On our short but steep hike to our spike elk camp in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado, Aron Snyder stops and looks at the ground. “A pretty decent-sized herd must have come through here in the last 12 to 24 hours,” he ...
Features
Hunter, Frogman, Sniper, Spy: Retired SEAL Terry Houin is Just Getting Started
Standing on the ramp of a C-130 in the dead of night, at 5,000 feet, in thick clouds over the Indian Ocean 12 miles east of the Horn of Africa, Terry Houin and his five teammates, all part of a secretive intelligence unit within the US Navy SEALs, ...
Where The Light Shines In: A US Marine’s First Turkey Hunt in Montana
“Should we take the bird to the truck and start cleaning it; maybe get ready for the guys to return?” Andy asked me. “How about we just sit here and look at Montana,” I said. The thought of it being okay to be in the moment caused half a ...
Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Hunter S. Thompson and Firearms
Hunter S. Thompson has become a lot of things to a lot of people since his death in 2005. While he was alive, it wasn’t much different. He was a public figure so controversial, that went so against the grain of civilized society, and was so litigious ...
Wildlife Scientists Lead the Charge in Montana’s CWD ‘Zombie Deer’ Fight
Most sportsmen who travel to Montana head almost immediately for its wilds to fish and hunt. On this trip to Big Sky Country, the mission is whitetails — chronic wasting disease–infected “zombie deer” specifically, but our first stop is a veterinary ...
Underdogs: 4 Hunting Dogs That Beat Death and Got Back in the Field
Americans love their underdogs. The comeback story is an age-old reminder that you can’t count someone out till the final whistle, bell, buzzer, or fat lady dropping the mic. Of course, some of the best comeback stories aren’t about people. In ...
Reader’s Choice: The 10 Biggest Free Range American Stories of 2021
This was a good year for Free Range American. We grew by hundreds of percentage points in every conceivable metric and covered a wide range of topics (and controversies) other outdoor media sites were afraid to touch. We broke the news on an ...
Carp Crazy: A Fly-in Fishing Adventure on Lake Michigan’s Beaver Island
Forty-degree wind and spitting rain blow unabated from Canada’s northwestern territories, gusting to 25 miles per hour. The rain hits my jacket and the back of my hands with the sharp snap of firecrackers as I stand waist-deep in the murky water of ...
Peace in the Clouds: How This Deadly Warrior Found His Zen
The sun has barely crested the snowcapped peaks of “his canyon” when Dan Schilling pulls into the back lot of Snowbird ski resort. He grabs his ruck — packed with snowshoes and hiking poles — from the back seat and shuts the truck door. His white ...
Breaking the Curse: A Decade-Long Elk Hunt
The first year I hunted elk, I drove from New York to Colorado in my beat-up Tacoma and camped high on a forest service road. I wanted to kill my first one solo and with my bow. I hiked in by myself on the second day of the season. A few miles deep, ...
Good In The Woods: Surviving The Wild With Laura Zerra
With the state of humanity in chaotic disarray, I have often found myself wondering how well I would survive in the event of a total global apocalypse. Would I be able to hold my own if I was forced to seek shelter in a woodland sanctuary? How long ...
Star-Spangled Burgers: 3 Wild Game Masterpieces for the Fourth of July
To celebrate Independence Day, we’ve put together three original recipes for wild game burgers that will help you win this Fourth of July weekend — a basic cheeseburger for weirdos unsure about venison, an Americana steakhouse classic, and a ...
The Powerful Treatment That Could Help Heal Our Wounded Vets
A bed in white linens sits in the center of a wood floor, lit by soft daylight streaming through large windows. Outside is a still desert landscape pockmarked with scrub brush and cactus. A veteran is on the bed, tattooed, laying still as a ...
The Bear: Hunting Ursa Major in the Idaho Wilderness
We saw him the first night. Kurtis sat with his bow. The bear stood motionless in the alders. Quarters like tree stumps anchored him to this steep side of the mountain. His rough coat cut a saw-blade silhouette in the dying light. He had no neck and ...
