The new Pennsylvania state record for walleye almost went to hell in a bucket, literally. Richard "The Breeze" Nelson came home from a day of fishing with the giant fish in a 5-gallon bucket and was just getting ready to cut some big, fat fillets ...
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Mount Up: The American Range Wars Of The Wild West
The Wild West of lore ended a little after the turn of the 19th century, but it didn’t go down without a fight. As civilization made its final push into the West, farmers and ranchers had a war over whether the region would be open range or ...
Buck Turns to Prayer, Busts Into Church on Michigan Deer Season Opener
Millions of parishioners gather in fellowship on Sunday mornings, turning to prayer for their salvation. Fortunately, the Grace Sturgis non-denominational church was mostly empty the morning of the Michigan deer season opener. It seems that one ...
Cold Sharp Steel – A Guide To Putting A Razor Edge On Your Knife
The cliché exists because it is true. A dull knife is a dangerous knife. When our trusty blade doesn’t have the edge, it once did, we tend to force the cut a bit more. Or we simply reduce ourselves to sawing whatever it is we are trying to ...
Grand Canyon Bison Hunt Update: Epic Fail, 5 Animals Killed
Update: On Sept. 20, 2021, a highly managed bison hunt began on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the first-ever allowed in the national park. Twelve hunters from around the country were selected to participate in the hunt by the Arizona Game and ...
Prime Alaska Caribou Hunting Units Could be Closed
A tabled proposal to close two public Alaska hunting units for caribou and moose hunting to anyone not considered a subsistence hunter is once again moving forward. The Federal Subsistence Board deferred action on the closure of the Federal public ...
Smith and Wesson Founded Their Gun Company 165 Years Ago, Not 169
Smith & Wesson is one of the oldest gunmakers in the United States, but exactly how old depends on who you ask. According to Smith & Wesson’s website and official story, the company began in 1852 when Horace Smith and D. B. Wesson decided ...
Infrastructure Bill Includes Big Wins for Hunters and Anglers
President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684) on Nov. 15, 2021, finally pushing the hotly contested bipartisan infrastructure bill over the finish line. But it’s not all about roads, bridges, and train lines. ...
COVID Deer Update: Wisconsin Tells Hunters to Mask Up
In true, mountain-out-of-a-mole-hill government fashion, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services recently released updated COVID-19 guidance, urging hunters to wear a mask when field dressing any whitetail they’ve killed. Wisconsin deer hunting ...
Virginia Elk Are Back! Whitetail Hunter Tags 700-Pound Home-State Bull
Richard Bryson always takes two weeks’ vacation during Virginia’s early muzzleloader season, which gives him so extra time to work on filling his deer tags every year. He never expected to use one of those tags to check a bull elk, but that’s exactly ...
Two Hikers, Ages 83 and 5, Make Appalachian Trail History
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail was established in 1937. That’s just one year before M.J. Eberhart was born, and the 83-year-old just hiked his way into Appalachian Trail history. On November 6, 2021, he completed the trail’s roughly 2,200 ...
Poutine Recipe Twist: Use Wild Turkey Wing Meat and an Air Fryer
While french fries and hot gravy have been an American staple since at least the 1950s, it was our neighbors to the north who perfected it. French-Canadians began embellishing simple deep fried potatoes by adding not only gravy but also cheese curds ...
Chronic Wasting Disease Outbreak: Wyoming Collects 1,000s of Samples
A year after approving a new chronic wasting disease (CWD) management plan, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) is on track to collect the most lymph node samples ever in a single year. Since identifying its first cases of CWD in ...
Where Are The Deer Hunters? Michigan Hunting Licenses Down by 250K
A quarter-million hunters is a lot for one state to lose, but that’s exactly the deer-hunting license deficit Michigan is currently facing, based on the latest statistics. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reported deer hunting ...
Makah Tribe Could Resume 2,700-Year-Old Whale Hunting Tradition
Whale hunting is a tradition sacred to the Makah Tribe, an indigenous people who live on the Pacific Northwest Coast. But due to dwindling whale populations and a lengthy legal battle, the Makah have only had one whale hunt in nearly a ...
