“This corona deal sucks. Every parking lot is full and I heard four shots this a.m.” For once in my life as a turkey hunter, I could feel smug. The text came from a friend hunting the public area where I have chased spring gobblers for 30 years. ...
Hunting & Fishing
Starter Kit: Learning To Fly Fish — Casting
Learning a basic fly cast is probably the coolest part of the process aside from actually catching a fish. Fly casts are inherently beautiful, for sure. But when you drop a fly on the water above a fish and it happily grabs that fly and puts a great ...
Proposed Legislation That Impacts the Outdoors and Outdoor Sports
Legislation that directly affects our legacy outdoor pastimes like hunting, fishing, and shooting is in a constant state of flux. In an effort to keep you informed, we’re pulling together a monthly roundup of national and state-level policy-making ...
Going primal: The challenge of traditional bow hunting
I started bow hunting with an old wooden recurve bow that my grandfather gave me for Christmas when I was 12 years old. It didn’t have much draw weight, but I still couldn’t hold it at full draw for very long. It didn’t have any sights, so I had to ...
Starter Kit: Learning To Fly Fish — Gear Up
Fly fishing can seem overwhelming at first. Truth is, it’s not. Learning how to fly fish is actually easy and fun as hell. And it won’t immediately empty your wallet. With the right gear and some fundamentals, you’ll be ready to pester farm-pond ...
Winter Storm Uri Devastates Texas Exotic Wildlife and Fish Numbers
Winter storm Uri has dealt a devastating blow to coastal fisheries and exotic game species in Texas, and with only preliminary reports and anecdotal data currently available, officials say it will take months to fully understand the scale of this ...
Private Land Access: How To Earn Permission for Hunting and Fishing
As a fly-fishing guide in Montana, I made a living on one of the country’s most prolific public river-access programs. The rivers I called home, like the Clark Fork and Bitterroot, wound through sprawling private ranches, but thanks to Montana’s ...
Off Script: Free Range Q&A With Correy Hawk of Organic Archery
Correy Hawk is more than a renaissance man — he’s a renaissance badass. A Marine veteran, student of the natural world, and teacher of how to live in it, he can spend weeks in quiet solitude deep in the backcountry with the most minimal gear. He can ...
No Fences: Hunting Lions in Tanzania
International hunting videographer and photographer Dallas Hemeyer recently sat down with Evan Hafer on the Free Range American podcast to discuss the thrill of hunting lions in Tanzania. While all lion hunting is exciting, Hemeyer explained how ...
How To Start a Gun Dog
Once you hunt over a gun dog of your own, hunting birds without a dog, or hunting over anyone else’s dog, doesn’t feel like hunting anymore. It’s just walking around trying to shoot stuff. A bird dog connects you to the unseen world of scents in ...
Firefighter and Avid Fisherman Wins the BRCC Ultimate Outdoor Giveaway
Brandon Crimmons, a firefighter from White House, Tennessee, has won the fishing package of a lifetime — Black Rifle Coffee Company’s Ultimate Outdoor Giveaway. Crimmons landed more than $110,000 worth of prizes, including a brand-new Toyota Tacoma ...
Take Down Those Dams: New Legislation Could Save Snake River Salmon
Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican congressman, has just put the Northwest energy and agriculture sector on notice: Salmon and steelhead will join them at the table, and not as the entrée. In a video statement posted over the weekend, Simpson ...
Doing What You Love: How Dallas Hemeyer Turned His Passion Into a Career
Most hunters reluctantly leave the woods to go to a job they may not particularly enjoy, but Dallas Hemeyer found a way to turn his passion for hunting into a lucrative career. During a recent chat with Evan Hafer on the Free Range American ...
Suburban Hunting: Bringing Bowhunting to a Neighborhood Near You
It’s a sunny, abnormally warm early evening in October, and Taylor Chamberlin is about 20 feet off the ground. Looking down from his treestand through the dense canopy, he sees his target: a whitetail cruising for acorns. Chamberlin draws his ...
