Walking down a second-floor hallway of a decades-closed post office to the Interstellar Motors custom motorcycle shop, the last thing you’d expect to see is ballet studios with handmade welcome signs and a dozen moms shepherding pint-sized darlings ...
Latest Articles
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 ...
Boat Building: Pat Smith’s Handcrafted Cedar-Canvas Canoes
Pat Smith’s boat shop is not a place for those with OCD. One step inside and you get the smell of Captain Black pipe tobacco, cedar sawdust, epoxy, and varnish. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" drifts from the transistor radio in the back of the ...
7 of the Toughest Trail Races in America
If you think it’s totally normal to run until you hallucinate, reach total muscle failure, lose toenails, or can no longer feel your feet, you’re a perfect candidate for one of America’s toughest trail races. It takes a special type of person to ...
In Praise of Shad
Shad and shad fishing became real for me on a backwater hole in eastern North Carolina when my first buck hickory danced across the water on his tail like a miniaturized, silver-scaled tarpon. I was hooked more surely than that spawning fish ...
The Hunter Recruitment Project Introduces Veterans to Fly Fishing
Conversation the night before covered the usual bases. Everyone knew the shit that everyone else had seen and no one really wanted to rehash most of it anyhow. Everyone spoke the language, the shorthand of combat experience, and that acknowledgment ...
Incredibly Dumb Moments in Survival Movies
Sometimes, characters in movies make inexplicably stupid decisions, the kind that make you scream at the screen in fury. In survival movies, when the stakes are incredibly high, dumb characters making dumb choices is even more infuriating than it ...
Zebra Mussels: The $1.5 Billion Invasion
The pike is as visible 20 feet away and 10 feet down as it would be in a fish tank in some doctor’s waiting room. Suspended in gin-clear water in the shadow of a forest of milfoil, he spooks before a single cast can be made. It’s the curse of the ...
Forging Forward: Lucas O’Hara Finds Success in Blacksmithing
Veterans transitioning to civilian life possess many marketable skills, but Lucas O’Hara credits blacksmithing for forging his path to success. On a recent episode of Free Range American with Evan Hafer and Trevor Thompson, the Grizzly Forge ...
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Dalton Villines, Axe Thrower
Dalton Villines could easily be a fan favorite on The Walking Dead. As a matter of fact, the folks at AMC might want to take note ASAP. He'd be as deadly with axes as Daryl is with his crossbow. The Kingston, Arkansas, native and Marine ...
Naked and Not Afraid: A Profile of Laura Zerra
Laura Zerra is focused. The 35-year-old reality television star and social media influencer sits in an ice shack on a frozen river in South Dakota, her gloved hand tapping an 8-foot steel spear. A rectangle the size of a 60-inch ...
Monarch Butterflies, On Brink of Extinction, Garner Congressional Attention
The western monarch butterfly — the iconic creature that’s a universal beacon in generations of childhood memories across the country — is but a wing-flap away from disappearing completely. The literal butterfly effect of this could further ...
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 ...
10 of the Best River Misadventure Movies Ever Made
The thing about taking a river trip is that it’s kind of a one-way affair, and once you’re committed, you have to just take the ride or hike out. Most river adventures in movies go bad when a group either accidentally navigates into unexpected rapids ...
Kifaru’s Aron Snyder on Compound Bow Versus Stick Bow
Not only is Aron Snyder the president of Kifaru International, a company that specializes in extreme outdoor-adventure gear, but he’s also an avid traditional bowhunter. Having hunted exclusively with a traditional recurve (which he both jokingly and ...
Trail Running: 6 Basic Tips to Train Successfully
You don’t have to be a wiry, mesh-tank-top-and-short-shorts-wearing, Gu-eating, ultra-zen human mountain goat to run trails. There are actually a lot of average people into trail running. Why? It’s easier on your body than running on pavement; each ...
Sporting Art: Zippo Lighters Designed with the Outdoors in Mind
Early man in Africa and Eurasia first harnessed the power of fire 2 million years ago, discovering its usefulness for not only warmth and light but also protection from predators — and the ability to cook food. The earliest cave paintings, ...
Contingency Planning: 5-Point Prep for Tech Failure
Our reliance on technology isn't going away anytime soon. We have cellphones, satellite phones, GPS communicators, and GPS beacons that relay our locations to those with a need to know. What happens when technology fails? In US Army small-unit ...
PBS Hemingway Documentary Gets to The Man Behind the Legend
An ordinary man has many limitations, especially in the way of ability and longevity. A legend, however, continues to grow and reshape itself, uncaring of the passage of time. The bigger the legend, the more it evolves as it grows, often becoming ...
Survival Garden 104: Planting Cold Crops
Survivalist gardening is all about knowing what works ahead of time. Take planting cold crops, for example. Most people have accepted Memorial Day weekend as the start date for the planting season; however, experienced gardeners know late March to ...
Becoming a Ninja: Behind the Scenes of ‘American Ninja Warrior’
Watching the daring acrobatics on TV's American Ninja Warrior, I would mutter to myself, “The obstacles don’t look that hard.” That’s what I thought until I tried it myself. My wife and I own and perform with a cirque entertainment company. ...
Survival Garden 103: How To Prep Your Soil Before the Season Starts
If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that a global panic disrupts supply chains and creates scarcity. Many grocery stores issued buying limits on certain food items, prices skyrocketed, and store shelves thinned out. Realizations of just how dependent ...
Camp Stoves 101: Understanding and Choosing the Right Cooker
There is nothing better than cooking over an open fire, but it’s not without its challenges. Regulating heat is difficult, and getting the right amount of flame and ember can be tough for even the most experienced fire-builder. The best choice for ...
Rick Wilcox: The Most Accomplished and Least Known US Mountaineer
Chunks of ice break free from about 70 feet above, clacking off lower bulges before landing in heavy, dull thuds on the snow-buried slope only feet away. “Ice!” The climber that yelled down is pegged to the face of the wall by two ...
Buying the Right Sleeping Bag Made Simple
Perhaps no single piece of gear is more critical to comfort, and even survival, in the backcountry than a good sleeping bag. At first blush, you might think that choosing a sleeping bag would be a pretty simple endeavor. But fill material, ...
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 ...
Pro Tips For Shooting Better Outdoor Photography
Shutter speed, aperture, exposure, focal length, depth of field, composition. There’s a lot to take in if you want to up your photo game. Whether you’re using an iPhone, a point-and-shoot digital camera, or the latest and greatest Sony Alpha, putting ...
Portraits of Strength: The Unseen Suffragist Photographs
In December 2020, David Whitcomb, an attorney in Canandaigua, New York, bought a historic building in neighboring Geneva. While renovating the space for a new office, he discovered a secret attic that held a trove of old photographs, props, and early ...
