Field & Stream

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Colin Kearns DESIGN DIRECTOR Russ Smith EXECUTIVE EDITOR Dave Hurteau SENIOR EDITOR Matthew Every NEWS EDITOR Sage Marshall ASSOCIATE NEWS EDITOR Travis Hall ASSISTANT EDITOR Ryan Chelius ENGAGEMENT EDITOR Derek Horner GEAR EDITOR Ama

TYPICALLY, with each issue of the digital magazine, we like to get creative with a unique theme—topics that no brand but Field & Stream could execute. Some standout issues that come to mind are Danger, Drive, Classics, and, most recently, Limits. Thi

IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF FALL, September is simply the opening act. But it can still be one hell of a show. For waterfowlers, this month brings teal limits in shirt sleeves. For bird hunters, it’s all about dove shoots, followed by a party with jalapeñ

THEY COULD’VE BEEN carrier pigeons, flying through the smoke and pops of gunfire on a century-ago battlefield to relay a secret message. But they were just doves, hellbent on eating popcorn. My buddy Ryan and I knelt in the shadow of a tobacco barn t

FOR A STEELHEAD fly fisherman, September is the month of the dry—when a fly skated across the surface is most likely to draw strikes. Later in the fall, when water temperatures dip into the 40s, the odds of getting a fish to look up begin to diminish

“OH MY GOD,” I said to Randy. “Here he comes.” We plunked to our knees right in the open meadow, crouching tight to the ground as if we could actually hide behind the little wisps of bunchgrass and the last scant aster blooms. We may as well have rol

TINA WAS in perfect health. Well, almost perfect. At age 11, my orange-​and-white English setter had the beginnings of cataracts, visible as milky-blue reflections, in both eyes. I’d also noticed that she sometimes bumped into things—the doorway to h

AFTER SEPTEMBER’S WARM-UP, things are getting interesting. There’s more of a chill in the air now, and it’s starting to feel like fall. As the leaves continue to turn, it’s starting to look more like fall, too. There is, perhaps, no better place to e

WE RODE the horses across the valley and up the mountain until they got too tired to go any farther. Then we tied them off, strapped on our packs, and started hiking. Our guide, Spencer Strike, led me and my friend David Herman past the treeline, int

IF YOU BELIEVE the legend, noted fly-tier Randall Kauffman was fishing the Deschutes River when he hooked a steelhead just as a freight train was thundering up the canyon. The unnamed fly he removed from the maw of the great trout was christened on t

Continued from Part 1 THE ONLY PLACE I want to be in October is a certain cabin tucked off a back road in a lightly populated corner of northeastern Wisconsin. Called Andy’s Acres in honor of its owner, my friend Andy Cook, it’s been my base of opera

IN SOME RESPECTS, the end of fall marks the beginning of the sportsman’s season. Sure, there’ve been ducks and geese to hunt, but the colder it continues to get, the more the shooting improves. On the water, there are still giant steelhead to catch—a

I HEARD THE DEER long before I saw them—their plodding footfalls through the leaves, their porcine grunts and chuffing, and then the sudden crack of a limb. For much of the year, mature bucks slip through their world like vapor; these sounded like a

THE INTRUDER is the culmination of an effort by Northwest anglers to create the perfect winter steelhead fly—one with a pulsing action that suggests bulk while remaining light and relatively easy to cast. Intruder patterns accomplish this by incorpor

9:27… I JUMPED into the bay to retrieve the harlequin. The water appeared calm—until I started tracking the speed at which the current was ferrying my bird. I quickened my pace, as if I were chasing a giant brown trout headed downstream. At first, wi

Continued from Part 2 ON THE WIDE-OPEN prairies of South Dakota, Tina’s compromised hearing wouldn’t be a factor. And even with her foggy vision, she’d be able to see well enough to pick me out against a backdrop composed of grass and sky. That was m

IT’S AN INDISPUTABLE FACT: Food tastes better around a fire. Doesn’t matter if it’s fresh elk tenderloins or yet another pouch of freeze-dried grub—nothing seasons a meal better than smoke and flames. Of course, these feasts are even better when you

WE CALLED IT the Cove—and oh man, it was a gorgeous place to hunt. Run a climber up a tree and I could see along the bank of the creek for 75 yards, with deep views into the hardwoods. A low, flood-prone opening was ringed with greenbrier and blackbe

CLINT BREAKS a long silence in the blind. “I read in some waterfowling magazine that this is a bucket list hunt,” he says. “Canvasbacks on Pool 9 is one of the top five hunts to do before you die.” He gets the reaction he’s looking for, a rueful chuc

I’VE GOT a shoulder mount of a fine 4x4 mule deer buck on my wall, and if I look at him from just the right angle, I’ll swear that he’s wearing a slight smirk. Shooting that buck was like backlashing your first cast of the day but catching a 10-pound

YAKAMEIN (often pronounced “yaka-mee”) is a cult New Orleans specialty that’s one part ramen bowl, one part pho, and 50 parts New Orleans: a rowdy combination of spaghetti noodles, intensely seasoned broth, eggs, and slurpable shreds of meat. The ver

IT WAS LIKE the buck fell from the sky. I’d glassed the wooded creekbottom to my left only minutes before. Then I scanned the opposite timber, stared at my boots for a few seconds, and heard the slightest scuff in the leaves. Or I thought I did. This

ROD COLLIN, a veteran Yukon sheep guide (“Can Sheep Hunting in the Yukon Survive Another Century?”), has spent the last 40 years of his life migrating to the mountains every fall. Each August he leaves his home, his wife, and all their dogs to lead h

AS TOLD TO DAC COLLINS ILLUSTRATIONS BY AJ FRENA A FULL-TIME firefighter in Taylor County, Florida, Rhett Willingham says he’s always been close with his sister, Addison Bethea. While growing up in the Panhandle, they’ve spent countless days fishing,

NICK SCHRIVER looks at highways the way a contractor looks at your house. He sees trouble spots that can use some touch-ups, if not total reconstructions. The maintenance supervisor for the Montana Department of Transportation’s northeast field offic

IT’S DARK and raining on the Canadian prairie. Most sane people are still tucked in bed or just putting on a pot of coffee. But the group of us getting soaked to the bone setting out decoys and brushing in A-frame blinds in a cut pea field are all ce

I’M 7 MILES OFFSHORE from Lorain, Ohio, being verbally abused. To get here required an alarm set for well before dawn, an hour-long drive from my motel, and a backbreaking run across a Lake Erie that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It’s the kin

ON A HILLSIDE a half mile below us, three rams graze on lush, green grass. A few hundred yards to our left, four young rams are bedded in a dirt patch. And across the valley, on the far ridge, dozens of white dots flicker in my binoculars. Before tod

HATCHET’S FIRST HUNT isn’t going as planned. Every trainer I consulted offered similar advice for our inaugural duck hunt: Set up with a good view for my young Lab. Take just one other hunter, one who won’t miss. Don’t hunt with other dogs. Keep it s

THE SUN BEATS down and sweat drips off our heads as we unload rented llamas from a borrowed trailer on the west side of Wyoming’s Wind River Range. Dust puffs off the llamas’ coats and sticks to everything: our packs, our tents, and our rod tubes. Ou

I MOVED TO Bozeman, Montana, in the summer of 2010. I was just one of many out-of-staters resettling here, one hunter in an influx that’s gained steam ever since. When I arrived, many local friends—themselves transplants for the most part—suggested I