The air is getting cooler. A few trees are starting to turn. Many folks are thinking about fall fishing. Aggressive browns, big streamers, you name it. We love to fish, we’ll probably still fish this fall. But something else is underfoot. It’s hunting season. Some folks are already going full tilt. Archery seasons have, Read More
The more I learn about hunting and fishing, the more I recognize how much I don’t know. Adding a kid to the mix has really driven that humbling realization home for me. Not only do I have the perpetual need to refine my approach in the field, but now I also need to develop, Read More
Sweat was beading on my brow. I was gasping for breath. Running up hill, I needed my iPhone. Fifty yards away I had the spotting scope set up. Binos were around my neck, so was the camera. A few hundred yards below were 300-400 head of elk. Cows and calves were mewing, the herd, Read More
I’ve got a garage full of gear. Enough to outfit a small army for anything from mountaineering to horsepacking, canoeing to big wall climbing, not to mention hunting and fishing. Despite the raw volume of stuff, that at times is overwhelming and probably warrants a garage sale, there are a few pieces of gear, Read More
Kids are born hunters. “Can I go catch a grasshopper?” asks my son at dawn. “Sure” we tell him, and off he goes through the dog-door, clad in cape and undies, to creep around the dewy lawn with his jar. The jar rarely comes home empty. “You have to be quiet.” he tells me, Read More
Arthur C Clarke once said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Had he been an elk hunter he’d have known that no technology, advanced or otherwise, knows the half of it. There is nothing so magical as elk apparating from the pre-dawn grayness. With a naked eye or through German glass,, Read More
My lungs were about to explode, which masked the burning in my quads. The terrain was unforgiving. So were the birds. We had been in birds all day, but it was the last day of the season and they were onto us. Only minutes prior I had managed to scratch down my first chukar, Read More
One thousand two hundred and twenty-eight generations ago, my ancestor lay curled in a shallow depression scratched from the soil of a low African cave, listening to the night. Fear and Hunger waged a Great Battle in him. Fear was mighty and terrible in its strength, neither reasoned nor conceptual. It was real; a knowing in my ancestor,, Read More
Upland birds have gained my favor the past few years. Maybe it’s the country, maybe it’s because I don’t have to get up at 3am, maybe it’s the exercise that both my dogs and I appreciate. Whatever the reason waterfowl have been on the back burner. However, time spent in the uplands has not, Read More
Meat, as we’ve discussed, is a fundamental USOB asset. Keep bringing it home, and you’re more likely to score the hall pass for a trip to go get more. Take it up a notch though, by fixing a knock their socks off supper, and you’ll get unsolicited inquiries into when you’re going hunting again., Read More