GREG MAYNARD bows his head in prayer. It’s about an hour before sunset on a Friday in May, and the president of the ProSport Kennel Club is standing inside a clubhouse in western Indiana that looks like no place of worship I’ve ever been to. There’s

ON A BITTER November afternoon, my neighbor Alan wrapped up his 15-year-old son, Tanner, like Ralphie’s kid brother in A Christmas Story, then put a muzzleloader in his hands and led him to a blind overlooking a cut cornfield. Though it was still ear

RECENTLY, one of my editors asked me if I had to use just one shotgun for all my hunting and shooting, what gun would it be? I told him that it didn’t exist, but instead would have to be stitched together out of bits and pieces of several shotguns, c

I GOT MY NICKNAME from an old hillbilly from Arkansas whose boat I captained up in southeast Alaska for about 10 years. He said working with me was like working with a barnyard rooster. * * * I was born on a dairy farm in western Massachusetts. We we

STREET-FOOD STAPLES in Vietnam, these butterflied quail are marinated in a slurry of oyster sauce, fish sauce, spices, garlic, and honey before being pan-fried and then—just to gild the lily—drenched with lime and black-pepper-spiked butter. Little b

FIELD & STREAM has long celebrated the bond between hunters and their dogs. Our photo editor discovered these pictures dating from the ’30s to the early ’70s in our files. They show a very different era of hunting, when whitetails and turkeys were sc

I WASN’T going to shoot either deer. Nor did I want to risk spooking one and send it huffing and puffing through the deep woods just as my hunt got started. So I eased the rifle down, leaned against the tree, and watched from my stand. The young doe

IT STARTED WITH a single knock—just one quick bounce of the rod tip. If the fish committed, within two seconds the ancient chipped and scuffed Ugly Stik would bow over and not pop back up. “Here we go, bud,” I said to my 5-year-old son, Jamie. “You r

THE SCENT OF SKUNK didn’t come off the bell for days, but that happens when your dog takes two close-range blasts in the face. Sam was wearing the bell on the morning my wife, Pam, first came hunting with me. When it fell silent, we found Sam on poin

AS WE BOUNCE onto the cornfield aboard the school bus, I’m reminded of the last time my dad and I rode in one of these together. Running school buses is our family business, and when I was a kid, I’d ride with him to drop off vehicles at drivers’ hou

In the beginning, Sam would take off at some point during almost every hunt. His departures were completely random, and not unlike those scenes in science fiction movies when a ship makes the jump to hyperspace. He’d blast off in a straight line at t

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Colin Kearns EXECUTIVE EDITOR Dave Hurteau ASSOCIATE EDITORS Ryan Chelius, Travis Hall ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Derek Horner EXECUTIVE GEAR EDITOR Amanda Oliver STAFF WRITER Travis Smola DESIGN DIRECTOR Russ Smith MANAGING EDITOR, F&S+ Jean

I HAD JUST RETURNED from Homosassa, Florida. I had driven 10 hours each way to fly fish for tarpon. I had recently broken three ribs in what remains disputed as either a biking accident or a drinking accident, which required that I ride in the poling

IN THE ALLEGHENY FOOTHILLS of my childhood, a boy had a choice between two doors. Open his front door, and there was the town—friends and enemies, fistfights and football—and down in the valley, the soot-blackened dragon that dominated the skyline, b

MICHELLE HAD SAID the alligator wasn’t dead, and I should’ve listened. But there was a hole right through the thing’s head from the bang stick, and we’d pulled it up onto the deck of my buddy Tom’s boat, and I’d even knelt behind it for a photo. At 8

THEY OUGHT TO WRITE country songs about losing fish. As every angler knows, breaking it off with a big bass or untying the knot with a beautiful trout is as painful as any other split, and just as likely to drive you to drink. It doesn’t matter whose

GOOGLE, WHICH KNOWS all things, says that a close call is a narrow escape from danger or disaster. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but there are different kinds of close calls. There are fast close calls, for example, and there are protracted close c

AS A KID growing up in Athens, Alabama, Brandon Bailes used to spend a lot of time in his grandfather’s woodshop. His grandpa would cut a block of cedar for Bailes, then sketch something on it—the outline of a northern cardinal, for example—and hand

EVER WONDER what guides really think of the average hunter’s shooting? One told me last year why he sold his operation in Canada. “Guides can’t carry a gun up there. I got tired of putting birds in front my hunters and watching them miss,” he said. “

YOU MIGHT have heard about—or even tried—last year’s trendy Thanksgiving trick of slathering your turkey in mayonnaise before its turn in the oven. Eyebrows were raised, but hardly anyone could dispute the results: richly bronzed skin, uncommonly jui

WHAT SMELLS remind you of childhood summers? The sulfury smoke of a sparkler that just burned out? The nostril-stinging water at the public pool, loaded with enough chlorine to strip paint? Maybe it’s as simple as an overcooked hotdog on a charcoal g

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Colin Kearns EXECUTIVE EDITOR Dave Hurteau SENIOR EDITOR Matthew Every NEWS EDITOR Sage Marshall ASSOCIATE EDITORS Ryan Chelius, Travis Hall ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Derek Horner EXECUTIVE GEAR EDITOR Amanda Oliver STAFF WRITERS Meg Carney,

THE REEL ARRIVED in a handcrafted wooden box with a shiny silver Z screwed to the top. Inside, the ZX2’s body was cradled in a custom compartment, the detached handle secured in its own nook by a leather strap. The way it was presented reminded me of

IT’S MORNING at Kooyooe Pa’a Panunadu, or Pyramid Lake, in Nevada, and I’m fly fishing for the biggest cutthroat trout in the world. It’s my first time at the lake, and I’m here with Autumn Harry, the first Paiute woman fly-fishing guide in its histo

“YOU GO,” I said. “You sure?” Jack asked. My son knows I don’t like giving up the casting deck of a flats boat. “Go, go,” I replied. “You want a permit worse than I do. But hurry up before I change my mind.” And there wasn’t time to waste. Two permit

IN 1972, I went to Beverly Hills to attend the presentation of the Weatherby Award, which was given annually to the most accomplished big-game hunter Roy Weatherby could think of. It was a black-tie affair held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which wa

FROM HIS WORKSHOP in Thomasville, Georgia, taxidermist Edward Harden has been stuffing everything from mourning doves to elephants for more than 40 years. He got his start by sending away for a mail-order Northwestern School of Taxidermy course at ag

THE GOBBLER stood in the shade of a far-off cedar, very still, as if he were impersonating a decoy. It was noon and hot, and Tim and I were planning to leave Nebraska that very day, ending not only our weeklong trip but another spring of turkey hunti