The sound was quiet, but close: a rustle in the leaves a few feet from the hiking trail. Curious, I peered under the ferns and caught sight of a garter snake. Then I saw what it was up to. Not one of Mr. Frog’s better days. The image of the amphibian in that reptile’s maw … Read more
If my pristine hardcover copy of Meditations on Hunting was a paperback, it would be heavily marked up. Here and there, a sentence would be underlined, noting my emphatic agreement. Mostly, though, the margins would be crammed with question marks, exclamation points, and words of protest. This little book, written in 1942 by Spanish philosopher … Read more
Two weeks ago, I got an email from Michelle Scheuermann, a spokesperson for The Sportsman Channel. Hunt.Fish.Feed.—a project Michelle works on, bringing donated game and fish to the hungry—was getting some bad press. She wondered if I would take a look and share my thoughts. Given my journey from veganism to hunting, she thought I … Read more
Even with the leaves damp and quiet, I heard the buck coming. And even through the branches and brush, I saw enough antler to know he was no off-limits spikehorn. When he stepped around the big hemlock twenty yards away, my rifle was up. In the periphery of my mind, the antlers registered: maybe six … Read more
Cath and I looked at the ground in surprise. We had visited this rocky hilltop many times. It was here, some eight years earlier, that I had asked her to marry me. We had often seen these low bushes clinging to the meager soil. We had never seen them fruiting. The patch of green leaves … Read more
The moose steak sat on the kitchen counter in a steel bowl, thawing. Having just completed the state hunter education course, I was contemplating the prospect of going after meat on the hoof. Though I didn’t have any plans to hunt until the following year, I did have a question to answer: How would it … Read more
The timing was dead-on. Just as I walked past the table, the woman said, “My rule is, ‘I’ll only eat it if I could kill it.’ And I could definitely kill one of those.” I left the restaurant chuckling. I was thinking how the line echoed one of my reasons for taking up hunting: to … Read more