in Cages
Trapping in my home state of Colorado looks a bit different than it does in many other states. Body grips, leg holds, and snares were outlawed back in 1996, so trappers are confined to using exclusively cage traps. Having been born in the year they ...
Wild Game Recipes: 5 Ways To Make Freezer Space for Hunting Season
As summer days dwindle, so does the cache of wild game meat in my freezer. By August, all the backstraps, inner loins, and other prime cuts are gone. Less desired cuts sit on a lonely shelf or two like sad emo kids at a high school dance: the shank ...
Add Core Training to Your Rucking Routine for Elk Hunting Prep
September is so close you can almost hear the bugling of a bull elk in the distance. If all goes to plan, you’ll be hiking that big boy out of the mountains in quarters. You’ve been rucking to prepare, but adding some simple core training will have ...
Elk Hunting Returns to Virginia for First Time Since the Mid-1800s
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 ...
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 ...
An American Classic: How To Make Squirrel Potpie
Potpie is the definition of American home cooking. While traditionally made with chicken, squirrel is a fantastic wild-game substitute. The meat takes well to a variety of recipes and cooking techniques and it can be used in place of poultry, rabbit, ...
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 ...
The West Is Burning: How Wildfires Are Impacting Fish and Wildlife
Is the West ever NOT on fire?! As of Tuesday, 6,000 more wildfires have burned almost a million more acres since Jan. 1, 2021, than in the same time period last year. That adds up to 36,796 fires and 2,823,453 acres so far — and there are ...
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 ...
Cheesy Good Classic Wild Dove Poppers
For years, I avoided wild-game poppers. I thought they were pretty unimaginative. Deep down, I knew they were delicious, but the cliche appetizer wasn’t the kind of thing I got excited about. But as the dove breasts in my freezer reached the verge of ...
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 ...
Starter Kit: How To Hunt Rattlesnakes
Over the years, I’ve found myself hunting almost year-round — turkeys in spring, bugling elk in September, whitetails and bears in fall, and predators in winter — but there’s always been a lull during summer. Then, I found rattlesnake ...
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 ...
Star-Spangled Burgers: 3 Wild Game Masterpieces for the Fourth of July
To celebrate Independence Day, we’ve put together three original recipes for wild game burgers that will help you win this Fourth of July weekend — a basic cheeseburger for weirdos unsure about venison, an Americana steakhouse classic, and a ...
Free Range Q&A With Surfer, Hunter, Filmmaker, Badass Mark Healey
If you asked Captain America to pull together a list of what he does when he’s not saving the world, it would fall short of the resume of Mark Healey. Professional big-wave surfer, free diver, spearfisherman, conservationist, sky diver, ...
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 ...
‘The Comfort Crisis’: This Book Should Be Your Next Read
I pull the rifle’s trigger, an action that sends its striker pin into the round’s primer, igniting the powder and creating a violent release of energy that pushes a bullet 22 inches down the barrel at 1,772 miles an hour. The herd collectively ...
Oregon Bill Would Ban Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, and Animal Agriculture
Initiative Petition 13, or IP13, was filed in Oregon in November by a Portland animal-rights activist with almost 1,100 sponsorship signatures. In the latest development, if by July 8 supporters collect the 112,020 signatures required to move the ...
Bowhunting Starter Kit: Everything You Need to Archery Hunt
So, you want to bowhunt. Welcome. It's rewarding, and in many ways, a life-changing pursuit. There is, however, a learning curve. There are several learning curves, actually, the first of which is gear, so using a bowhunting starter kit to make sure ...