I was around 10 years old when I established some of my first campfire cooking skills. There were two distinct memories from those times which I suspect formed the basis of my campfire culinary career. The first was an early fall bowhunt for grouse in the pine sandhills a couple miles from our [...]
When I was a kid, understanding the annual hunting regulations was simple business. You bought your license and received a little pamphlet that wasn’t more than a few pages long. The first half was mostly a verbatim reprint of the previous year’s version, along the lines of, “It is illegal to shoot game at [...]
Every bowhunter needs a sharp broadhead at the business end of the arrow. Most of us hone our broadheads ourselves, but a truly sharp edge can be elusive for many of us, sometimes seeming like black magic. This tutorial will get you started with a simple method and a pocket kit for honing [...]
Favorite Bow Poll I have often heard that the first arrow is the only one that counts, because few hunters get a second shot. If you subscribe to that notion, it might be due to the way you handle your arrow while nocking. One significant advantage of traditional bows over compounds is how [...]
Left to right: Eugene Reeber, Leo Lange, and Nelson Grumley. Back in the days of lumberjacks and logging camps they told the story of the “winter of the blue snow” when meat was scarce. During that time of starvation and bitter cold the legendary Paul Bunyan stepped up and proved that he was [...]
I was thirteen years old and had just finished crawling through knee-deep Wisconsin snow in December to position myself within bow range of a deer feeding in a cut corn field. In addition to the numbingly cold temperature, I recall feeling heat pounding in my ear drums and slight trembling throughout my body. [...]
Using decoys to help lure animals into range goes back almost as far as our hunting history does. In fact, early man and Native Americans were the first to employ many of the same strategies we still use today to kill animals. I am sure our forefathers learned a lot of their hunting [...]
Many people are upping the excitement and challenge of bowhunting by electing to use traditional bows. As a reader of TBM, you likely need little help deciding on a traditional bow, yet most often hunters considering the switch turn to those already involved for advice. Bowhunters who have five or more decades of [...]
Over twenty years ago, a friend of mine was giving me an impromptu lesson on coon hound training along a familiar creek on our farm. When his pup finally treed, we started into the woods at the creek crossing and three hundred yards later, turned left, away from the creek, and walked fifty [...]
The whine of the diesel pushed us down the rain-soaked asphalt, green moss popping up through the cracks in the shoulder. The trees lining the highway from the airport drip with tendrils of olive and gray, a moss that resembles Hagrid’s beard. The sharp peaks push up straight from the Copper River Delta [...]
