I hate not having something I need when I’m hunting. Unfortunately, the choice often seems to be either toting around a good-sized pack or doing without something I need. By finding compact, light gear that still gets the job done, though, you can have both mobility and the stuff you wish you had [...]
“Woof!” The sound sent a chill down my spine. I looked over my shoulder to see a large, hungry looking grizzly bear watching me intently from directly across the river. I turned my head momentarily to warn Mike. “Bear!” I whispered. As I looked back at the bear, he stood up on his [...]
I have read a lot of stories in outdoor magazines (including the unbeatable Traditional Bowhunter Magazine) that shout high praise for the merits of hunting feral hogs. I agree with the praise for hunting them, but they come with downsides. Growing up in south-central Oklahoma, I did not realize until recently how well [...]
Grizzly tracks paved the dusty mule trails, in places erasing all sign of the heavy camp traffic. As dusk pulled shadows from the forest, I saw my first elk print. We’d been more than 20 miles in the saddle when we dismounted and tugged panniers, then pack-saddles, into the tack tent. To find [...]
The alarm had been going off for some time when I finally reached around to hit the snooze button. I should have been bouncing out of bed. It was the second week of November, and for a bowhunter, this is the time of year dreamt about during those other 50 weeks. The whitetail [...]
"I will never go back to that place!” had barely slipped past my lips before my buddy, Fink, and I started debating our September hunt. The past three springs I had hunted bears in central Idaho. The short version is that I’d just spent two weeks hunting bears, saw a boar on the [...]
Target panic is one of those topics sure to elicit a wide range of responses. Some people will perk to attention, while others will run like a little girl being chased by a spider. There are people who know it exists—usually because they suffer from it—and others who consider it a fairy tale. [...]
I was sitting on a saddle over four miles into a small wilderness area in eastern Oregon, watching the sun descend in the sky. A brisk wind blew steadily in my face giving the thin air at 7,000 feet a little sting to my cheeks. Every half hour I let out a couple of [...]
Near the end of a long spit stretching out almost 4.5 miles into Kachemak Bay from the fishing town of Homer, Alaska near the tip of the Kenai peninsula sits a small, A-framed roofed building. This is the “World Headquarters” of Homer Ocean Charters, a well-known and highly respected charter and adventure company [...]
“Take my wife hunting? I go hunting to get away from my wife!” Few comments about hunting make my skin crawl as much as that one. Perhaps “Women don’t belong in hunting camp!” would edge it out on the Chauvinist Pig Top Ten List, but not by much. While I try not to [...]