International Ass Kicking: Combat Sports By Country
There are a few things all cultures have in common: language, some type of bread, religion and fighting. Weapons made unarmed combat obsolete as a means of defending or expanding civilization long ago, but hand-to-hand fighting remains a celebrated ...
Too Efficient at Killing? Here Are the Top 5 Combat Shotguns
Americans began fielding shotguns on the battlefield during the final stretch of World War I and with great effect. German soldiers, who had regularly utilized chlorine gas on their enemies, found the wounds left by the weapons to be egregious and ...
DIY Alaska Caribou Hunt Checklist: How to Hunt the Dalton Highway
In May 2020, my friend Steve Opat of Alaskan Odysseys hit me with the news over the phone: “Change of plans. Alaska caribou hunt. We’re hunting the Haul Road.” We’d planned on going after moose that fall, but the ‘rona shut down access to the ...
Stallone’s Rocky 4 Director’s Cut Delivers More Heart, Less Synth
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the country was mostly locked down in 2020, Sylvester Stallone told Rocky fans that he’d been occupying his time by doing something that nobody really expected — completely recutting Rocky IV (1985), which is a fan ...
Ditch the Situps: Better Core Training for Hunters
Situps. Crunches. Russian Twists. These abdominal training dinosaurs still show up in hunting fitness programs even though they should have been left to fossilize long ago. While the burn they produce might feel productive, situps and their brethren ...
Classic Venison Osso Buco Is Stupid Simple and Guaranteed to Impress
Osso buco is one of those cliche wild game dishes that’s actually worthy of the hype. Traditionally made with veal shank, this Italian classic has found a devoted following among hunters using deer, elk, and other wild game — venison osso buco comes ...
Most Important Piece of Hunting Kit: Stay Warm in a Treestand
When I first started whitetail hunting, being cold was the No. 1 thing that’d get me out of a stand early. It didn’t matter how heavy or warm my clothing was; I still froze during November and December hunts. Every Hunter’s Ed test has the same ...
Watch: Hunter-Gatherers and the Meaning of Life
Few experiences in this world are more authentic or pure as hunting for sustenance — heading to the field with the knowledge that if you’re not successful, you don’t eat. For the Hadza, a tribe of roughly 1,500 true hunter-gatherers living in a ...
Rogue Red Stag Looking for Love in Georgia
State wildlife officials identified a massive elk-like animal caught on remote game cameras in four Georgia counties as a European red deer, aka a red stag. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources began receiving game camera images of the ...
New Documentary Chronicles Insane Mountain Climbing Record Quest
Climbing the 14 highest peaks in the world is an accomplishment very few mountaineers have achieved. Only 44 highly motivated souls, to be exact, have done it. Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja, a Nepalese mountaineer and former British army soldier, is the ...
Photos: What Old West Life Was Really Like in Tombstone, Arizona
Thanks to television shows like Deadwood and every movie that falls under the genre heading of "Western," we have a particular version of what life was like in towns like Tombstone, Arizona, in our American pop-culture collective mind. Of course, ...
Coast Guard Rescue: Alaska Hunters Stranded for 8 Days Safely Extracted
Seven hunters were safely returned home after a Coast Guard rescue helicopter extracted them from a fishing camp near Emmonak, Alaska, on Thursday, Nov. 5. The group, all from Pilot Station, were socked in by bad weather on their way home ...
Airgun Cleaning 101: How to Remove Rust
The airguns of today are not what they were when you were a kid plinking cans behind your parents’ house. The modern airgun is powerful, and some are capable of launching heavy .50 caliber projectiles very accurately. They are fine-tuned hunting ...
Why Germany Wanted to Ban America’s Trench Shotgun During WWI
By the end of World War I, the Winchester model 1897 pump-action shotgun had gained a nasty reputation across no man’s land on the Western Front. Despite the emergence of numerous novel weapons technologies, including mechanized armor, ...
Who Is the Best James Bond? All Six 007 Actors Ranked
In 1953, British intelligence officer and author Ian Fleming created one of the most recognizable characters of all time: James Bond. The fictional secret agent has been fighting for queen and country since first appearing in Fleming’s ...