Sex Dungeon? The Best Named Fly-Fishing Flies of All Time
Fly-fishing used to be a particularly stodgy affair. That was true also regarding the names of flies; they were either named after their inventor or given an unimaginative moniker based on what they imitated. Fortunately, that has all changed as new ...
Evan Hafer of BRCC Appointed to CSF Board of Directors
The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) has announced the appointment of Evan Hafer, founder and chief executive officer of Black Rifle Coffee Company, to its board of directors. The CSF works directly with Congress, governors, and state ...
5 Reasons Why Hunting, Fishing, and Shooting Will Be Awesome in 2021
By pretty much every metric, 2020 was a dumpster fire. A global pandemic and civil unrest the likes of which haven’t been seen in a lifetime rocked the globe. Normal has gone out the window, and who knows when it will be back. But not everything is ...
Where the Brook Trout Run: Pond in the River
If I’m in Maine, it’s raining. This trip was no different, with an early spring drizzle dancing on the lake’s surface as we put in on the southern corner like we had so many times before. As the sun began its westward procession across the gray sky, ...
Check Out Evan Hafer’s Awesome Father-Son Elk Hunt
Earlier this year, Black Rifle Coffee Company founder and CEO Evan Hafer took his dad, Ed, on an epic elk hunt in northeast Utah. The pair haven’t hunted together in 30 years, and hilarity ensues when old school meets new school on the ...
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 ...
Becoming the Squirrel: Hunters vs. Vegans on Social Media
Maybe hunters and vegetarians — and even vegans — aren’t all that different? Biologist, explorer, and filmmaker Donnie Vincent raised this question in a recent chat he had with Evan Hafer on the Free Range American podcast. “I don’t like the ...
2020 FRA Holiday Gift Guide: The Hunting Wish List
When we’re not making coffee or printing T-shirts, you can bet the crew here at Black Rifle Coffee Company and Free Range American are out hunting. How into hunting is this team? The HR department gives away hunts for filling out internal work ...
A Vegan Hunter and Her First Deer Kill
G is a vegan. Her kids and my kids became friends at Montessori. On our first few play dates, we talked a lot about meat, about hunting, about her experience training as a veterinarian in factory farms. We talked about killing, and sadness, and ...
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 ...
2020 FRA Holiday Gift Guide: The Fishing Wish List
The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and for outdoors enthusiasts that means one thing: new gear. New gear to gift our buddies who fish and hunt. New gear to put in our own letters to Santa. This year, FRA decided to go big and asked ...
The Art of Conservation: Yeti Presents ‘Wild Sheep’
“There is no half way. After his first exposure, a man is either a sheep hunter or he isn’t. He either falls under the spell of sheep hunting and sheep country or he won’t be caught dead on another sheep mountain.” — Jack O’Connor This book is for ...
The San Diego Bottom Scratchers: The Men Who Hunted Sharks Barehanded
All 19 members of the San Diego Bottom Scratchers are dead. At the bottom of the ocean, a few hundred yards northwest of Boomer Beach and the Point in La Jolla, is an underground cemetery of tombstones and rock cairns. Inscribed are the names of some ...
How the Hunter Recruitment Project Recruits New (Adult) Hunters
Have you wanted to get into hunting but didn’t have anyone to take you growing up? Did you hunt a few times in your early years with friends and family but became overwhelmed by the unending number of questions, such as What camouflage do I buy? Do I ...
Wildfires, Hunting, and Fishing: How the Fires Will Change Your Next Trip
I’m beyond angry. I’m pissed off, standing with two US Forest Service employees while my good friend and hunting partner Anthony Noriega, almost a mile away and 1,000 feet higher than us, inspects the ruins of a man-made fire high in the Idaho ...
How To Deal with Trespassers on Private Hunting Land
Realizing that someone has been trespassing on your hunting property is not a good feeling. This year after gaining permission to hunt a piece of land, I went to scout it in preparation for a friend coming to hunt. There were multiple trail cameras ...