Sweat dripping down his face, Phil Smage sat on his Kawasaki KLX 110 pit bike at the starting line of the first-ever Pastranaland Pit Bike Championship. Nine national-level motocross competitors were beside him — all gunning for ...
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How to Find a Last-Minute, Affordable Hunting Lease
We could be in for one crazy deer season. With more and more folks interested in hunting and putting meat in the freezer during the coronavirus crisis, there’s a good chance that there will be a lot of hunters in the woods this fall. That could mean ...
Antarctic Ice Marathon: A Trial by Fire
I passed the threshold of the aircraft door and the cold cut through my piled-on layers of down and fleece in a flash. The cold went straight to my bones, and the primitive, reptilian part of my brain spoke, informing me that this ...
Man Versus Mountain Lion: A Near Deadly Encounter Caught on Video
Snapping jaws, claws swinging through the air, the mountain lion came in hot and ready to pounce, driven to protect her cubs with a lethal barrage against an unfortunate 26-year-old trail runner who happened to stumble upon them. Kyle Burgess of ...
Ishi, Pope, and Young: The History of Modern Bowhunting
In 1912, Ishi crouched behind a bush and put his index and middle fingers to his lips. He made a sharp, high-pitched kissing sound — a rabbit distress call. To his left, Saxton T. Pope watched in amazement as a small group of rabbits came within ...
It’s Time to Cut the BS in Deer Hunting
Our deer-hunting culture is changing. A whole generation that has grown up with trail cameras, food plots, and hunting television shows is after much more than a giant buck this fall (though we’ll shoot one if we get the chance). If you listen to ...
Bushcraft Knives vs. Survival Knives
The terms “bushcraft knife” and “survival knife” probably go back to the 1980s. The first comes from a seminal book by the Canadian survival expert Mors Kochanski. Bushcraft was published in 1987 and is an instruction manual on how to live in the ...
Setting a Wingsuit World Record
In 2015, Andy Stumpf, a retired Navy SEAL, broke the standing world record for absolute distance flown in a wingsuit, covering 18.257 miles and falling 36,500 feet. It was a hell of an accomplishment, considering he volunteered for the undertaking ...
OnX Hunt: Is This Hunting App Worth $100?
In the second week of my 2019 elk hunt I was playing the public land shuffle — bouncing around forest service and Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, roads trying to locate elk while avoiding other hunters. No stranger to this game, I had pre-plotted ...
Wilderness Movies: 10 of the Best Ever Made
The wilderness can be one of man’s greatest allies or his biggest enemy. It can be a refuge for those seeking a greater purpose in life or a hellacious landscape that proves to be unconquerable for those unprepared for the rigors of the great beyond. ...
Presidential Elections: 4 Little-Known and Unusual Stories
Election years throughout the more than 200-year history of the United States are often rife with contention, political upheaval, social unrest, and surprise. On Jan. 7, 1789, Congress required state electors for the nation's first presidential ...
Strongman Squats Like the Old-Timey Guys Did
Nineteenth-century strongman Arthur Saxon was famous for backlifting 4,337 pounds. If that isn’t strength, then I’m not sure what is. What makes strongman squats like that so hard to consider today is the leverage required to move that much weight ...
9 Ways to Actually Get Better at Shooting Your Bow
I am not a professional archer. You won’t see me winning any national 3D tournaments or catch me doing burpees before the Total Archery Challenge. But I am, proudly, an effective average-joe bowhunter. I started shooting a compound when I was 12, and ...
Wild Game Jerky: The Ultimate Guide to Killer Meat
For as long as there have been hunters, there’s been wild game jerky—at least as best we can tell. Ötzi the Iceman—a 5,300-year-old hunter found frozen solid in the Italian Alps—had a last meal of dried ibex and red deer meat. Archeologists have ...
10 of the Best Adventure Movies Ever Made
Good adventure movies have a few necessary ingredients. You need a protagonist, or a group of them. There also has to be a mission — a goal, a reason for setting out. Then there’s the journey. It can be a literal journey — into space, up a river, or ...
