Hunting

I’m confident in saying that I have fairly well-trained bird dogs. They know the basics and can run multiple retrieves at the same time. My dogs are steady to the shot, and they listen really well. For me. My daughters and my wife, their dogs aren’t quite as good. This is a real bummer, because they...

If you’ve spent any time in western terrain, you already know about the brutal climbs, long hours in the cold, or the moment you finally arrow a bull, only to realize you’re many miles from the truck with a few hundred pounds of meat on the ground. That’s when fitness stops being a bonus and becomes...

While public land advocates celebrated the elimination of Mike Lee’s contribution to the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, gun owners cheered a different provision that could pave the way for total deregulation of suppressors and short-barreled firearms. Congress passed–and the president approved–the...

How many times have you heard someone say something like this when talking about hunting public land roosters, “As soon as you shut the truck door, they all flush out the end of the slough and sail to the private.” The implication is that those hard-hunted ditch chickens are onto the game, and they...

Smith & Wesson has been around for nearly two centuries, so you might assume that the new Model 1854 is the resurrection of a much older lever gun. In fact, Smith’s new offering is the very first modern lever action rifle the company has ever produced, and it’s only been out for about a year. “185...

Some hunters want a dedicated rifle for every purpose. Others say they prefer a single gun that can do just about anything. Most of us land somewhere in the middle, but Remington was aiming for the one-gun crowd when it released the .22 Accelerator in 1977. The .22 Accelerator stuffed a 55-grain...

By late June, the Gnome had grown bored of the small fish he was catching. He had a successful spring season and caught and cooked his fill of the local fare—he’d smoked spry trout, fried fat panfish, boiled mudbugs, and even pickled some suckers—but he was hungry for something more. So, as the...

If you’ve been around dog trainers long enough, you’ve no doubt heard the expression, “You have to put a good foundation on the pup!” or something along those lines. Trainers love to talk about how building a strong foundation makes future training easier. While I completely agree with the premise...

I have a love-hate relationship with my reloading press. Reloading ammunition is both fun and frustrating; relaxing and anxiety-producing; money-saving and money-wasting. It’s a hobby I’ve been obsessed with and wondered whether I’ll ever pick up again. I’m probably being dramatic, but the...

Whether you have a retriever puppy you’re hoping will bring you a decade’s worth of greenhead limits, or a ride-or-die mutt that will spend the summers at the lake with you, getting a dog comfortable with boats can be an interesting experience. You could take some puppies on a speedboat when they...

How far is too far to take an ethical shot on an animal? However you answer that question, some in Wyoming are calling on lawmakers to step in and decide. Long-distance hunting has become more and more popular over the past several years, and MeatEater has lots of coverage about squeezing the most...

There’s never been a better time to take a suppressor into the field. Forty-one states have legalized hunting with a suppressor, and outfits like Silencer Central have streamlined and simplified the purchasing process. What’s more, the ATF got its act together last year and dramatically reduced the...