Standing on the backside of the bass pond at the Black Rifle Coffee Company Ranch near San Antonio, Texas, the 7-foot foam Sasquatch target was laser-ranged at 106 yards. We were halfway through the 15-target Veteran Adaptive Athlete Shoot, or VAAS, ...
Howl for Wildlife Is the Platform Hunters Need Right Now
Like so many good ideas, Howl for Wildlife was born out of frustration. It was January 2021, and state Sen. Scott Wiener of California had introduced a bill to ban bear hunting in his state. Army veteran Charles Whitwam, a Bay Area entrepreneur, ...
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, ...
How To Make Bear Brats
We sat under an old blue tarp trying to stay dry in a stout rain while glassing a narrow drainage in the Bitterroots. I had just killed a good bear in Idaho a few days before and pressed on into Montana hoping to tag No. 2. “What are you going to do ...
GTFO: The 5 Wildest Adventure Vacation Rentals in the World
Few want to say the pandemic is over, but most of us are acting that way by eating out, traveling more, even getting on airplanes, and taking a much-needed vacation from our stressed-out lives. Go ahead and take a break from these weird-ass 18 months ...
WATCH: This Danish PSA Is the Best Viking Video in Years
The Danish Road Safety Council wants to remind everyone that badasses have worn helmets for thousands of years, and to do so, it produced the best Viking video to come out in ages. Don’t get me wrong — the first three seasons of Vikings ...
Zuckerberg Shoots Bow, Throws Spear, and We Don’t Know WTF To Think
When not flagging your drunk uncle Larry’s anti-vax posts, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently shoots bows and throws spears. No, seriously. In his trademarked blue shirt and sunglasses, the fifth-richest man in the ...
Father’s Day Guide: 8 Rad Gifts for the Adventure Dad in Your Life
I used to think Father’s Day was a made-up, Hallmark holiday designed to separate an unwitting American public from their hard-earned capital. Then I became a dad and understood the true meaning of Father's Day: breakfast in bed, compliments all day ...
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 ...
Wild Goats: Four Feral Hunts for the People
Ibex in Spain. Markhor in Pakistan. Tur in Azerbaijan. Hunts for Capra are some of the wildest, rarest, most expensive, and most sought-after mountain adventures on Planet Earth. Tags are limited. Logistics are complicated. Costs can rival the price ...
DIY Public Land .410 Turkey Slam in the First 2 Weeks of Turkey Season
Seth Gebo wasn’t planning to pull off one of the hardest things in turkey hunting. He connected with an Osceola in Florida on a buddy hunt a few days into the season. Then the lightbulb went off. With some last-minute plane tickets and a few hundred ...
This is How Firearm Suppressors Work
All firearm suppressors work the same way. When a trigger is pulled and the striker ignites a primer and sends a bullet down a firearm barrel, it’s trailed by hot and expanding gases from the combustion of primer and powder. Suppressors collect, ...
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 ...
The Experiment: A Late-Season Ohio Whitetail Hunt
The plan was laid in August. To mark the launch of Free Range American, we’d give away a world-class whitetail hunt on one of the largest contiguous farms in the Midwest — and swag out two readers with piles of gear and goodies from Black Rifle ...
Starter Kit: Gear Up for Turkey Season
Turkey season generally goes something like this: you find them, you call them, you shoot them. It's simple to turkey hunt—but it's not easy. Spring is most hunters’ favorite time to chase turkeys because the season plays on the one chink in a ...
Know Every Plant: A Cool and Useful Flora Identification Smartphone App
Sometimes the Instagram ads really nail you. No, I’m not talking about the cheap Made-in-China adult onesie it tried to sell me or the arthritis pain gel that got Paula Abdul dancing again. (How old do you think I am, IG?) But in my case, the ’Borg ...
Superfoods: How to Make Bone Broth
Endurance athletes have long known the power of salty, high-protein, high-fat bone broth for in-event energy and post-exercise recovery. Health food companies have caught on, too, with a litany of frozen broths and powder concentrates available now ...
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 ...
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. ...
Favorite Stories of 2020: Free Range American Editor’s Picks
We are young, but we are mighty. Free Range American launched in October and in just over 10 weeks we’ve published a deep-dive profile on an alt-country rocker, decided once and for all what exactly is the best hunting bino harness on the ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
Meet Morgan Mason, BHA’s New Armed Forces Initiative Coordinator
Morgan Mason has done a lot. The Kansas farmboy went overseas for the invasion of Iraq as an intelligence analyst with the US Army. After returning home, he bummed around the Rocky Mountains — and Baja, Mexico — hopping between various outdoor jobs. ...
Wild Game Jerky: The Ultimate Guide to Killer Meat
For as long as there have been hunters, there’s been wild game jerky—at least as best we can tell. Ötzi the Iceman—a 5,300-year-old hunter found frozen solid in the Italian Alps—had a last meal of dried ibex and red deer meat. Archeologists have ...
Kicking Off Fall With a Tennessee Dove Shoot
Nothing marks the start of hunting season like a good old-fashioned dove shoot. Across the Southeast, Texas, and parts of the Midwest the ceremonial beginning of fall is often a gathering of friends and family — around a planted sunflower ...
Blood Brothers: Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Selous
Nineteen days after leaving the White House and his second term as president, Theodore Roosevelt kissed his wife goodbye. He boarded a train in Oyster Bay with his son Kermit, bound for a steamship, bound for Africa. Roosevelt was embarking on a ...
More Than 80,000 Acres of Public Lands Inaccessible to Hunters, Anglers
More than 80,000 acres of federal, state, county, and municipal public lands in the Mid-Atlantic are inaccessible to hunters and fishermen, according to a new report from onX Maps and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). The ...
Fish Candy: Dry-Brined and Smoked Lake Trout
The best part about fishing with Big Spoon Sportfishing isn’t all the fish you catch but the snacks that Capt. Chris Bomysoad serves up on the water. “Fishermen,” he likes to say, “fish on their stomach,” so this New York guide keeps his clients ...