Baghdad Angler’s Club: How a US Navy Sailor Brought the Fly Fishing to Iraq
When Joel Stewart arrived in Iraq in February 2005, he didn’t expect he would be able to fly fish in the middle of a combat zone. Fortunately, he came prepared and even started teaching others the sport. The Baghdad Angler’s Club was born. The US ...
Kicking Off Fall With a Tennessee Dove Shoot
Nothing marks the start of hunting season like a good old-fashioned dove shoot. Across the Southeast, Texas, and parts of the Midwest the ceremonial beginning of fall is often a gathering of friends and family — around a planted sunflower ...
How to Pick the Perfect Backcountry Campsite
The sun set to the north that day, at least as framed by the steep walls of the Chugach Mountains, casting a golden light over the valley. Up in the alpine, 4,000 feet above sea level, we watched the day end. It was a good campsite and one of the ...
MOLLE: The Modern Tactical Load Carrying System
The modular lightweight load-carrying equipment (MOLLE) platform has been an integral part of the standard-issue military backpacks since the early days of the Global War on Terror. Since then, first responders have also embraced elements of this ...
Blood Brothers: Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Selous
Nineteen days after leaving the White House and his second term as president, Theodore Roosevelt kissed his wife goodbye. He boarded a train in Oyster Bay with his son Kermit, bound for a steamship, bound for Africa. Roosevelt was embarking on a ...
Camp Pendleton Marines Engage in the Ancient Art of Bowhunting
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — Appreciation and understanding of various weapon systems are a part of Marine culture. Typically, the M16 or the M240 are the first to come to mind. However, there is a more traditional weapon system being utilized by Marine ...
How to Build a Kitchen Cook Kit
Our ancestors separated from the great apes thanks to cooking with tools over fire. Yet now in our tech-heavy age, thanks to apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats, a whole generation of young adults has never learned how to cook. We’re here to help. ...
Off the Couch and into Life: How to Get Your Kids Outdoors
I won’t lie, I’m not super dad — heck, sometimes it seems like I struggle to be average. Married with two sons, 7 and 10 years old, my wife and I work and try to get the kids outdoors when we can. But sometimes the siren song of the couch is too ...
The Frank: A Fly-in, Fly-Fishing Adventure in Idaho’s Largest Wilderness
There is a rattlesnake somewhere near my left boot. I can hear it, but I can’t see it. My dad is sitting on the ground 10 yards away with his back against a log, holding a sandwich in one hand and pointing frantically with the ...
Outdoor Movies: The 10 Films NOT to Watch Before an Outdoor Adventure
When preparing for an adventure outdoors, it’s important to have your gear squared away — and your head squared away, too. To that point, here are the top 10 outdoor movies you want to avoid at all costs before a big trip into the wild. These films ...
GEAR TEST: The Ultimate Bino Harness Shootout
With binoculars ranging in price from $300 to $500 for entry-level glass to more than $3,000 on the high end, it only makes sense to protect them. Not long ago, that meant a harness of a few elastic straps that held exposed binoculars close to the ...
More Than 80,000 Acres of Public Lands Inaccessible to Hunters, Anglers
More than 80,000 acres of federal, state, county, and municipal public lands in the Mid-Atlantic are inaccessible to hunters and fishermen, according to a new report from onX Maps and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). The ...
Fish Candy: Dry-Brined and Smoked Lake Trout
The best part about fishing with Big Spoon Sportfishing isn’t all the fish you catch but the snacks that Capt. Chris Bomysoad serves up on the water. “Fishermen,” he likes to say, “fish on their stomach,” so this New York guide keeps his clients ...
John Wesley Powell and the 1869 Discovery of the Grand Canyon
Four fragile wooden rowboats, 10 months’ worth of provisions, and 10 courageous men set out on May 24, 1869, on an audacious expedition from the Union Pacific’s Green River Station in Wyoming en route for the “Great Unknown,” the last unexplored ...
How a US Air Force Combat Controller Survived a Double Parachute Failure
Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane is scary enough without having a parachute failure. But having the backup fail, too? Shit just got real. And that's just where Jared “CCT Peaches” Pietras, an Air Force Combat Controller, found himself during ...