by Duncan Dobie | Sep 16, 2025
The bumper sticker read: A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work. I was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wondering how I had allowed myself to get in such a frustrating situation. Like all of the other miserable souls around me, I was growing more...
by Mark Siedschlag | Sep 2, 2025
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...
by John Seerey-Lester | Aug 11, 2025
He caught a glimpse of something white among the herd, its body illuminated by the setting sun–he recognized the animal as an extremely rare white bison. The fall was changing into winter and the buffalo hunters were getting ready for the huge herds to gather on the...
by Michael Luders | Jun 5, 2025
In the pine barren, the pasture’s edge, the orchard, this is the ruffed grouse’s court . . . and we are honored to be there. In an orchard, long abandoned, we make our way toward a solitary tree, one of few bearing apples this fall. That it has fruit at all strikes me...
by Jim Casada | May 28, 2025
During the middle of the past century, it was commonplace for old men, maybe a smattering of somewhat younger n’er-do-wells and boys to congregate in popular gathering places. In small towns and rural crossroads, those spots were almost always a country store,...
by Roger Pinckney | May 27, 2025
All writers are liars, whether reef-fishing miles offshore on the Atlantic or fishing through a hole in the north country ice. The smokestack of the hulk gloomed from the depths, barely visible when the July sun ricocheted off the surface of the sea. Halfway to the...
by Jake Jacobson | May 27, 2025
A large, dark brown bear appeared on the ridge above us. The sound of Craig’s one shot was all it took for that top predator to home in on us. Soon after being put ashore we jumped a huge buck at sixty yards that took off quartering away to the right. I told him to...
by Dennis R. Ballard | May 6, 2025
The year was 1909 in America and a young, green scientist stepped boldly from a stage on the campus of Yale University, his hard-earned Master of Science degree firmly in his grasp. Now, he was a forester! Bonafide, certified and anxious. The university had captioned...
by Roger Pinckney | Apr 29, 2025
It was the greatest North American hunting trip ever, though the men’s survival was always in doubt. Fall of 1804, Meriwether Lewis was halfway up the Missouri, St. Louis to Great Falls, though he could not name the Great Falls until he had seen them, yet many months...
by John Ross | Apr 14, 2025
To restore or not, that is the question. How many times have each of us thought about having a fine old gun refinished only to be cautioned that having it reblued or restocked will diminish its value? Several years ago at a small gun show in a church social hall, I...