Nowadays, I don’t leave home without them. Years ago, I was several miles into a tough cougar chase when things went from bad to worse. Bright sun had caused evaporating scent conditions on the snow, and only one of our three hounds was still on the lion track when I started a long, [...]
The moment of truth has come and gone. You have released the arrow, and the excitement is slowly giving way to guarded optimism as you replay the shot in your mind. You have taken landmarks and stared at the exact spot where you last saw the fleeing deer until you are certain it [...]
I was the beneficiary of a wonderful childhood. In addition to his scientific accomplishments (his pioneering work in the field of bone marrow transplantation earned him the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1990), my father was a highly skilled outdoorsman. My mother also loved the outdoors. Best of all, they always made every [...]
There aren’t many bridges in the backcountry. Travel around much there and you’ll eventually have to cross some flowing water to get where you want to go, a process that can range from mildly inconvenient to outright dangerous. Experience eventually teaches that some ways are better than others. In smaller streams, the only [...]
I have no idea how many nights I’ve spent camped out in the field, but it’s a lot. Most of them were pleasant and highly enjoyable, either because I was engaged in exciting hunting or fishing nearby or simply because my surroundings were free of the noise and clutter of daily life closer [...]
This is an excerpt from Don's article, And One For All, in the Oct/Nov 2019 issue. We weren’t quite done yet. Back when we had four kids at home our household could consume amazing amounts of wild game. Now that it was just Lori and me, two deer would about do it. Knowing [...]
Where the deer and the antelope play… As the words from Home on the Range suggest, the American pronghorn, familiarly known as antelope, practically defined the prairie wilderness settlers encountered as they pushed west across the Great Plains. There's still something uniquely western about the species, and the very thought of hunting them [...]
An entire article on making a hamburger? I’m kidding, right? Wrong, and I’ll tell you why. First, I feel strongly that eating what we shoot doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves nowadays. Too many hunting magazines have devolved to endless streams of “grab-and-grin” hero photos separated by breathless prose descriptions of G-2s [...]
In the Jun/Jul 2019 issue’s Ground Game column, Built for the Ground, I talked about javelina as a great bowhunting spot-and-stalk quarry. One point I tried to emphasize is that despite their reputation to the contrary, they actually make good eating with proper handling in the field and preparation in the kitchen. I [...]
Some years back, a friend came out from the East Coast to go cougar hunting. The morning after he arrived, we set out early and were fortunate enough to strike a good track. By the time the hounds were out of hearing range, he was struggling to keep up with me as we [...]
