Choosing the Right Outfitter
When researching an outfitter, a little extra digging can make a big difference in the outcome of your hunt. By all rights, it should have been the hunt of a lifetime. Both the outfitter and his area were legendary for producing superlative trophies; we were hunting...
Idaho Youth Controlled Hunt Applications Open May 1
Idaho residents can enter into some fantastic youth-only hunt opportunities this fall Applications for controlled deer, elk, pronghorn, fall bear, and fall turkey hunts open May 1 and run through June 5. A controlled hunt has a limited number of tags, which are...
Teach a Man to Fish
If you think fishing with your daughter is engrossing, try fishing with her new husband. If you are fortunate enough to have been blessed with a daughter, you eventually come to realize that someday, somewhere, some guy is going to come along who wants her for his...
Like an Honest Dog: A Tim Flanigan Book Review
Like an honest dog, it’ll be the standard by which you compare all other upland hunting books. It’s the highest level of praise for a handler to call a dog "honest." By that handlers mean every time the dog points there is a bird under his nose. Honest dogs work hard,...
How to Find Great Fishing in Minnesota
Q&A with Minnesota DNR’s Ray Ruiz offers fishing tips for beginners and experienced anglers alike Anglers can find fantastic fishing opportunities all across Minnesota. Wherever you are, chances are there is a lake, river or stream nearby with fish that can be...
Iowa Deer Application Opens May 2
The time to apply for your 2020 Iowa deer tags is fast approaching. The application period opens on May 2, 2020 at 6 a.m. and closes June 7, 2020 at midnight, CST. Preference point purchases and applications will only be accepted during this time. In the meantime, be...
The Buffalo’s Demise
No one was fully aware of the buffalo's impending demise, not even the countless hidemen who rushed out West to hunt the huge beasts. John and George rode silently across the snow-covered plain, staying to the windward side of the big herd. The buffalo were slowly...
Reading Season
This has been a big season for books. You’ve undoubtedly caught wind by now of the Sporting Classics book on famed outdoor illustrator (and Hemingway pal) Lynn Bogue Hunt, Lynn Bogue Hunt: Artist, Angler, Hunter. It just so happens that I scribbled the text for it,...
Nominate your “hero” to win one of 25 belts during this five week give-away
African Sporting Creations is offering a $10,000 First Responder Crocodile Belt Give-Away throughout the month of May To recognize and celebrate those who have gone above and beyond to support our community in its time of need, African Sporting Creations is giving...
A Better Blind
My pro trainer friend Bob Olson had been raving about the Switchback Dog Blind/Kennel Crate, and when I finally made it up to his place (River Road Kennels in Lena, Wisconsin) for a look, I immediately became a believer. While the Switchback has a lot to recommend...
Crawfish: The Po’ Man’s Lobster
If you want a delightful seafood dinner, and you can’t afford lobster, then say hello to my little friends. They are called by many names: crayfish, crawfish, crawdads, mudbugs, mountain lobsters and yabbies. They have more names than Carter’s has Little Liver Pills,...
The Shining Tides: Fall
Roccus fed and strengthened, yet did not grow in size. Despite her healing, her feeding, her strengthening, she continued to waste away. Roccus sank to the bouldered deeps off Mashnee. The hooks of the plug were merely an annoyance, the weight of it a nuisance, which...
Arizona’s rattlesnakes most active April
So far, 39 bites have been reported statewide in 2020 and counting 19 of those bites were recorded in the month of April, the month when rattlesnakes are the most active. In warm deserts, rattlesnakes are most active March through October. During the spring,...
Memories at Goosepond Creek
It was remote, dark and distant, and about as wild and woolly as a place could be. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, this journey of ours. It had been a long time since we had been to "Goosepond." It had been called that since colonial times, and legend held that it had...
The Shining Tides: Summer
Roccus sinuated, swirled and sounded, and all the line so laboriously won was lost before the boat could be brought on a following course. So the May was gone. The backward spring leaped to keep abreast of the sun’s orbit. Anglers sandpapered rods, wound guides and...
Iowa’s Turkey Hunters Encouraged to Provide Leg for Disease Survey
Midwestern states look for answers to the decline in turkey populations across the region Iowa hunters who bag a turkey this spring are encouraged to keep one of the lower legs to be tested for the presence of Lymphoproliferative Disease (LPDV). “We want hunters to be...
The Shining Tides: Spring
Roccus the striped bass had survived man's hooks and nets and the ocean's deadliest predators...and now, in her last years, she'd become the largest of her kind. Sun and a wafer edge of dissolving moon rose a few minutes apart. From a late roost in a scrub oak on...
