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 ...
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Starter Kit: Learning To Fly Fish — Gear Up
Fly fishing can seem overwhelming at first. Truth is, it’s not. Learning how to fly fish is actually easy and fun as hell. And it won’t immediately empty your wallet. With the right gear and some fundamentals, you’ll be ready to pester farm-pond ...
5 Uncommon Chili Ingredients You Need To Try
You probably think your chili is the shit — and it could very well be. But even the best chili recipes leave room for some interpretation. A little moxie, instinct, risk. Chili is a fine balance of several senses in several dimensions. Yes, it’s a ...
Marine Veteran Scotty Bob Brings BASE Jumping to Next Generation
When Coffee or Die Magazine last talked to Marine veteran Robert “Scotty Bob” Morgan, he was well on his way to living the dream of a professional BASE jumper. So, what exactly does a BASE jumper do? BASE is an acronym that stands for four ...
15 Original Blues Musicians You Need To Know
Robert Plant begs her to "squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg." The Delaware Destroyer orders "one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer." Janis Joplin screams about that "ball ’ n’ chain." Elvis sneers that "you ain’t nothin but a ...
Understanding Fitness: Strength, Power, Endurance, Capacity
“Fitness” does not describe a single thing. It is a collection of attributes. Understanding these attributes will help you train more effectively and reach whatever fitness goal you set for yourself. Strength Strength is more than large muscles. ...
The Triumph and Tragedy of K2’s Epic Winter Season
This was no ordinary winter on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. For the first time ever, a team summited 28,251-foot-high K2 in winter, marking the achievement of the last great first in Himalayan mountaineering. The successful team ...
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, ...
Winter Storm Uri Devastates Texas Exotic Wildlife and Fish Numbers
Winter storm Uri has dealt a devastating blow to coastal fisheries and exotic game species in Texas, and with only preliminary reports and anecdotal data currently available, officials say it will take months to fully understand the scale of this ...
Private Land Access: How To Earn Permission for Hunting and Fishing
As a fly-fishing guide in Montana, I made a living on one of the country’s most prolific public river-access programs. The rivers I called home, like the Clark Fork and Bitterroot, wound through sprawling private ranches, but thanks to Montana’s ...
Starter Kit: Learn To Cross-Country Ski
Flat, straight trails. Skinny, pointed skis. Boots that look more like high-tech sneakers. Bindings that only lock you in by your toes. It’s easy to think that cross-country skiing is the awkward junior high version of downhill that somehow missed ...
American Railroad: Is There a Future for Trains in a Changing Nation?
It’s a dreary winter afternoon in Huron, South Dakota. Standing in his safety gear — hard hat, coveralls, harness — mechanic John Tapken is ready to get back to work on trains. It’s a few hours past lunchtime, but the day is far ...
A Beginner’s Guide to Snowshoeing
Blinded by the wind and stung by the cold, we set up our camp as the day grew dark around us. The two of us had snowshoed to Dogsled Pass, deep in the Talkeetna Mountains of south central Alaska. We hoped to explore nearby alpine valleys over the ...
Numb Decisions: An Essay on Ice Climbing
My fingertips have just regained feeling. The screaming nerves claw at my skin and burn the last half-hour of ice climbing into my brain. Below the belay I hear THWACK, THWACK — each placement of a tool cutting and holding ice 200 feet up this ...
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Correy Hawk of Organic Archery
Correy Hawk is more than a renaissance man — he’s a renaissance badass. A Marine veteran, student of the natural world, and teacher of how to live in it, he can spend weeks in quiet solitude deep in the backcountry with the most minimal gear. He can ...
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 ...
How To Start a Gun Dog
Once you hunt over a gun dog of your own, hunting birds without a dog, or hunting over anyone else’s dog, doesn’t feel like hunting anymore. It’s just walking around trying to shoot stuff. A bird dog connects you to the unseen world of scents in ...
5 Winter Survival Tips You Need to Know, According to the Boy Scouts
When the days grow cold and short, a lot of people use that as an excuse to stay indoors. But with a little bit of preparation and forethought, you can hike and backpack all through the winter without an issue. The Boy Scouts of America keep a ...
How One Woman Found Her Calling as a Long Haul Trucker
TJ O’Shea attracts the occasional odd look as she steps down from the cab of her big rig in a skirt, combat boots, Waxtrax hoodie, and fedora. She could be anywhere from Florida to Idaho, spending 14-hour days listening to audiobooks while flying ...
Meet Nat Love, the Most Famous Black Cowboy of the American Frontier
If Nat Love hadn’t learned how to read and write, then we’d never know one of the greatest Black heroes of the American frontier. We wouldn’t have learned his firsthand account of life growing up as a slave. We wouldn’t have the perspective of one of ...
Full Throttle: BRCC Driver Noah Gragson Returns to Daytona
NASCAR driver Noah Gragson, in the No. 9 Bass Pro Shops / TrueTimber / Black Rifle Coffee Company Chevy Camaro, is one of the hardest-charging young guns in racing — and he’s pedal-down powering toward another winning weekend in Daytona. In only ...
Process a Moose Solo: Here are the Tools You’ll Need
Trevor Thompson told the Free Range American podcast recently about the time he was able to process a moose by himself on a hunt in British Columbia. He ended up filling his tag with a great bull early in the week, so he had the time and ...
Firefighter and Avid Fisherman Wins the BRCC Ultimate Outdoor Giveaway
Brandon Crimmons, a firefighter from White House, Tennessee, has won the fishing package of a lifetime — Black Rifle Coffee Company’s Ultimate Outdoor Giveaway. Crimmons landed more than $110,000 worth of prizes, including a brand-new Toyota Tacoma ...
Take Down Those Dams: New Legislation Could Save Snake River Salmon
Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican congressman, has just put the Northwest energy and agriculture sector on notice: Salmon and steelhead will join them at the table, and not as the entrée. In a video statement posted over the weekend, Simpson ...
11 Questions & A Cup of Coffee: Three-Time CrossFit Champion Mat Fraser
Mat Fraser is a simple man. He likes shooting guns, drinking coffee, and working out. Well, “working out” may be a bit of an understatement: he’s been the fittest man on earth for three years running and is a heavy favorite to make it four years at ...
6 Ways to Beat Cabin Fever This Winter
This can be a hard time of year. The holidays are over, and we’re ready for spring — but it’s still winter. For many people that means not leaving the house, or the couch, until the middle of March. But let's face it, there are only so many shows you ...
Mountaineering Hacks: Popping Viagra and Teetotaling on Top of the World
High-altitude mountaineering is a miserable endeavor. In the rarefied air of the world’s highest peaks, there’s simply not enough oxygen for the body to function normally. At great height, however, our genes kickstart a whole host of corporeal ...
Survival Knife: Understanding Blades
There is no such thing as a survival knife. Knives have been called that and have been marketed that way — as some kind of magical tool that will save your ass in some unlikely situation. But that idea is inherently flawed. Sure, some ...
Doing What You Love: How Dallas Hemeyer Turned His Passion Into a Career
Most hunters reluctantly leave the woods to go to a job they may not particularly enjoy, but Dallas Hemeyer found a way to turn his passion for hunting into a lucrative career. During a recent chat with Evan Hafer on the Free Range American ...
You Don’t Know Squat: Single-Leg Variants
Now that you know how to squat correctly, let's up the ante. These three single-leg squat movements can correct muscular imbalances and shore up strength deficiencies. By forcing a single side of your body to move weight through full ranges of ...