The Journeyman
I turned 16 in July of 1966. Kent Wellerby, Mr. Reed’s farm manager for as long as I could remember, took a string of Red Oak dogs every summer up to the prairies of North Dakota in Divide County. The August and September weather was much cooler there than in...
Just Another Love Story
She was married when I met her but I took her fishing anyway. She was a fender-bender, a well-put-together willowy blonde with beer sign blue neon eyes. But she was wired for 110 and plugged into 220. When she shucked her jeans, the inseam read, “Lucky You.” Great...
The Politics of Camouflage
For years, many of America’s largest sportsmen’s organizations and media brands have carefully cultivated the image that they stand above politics. They present themselves as guardians of conservation, wildlife habitat, public lands, and the future of hunting and...
The Great Goach Gag
Stink, stank, stunk…uh, need a word here…the nth-square-to-the-10th-power expression of extreme stinkiness. A word for the gasp, cough, spit, shake-yer-head, blink-yer-eyes, spin, gag, retch, vomit kind of stinkiness. ’Cause that’s what it was. Don’t know...
Boundary Waters Vote Provides Fuel to Raise Money, But the Reality is Far From the Posturing
You’d think, listening to the loudest voices in the outdoor community lately, that the Boundary Waters had just been handed over to a mining company with a bow on top. Fundraising emails, social posts, and urgent alerts have painted a picture of imminent, irreversible...
To Bite the Bullet
Terror in the tall grass.
People Like Us Never Grow Up
I do not mean to sound bitter about this, for perhaps it is not the fault of the wet-eared young… This piece is being written in a bug-ridden swamp on the banks of the sluggish yellow Tana River, in northeastern Kenya, where the big elephants bugle and the...
Hall Watters: Rescuer and Pathfinder
Aviator, treasure hunter, sportsman and fearless rescuer, Hall Watters was as unmatched as he was widely unrecognized.
Adventures with Jim Belushi
You never know what will happen when hunting and fishing with this comedian and his friends.