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 ...
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Hemingway’s Top 5 Hunting and Fishing Stories
In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway wrote, “To me a heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in.” I like to think this version of heaven does ...
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 ...
Hunt All Year: Only Newbies And the Gainfully Employed Take a Month Off
There’s a certain sorrow that sets in when hunting season comes to a close. But you don’t have to pack up your camo just because you punched your last turkey tag. Throughout much of the country, invasive species have taken hold. Many of these do ...
Field to Table: Biscuits and Wild Turkey Gravy
Biscuits and wild turkey gravy opened my eyes to the possibilities of wild-game cooking. I shot a bird that morning, and I decided to cook it up for a staff meal at the restaurant where I worked. My not-so-outdoorsy co-workers hammered it, then ...
Alaska Pilot and Hunting Guide Urban Rahoi Dies at 102
After more than 80 years in the air, hunting guide and pilot Urban Rahoi of Fairbanks, Alaska, died last week at the age of 102. The Michigan native lived life to the fullest after flying to the Last Frontier with his wife, Vienna, following his ...
Seeing in Animal Vision: The John Barklow Approach to Camouflage
John Barklow is a retired Navy diver with more than 20 years of experience operating the cold-weather training facility for Naval Special Warfare in Kodiak, Alaska. Barklow also is an accomplished big-game hunter and product manager for Sitka’s Big ...
Off Script Q&A with Lee Kjos: Outdoor Photographer, Waterfowl Legend
“Way back when I was a 20-year-old snot-nosed kid, I could have photographed the Allman Brothers. But an early cold front sent a wad of mallards south from Saskatchewan the morning prior. “Had plans to shoot Willie Nelson at the Saint ...
The 7 Oldest Pope & Young Archery Records
If you’ve spent any time with old-guard archery hunters at the local greasy spoon or in the garage after a day in the field, you’ve heard the words “there was a time when” on more than one occasion. Those words are faithfully followed by stories of ...
DIY Public Land .410 Turkey Slam in the First 2 Weeks of Turkey Season
Seth Gebo wasn’t planning to pull off one of the hardest things in turkey hunting. He connected with an Osceola in Florida on a buddy hunt a few days into the season. Then the lightbulb went off. With some last-minute plane tickets and a few hundred ...
Discover the Life-Altering, Mind-Melting Power of a Wild Turkey Cheesesteak
A good cheesesteak will make you question your whole life and then scoop another dollop of Cheez Whiz. It's like driving too fast or smoking a cigarette — part of the appeal is flirting with the inevitable. It’s not a matter of if it will kill you, ...
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 ...
Wild Turkey Banh Mi: An Outdoorsy, American Spin on a Vietnamese Classic
When the French colonized Vietnam, they brought their food with them. The baguette, pâté, crème caramel (or flan), and other culinary staples found their way into Vietnamese kitchens and melded into the already vibrant food culture. The Vietnamese ...
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 ...
How To Find and Hunt Military Bases in the United States
Quality hunting, trophy potential, habitat management, and easy access aren’t often associated with military bases, but they should be. Over my 15-year military career, I have lived on and hunted several Army installations. It’s opened my eyes to ...
Aldo Leopold: A Conservationist’s Life in Pictures
On a bench along the Wisconsin River sat Aldo Leopold, a revered conservationist and outspoken advocate for wildlife science. On any given day in the late 1930s, Leopold, although in poor health, would venture to his writing haven he and his ...
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 ...
7 Hunting Podcasts You Should Be Listening To
In the not-so-distant past, if you didn’t have a mentor afield, you had to buy and read books or magazines to learn anything about hunting. While there’s still value in dead-tree media, the digital revolution has upended the old world order, and ...
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 ...
Starter Kit: Gear Up for Turkey Season
Turkey season generally goes something like this: you find them, you call them, you shoot them. It's simple to turkey hunt—but it's not easy. Spring is most hunters’ favorite time to chase turkeys because the season plays on the one chink in a ...
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 ...
Turkey Hunting the Pandemic, This Year and Last
“This corona deal sucks. Every parking lot is full and I heard four shots this a.m.” For once in my life as a turkey hunter, I could feel smug. The text came from a friend hunting the public area where I have chased spring gobblers for 30 years. ...
Proposed Legislation That Impacts the Outdoors and Outdoor Sports
Legislation that directly affects our legacy outdoor pastimes like hunting, fishing, and shooting is in a constant state of flux. In an effort to keep you informed, we’re pulling together a monthly roundup of national and state-level policy-making ...
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 ...