California Steelhead: The Fish of a Thousand Casts
A Little Background Oncorhynchus mykis - aka Steelhead - are a unique form of rainbow trout. Born in high country freshwater, they experience a physiological transformation within a year that allows them to survive in the ocean. They spend most of their lives there,...
Peter Beard’s Exotic Eye — His Life and Death
The unlikely life, art and death of legendary artist and adventurer Peter Beard. Peter Beard was a hard man to peg. A photographer of wildlife and beautiful women, a writer, an ethnologist, explorer, hunter, naturalist, conservationist, ladies man, married man, wise...
Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey Returns to Outdoor Channel June 29th
Hit series reaches 13.5 million viewers in its inaugural season through cable, syndication, and international distribution. Officials from Dorsey Pictures, a Red Arrow Studios company, the world’s largest producer of outdoor adventure television and the only...
One Last Late Season Hunt
Don't judge me on this last hunt of the season. I have my reasons! OK, let me make something clear, I have not been on my last upland or waterfowl hunt, just the last one for this ending season thanks to a nearby shooting preserve. For those who snub their noses at...
Pretty Fly for a Tie Guy
Tim Borski is making a career from the same inspiration that compelled him to leave Wisconsin and head to Florida more than 30 years ago. Tim Borski stood looking at spring snow, nine inches of heartbreaking fluff. The day prior had been in the 70s, and he had caught...
Rigby Releases Limited Edition Big Game Series Commemorating Tsavo Man-Eaters
London gunmaker John Rigby & Co. has announced a new series of limited edition rifles, called the “Tsavo,” modeled on the firm’s phenomenally successful bolt-action Big Game. Following hot on the heels of the exceptionally popular “Mopani” special edition series –...
Setting Sights on Nebraska’s Walleye
The walleye may be Nebraska’s most popular, albeit often hard-to-catch, game fish. It is known for not only having great-tasting fillets, but also for growing big and providing anglers a fishing challenge. Despite its reputation for being hard to catch, at certain...
South Carolina Stripers
The success of striped bass in our freshwater reservoirs represents one of the great modern-day stories of nature's ability to adapt. We got skunked that day, yet it remains one of my most vivid fishing memories. It was a warm spring morning in 1963. My dad had loaded...
Replacement Rifle Stocks Offer Many Options
SPONSORED CONTENT Aftermarket replacement rifle stocks and custom wood rifle stocks can improve your shooting and accuracy. There are many reasons to choose an aftermarket replacement rifle stock and among the leading ones are to improve the firearm’s accuracy, your...
Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey (CHANJ) featured in PBS Episode
The New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife is excited to share that CHANJ (Connecting Habitat Across New Jersey) is featured in a new episode of the PBS show EcoSense for Living. CHANJ is an effort to make the New Jersey landscape and roadways more permeable for...
Patagonia Founder: An 81-year-old Millennial
Yvon Chouinard's passions for fishing, hunting and natural resource conservation have made his name synonymous with sustainability and innovation. Yvon Chouinard is one of the great rebels of our time. He's forged his own path in business and life - much in the same...
The Hunt for the White Unicorn
The packs grew heavy on their backs, the rifles like lead in their hands. But they continued on. Neither knew how many miles lay ahead. It is said that the ancient shamans knew when a man’s last day had come. They could see it in the stars, the smoke, the shadows,...
The Anniversary Gift
She would leave him soon, and for this reason she had insisted that he fish the opener without her, the only gift she wanted for their anniversary. The first day of trout season usually filled him with excitement. Even as a man he felt like a boy awaiting Christmas...
New Life for Old Game: Easy, 3-Step Recipes for a Flavorful Meal
If you're like me, you've got game from a hunting trip years ago still shoved in the back of your freezer. Don't let it go to waste. A decade ago, I arrived home from Ungava with meat from two fine caribou. To store it, I bought an upright freezer. In it, season...
The Rod to Remember
The old rod had a history far richer than any he ever imagined when he first bought it, so many lives ago. And now his own life was about to change. He hovered just inches above my face, urgently pounding me with questions that I desperately needed for him to answer...
‘Ol Settler of Deep Hole
No fish had ever exerted a greater influence on the thoughts, the imagination, the manners or the moral character of his pursuers. Uncle Eb was a born lover of fun. But he had a solemn way of fishing that was no credit to a cheerful man. It was the same when he played...
Salmon Or Striper?