Sylvester Stallone Is a National Treasure, and You Can’t Change My Mind
Sylvester Stallone gets a lot of shit. People have been using him as a punchline for years, either because of the way he talks or looks or because of the roles and action movies he’s made famous. I grew up on Stallone and his ...
Naked and Not Afraid: A Profile of Laura Zerra
Laura Zerra is focused. The 35-year-old reality television star and social media influencer sits in an ice shack on a frozen river in South Dakota, her gloved hand tapping an 8-foot steel spear. A rectangle the size of a 60-inch ...
GEAR TEST: The Ultimate Replaceable Blade Knife Test
Sharpening and honing a knife blade is a necessary outdoor skill, but it’s hard to beat the convenience, weight, and surgical precision of modern scalpel-like replaceable-blade knives. Many of the most knowledgeable hunters and outdoorsmen have found ...
American Railroad: Is There a Future for Trains in a Changing Nation?
It’s a dreary winter afternoon in Huron, South Dakota. Standing in his safety gear — hard hat, coveralls, harness — mechanic John Tapken is ready to get back to work on trains. It’s a few hours past lunchtime, but the day is far ...
Inside the Fitness Cult of Gym Jones
On the south side of Bloomington, Illinois, in a warehouse next to an empty golf cart dealership, a small tribe of men and women prep to suffer. Over the sink in the restroom where I’m hiding hangs a 1st Ranger Battalion flag. ...
Hunting Trip for Veterans Could Be a National Model for Better Health
This article was originally published on Dec. 6, 2020, on Coffee or Die Magazine. Steve Houghton’s rugged face shone orange in the firelight as he pulled in a deep breath of the frigid Montana backcountry air and shifted in his ...
Who the Fuck Is Tim Montana?
It’s about a quarter past 11 on a drizzly July morning in Butte, Alaska, when Tim Montana and his entourage roll into the dirt courtyard of Jeff Heard’s property and pour out of an SUV for a day of four-wheeling in the Alaskan ...
When an Archery Pronghorn Hunt Goes Wrong
Sitting in the cab of Miles Fedinec’s pickup, beside a dirt road on a high sage flat in western Colorado, I can see through binoculars a pronghorn buck. He’s a half-mile away, standing in the 94-degree heat, and my arrow is pinned ...
Smagical Thinking: The Life and (Near) Death of Phil Smage
Sweat dripping down his face, Phil Smage sat on his Kawasaki KLX 110 pit bike at the starting line of the first-ever Pastranaland Pit Bike Championship. Nine national-level motocross competitors were beside him — all gunning for ...
Antarctic Ice Marathon: A Trial by Fire
I passed the threshold of the aircraft door and the cold cut through my piled-on layers of down and fleece in a flash. The cold went straight to my bones, and the primitive, reptilian part of my brain spoke, informing me that this ...
The Frank: A Fly-in, Fly-Fishing Adventure in Idaho’s Largest Wilderness
There is a rattlesnake somewhere near my left boot. I can hear it, but I can’t see it. My dad is sitting on the ground 10 yards away with his back against a log, holding a sandwich in one hand and pointing frantically with the ...
Island Peak: How 2 Spec Ops Vets Found Healing in the Himalayas
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say "These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.” After I left the military in 2011, I wandered for months, crisscrossing India and Nepal. I studied Buddhism in the misty ...
The Untold True Story of How Black Rifle Coffee Got Its Start
Evan Hafer, the founder and CEO of Black Rifle Coffee Company, was suspicious. He was holding staff meetings every two days, being told that their in-house fulfillment center was only a few shipments behind, and yet customer ...
8 Questions with Former Operator Kyle Lamb
Kyle Lamb has lived a life most couldn’t even dream of. He grew up in a small town in South Dakota, but by the age of 24 he had been selected into the most elite special operations unit in the military. He went on to serve in “The Unit” for the next ...
Surviving Pastranaland: A Day in the Life of America’s Premier Daredevil
It’s not that the backyard pool was remarkable in and of itself. Rather, it was the people swimming in it. Most of them had visible scars, some of them had fresh wounds that would eventually turn into scars, and one was even ...
