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The Steelhead With A Thousand Faces
Maybe if I take five more steps, throw one more mend, skate one more fly, a hero will appear, armored in chrome, and dance to the music of my singing reel.
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The Birth of A Fishing Town
Calf deep now in the cold river, Trent’s completed his prelude of silky false casts and is ready to start the show in earnest.
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In The End, Style Might Be All We Have
Over the course of 6 trips, in and out, and nearly 40 miles, I question whether or not it’s worth it.
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Banded
Folding neatly the greenhead splashed soundly onto the water. The old lady made quick work of the retrieve.
If I’d had a pipe and an Irish setter, we could have been in a Norman Rockwell painting. Puffy white clouds floated in a bluebird sky above vibrant green sage and the rolling red-dirt prairie. A man, at ease with the world and confident in his forthcoming conquest, strides forth, a shotgun cradled across, Read More
The old english proverb states that the “Eyes Are the Window to the Soul”. What can you say about looking into someone’s freezer? A quick inventory of mine revealed a few interesting items: One antelope head, that needs to be skinned and made into a european mount before long. Two flats of raspberries, saved for baking, Read More
Balance. Lift. Swing. Extend. Accelerate. Thwack. Repeat. The bounty of autumn is a backhanded blessing. There’s so much to do… but there’s so much to do. And winter is coming. The satisfying soreness that follows a day in the hills after elk, deer, antelope or chukar; the easy fit of old waders as water, Read More
They called him Deadeye Dan, although that was before I came along. He was a great shot. Dropping whitetails on the run as they darted between cottonwoods, elk in the fog at three hundred yards. Always just one shot. By the time I was able to tag along on hunts those days were long, Read More
My son was so excited for the first day of hunting season, and the morning was such a blooper reel of false starts, forgotten gear and last minute errands, that I nearly failed to calibrate expectations. We’d left the highway, the state roads, and the graded gravel behind before I thought to check in, Read More
My uncle always said that elk were a staple and everything else was an appetizer. I guess we liked appetizers because as a kid we would always shoot a couple of whitetail does for the freezer. We had tons of them on our family ranch and they tasted delicious. Now, I have almost no access, Read More
There’s a difference between the smell of an animal and the smell of an animal on you. Pronghorn antelope have a goaty, musky, virile stink. When a whiff wafts from an arroyo or the matted secrecy of a day bed, it’ll twist your neck and curl your nose. In such chance encounters the smell, Read More
Without much thinking I realized there are two pages that I go to every day, nearly without fail, and am always eager to see what they have to say when it comes to fishing. I’m not alone. Most of us who love to fish and own a computer know who these guys are. They, Read More
I can no more explain why I hunt than I can explain why I read. I have reasons – because others must die for me to live, and I’m resolved to do my own killing; because it’s the most sensually vibrant and emotionally complex way I know of to experience the natural world; because, Read More
Getting my hands on a new rod is always a treat. I have a couple of favorites for sure, but I really enjoy trying something new. Matt on the other hand pretty much fishes one rod. Once he asked to borrow a rod, for a trip to the Keys, but that was stretching it, Read More