Fishermen on Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula can not only roll the dice on landing an Atlantic salmon, but go after a high-odds striper as well. If you've ever cast a sinking line into a deep crystalline stream hoping to entice a 20-pound Atlantic salmon to snap up a wet...
Enter the 2020 New Hampshire Moose Hunt Lottery Today
If you want to hunt moose in New Hampshire this fall, now is the time to enter the 2020 moose hunt lottery and try your luck on the adventure of a lifetime — hunting moose in the rugged woods of the Granite State. The lottery entrance fee is $15 for New Hampshire...
MDC reports young hunters bagged 2,712 turkeys over youth weekend
Preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) shows that young turkey hunters in Missouri harvested 2,712 birds over the past youth weekend, April 4 and 5. Top harvest counties were Miller with 74 birds checked, Franklin with 62, and Callaway and...
An Excerpt from “Big Grizzly by Bow”
As it appears in Alaska Bears: Stirred and Shaken by Jake Jacobson The weather had recently turned colder, but we’d had no big winds for some time, so the willows still retained a lot of their leaves, which made visibility a bit less than ideal, but the project was...
Spring May Bring Black Bear Sightings in Georgia
Sightings of Georgia’s native black bears typically begin to pick up in the spring. These sightings are normal, and are to be expected across our state, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division. Where have the bears been?...
New Training Collars
SPONSORED CONTENT SportDOG Brand has just released a new line of dog training collars to its SportTrainer family. Three models in either black or orange are offered. The SportTrainer 1275 has a range of 3/4 mile and gives you long distance control of your dog and...
Sporting Classics’ Senior Editor, John Seerey-Lester, Awarded by NRA
The Hunters' Leadership Forum award recognizes distinguished NRA members who demonstrate exceptional leadership in the field of hunting and wildlife conservation. John Seerey-Lester, a renowned wildlife artist and writer, was recently awarded by the National Rifle...
Hawaii Cancels Lana’i Axis Deer Hunt Due to Covid-19 Risks
The 2020 deer rifle season within the Lana‘i Cooperative Game Management Area, is being cancelled due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19. The season was scheduled to run through May 17, 2020. The DLNR Division of Forestry and Wildlife (DOFAW) reports efforts are...
North Dakota Deer Gratis Application Online
Landowners who are interested in a 2020 deer gratis license can start the online-only application process now. The deadline for applying is June 3. The general deer and muzzleloader lottery applications will be available online in early May, also with a deadline of...
Parker Whedon: The Last Of The Old-Time Turkey Hunters
When Parker Whedon died on March 16, 2012 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and the myriad complications associated with the illness, the world of turkey hunting lost perhaps its final direct link to the sport’s great names of yesteryear. From the time...
Hunting for Happiness
Man or woman, dog or gun, you never know when you might say goodbye. Fixing to write this down before I forget, the days and years slipping away the way they do, that blaze of autumn to water the eye, the flames of maple and oak and the dry-bone rattling aspen, that...
Hope, Faith and the Man-Killer
Night and day they would pursue the huge beast that was threatening the very existence of several villages. Hope is twenty-three and Faith is two, and they live together, mother and child, in a tiny mud and grass-thatched rondavel a couple of miles from a place called...
Wyoming Game and Fish Department Delays Registration Process
In the interest of protecting public health and adhering to local community orders related to COVID-19, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is working to develop a procedure for new black bear bait registrations. Bait site registrations were originally set to open...
All That Alaska Allows
You can do it all on Alaska’s rivers as long as you’ve got the right outfitter and guides. The idea is traditional. Go to the wilderness. Fish and hunt. Everything. Moose. Bears. Waterfowl. Salmon. Whatever pops up. It’s what sportsmen used to do. It’s what they...
Dorsey Pictures Named to Real Screen Magazine’s Global 100 List Second Year in a Row
Dorsey Pictures, the world’s largest producer of outdoor lifestyle television, has been named to Real Screen magazine’s annual Global 100 list for the second year in a row. The prestigious Global 100 list consists of the world’s largest and best production companies...
The Voice Inside
On the same night on the same mountain, two hunters face a deadly storm. Only one would survive. The worst type of danger is the danger that’s brought on by one’s own ignorance. Overconfidence and familiarity can blind a man to the peril that lies ahead, and he...
A Day at Devil’s Dip
In many ways my Grandpa Joe was a boy trapped in an old man’s body. Full of tricks as a pet ’coon, tough as a seasoned hickory sapling and imbued with 70-plus years of wisdom accumulated by living close to the good earth of the Smokies, he possessed an unflagging...