As the days get shorter and evening temperatures cool, it's hard to think about anything but elk. September is my favorite time of year for many reasons: new gear to test, new adventures to share with friends, but most importantly, I get to live a ...
Archery
Elk Reaper: The Rise and Bowhunting Success of Aron Snyder
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 ...
This MACV-SOG Commando Carried a 55-Pound Trad Bow Into Battle
During the Vietnam War, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group, better known as MACV-SOG, conducted cross-border operations in denied areas in Laos and Cambodia to strike North Vietnamese Army targets ...
Swamp Bucks: Plan to Bowhunt Deer in Florida This Summer
When the sun started to peek over the horizon and rays of light teased the land to life, I found myself sitting in a treestand anchored to a palm tree. The heat mixed with over 90% humidity was already too much, and as I wiped the sweat away from my ...
Don’t Screw Up Father’s Day: Get Dad Cool Stuff He’ll Actually Use
Shopping for Father’s Day is hard. It’s tempting to just get dad a gimmicky barbecue tool that will be used once before getting hung in the garage for the next decade. Or maybe a new pair of Crocs. But, this year, you don’t have to be that lame. ...
Inside Black Rifle Coffee’s Veteran Adaptive Athlete Archery Shoot
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, ...
Isaac Sr.’s Total Archery Challenge Playlists
If you’ve never met Isaac Aleman Sr., you’re not surrounding yourself with the right people. He’s one of the funniest and most genuine people you’ll ever meet. Senior, as he's called, along with his son Isaac Aleman Jr. are the archery gurus ...
Stone Blinds and Bows: How Ancient Hunters Killed Reindeer in A.D. 600
Bowhunting for reindeer takes a good amount of skill and stealth in the 2020s. Ancient hunters 1,700 years ago in what is present-day Norway had to have Marine Scout Sniper-level skills. Now, there is well-preserved physical evidence of exactly how ...
WTF is FRA? The Origin Story of Free Range American
The best ideas are born in the mountains around a campfire, over coffee, before or after a hunt, a fishing trip, or a range day with friends. Free Range American is no different. It’s a community of like-minded adventurers, born — it turns out — from ...
Build an Indoor Archery Range in Your Basement and Shoot Year-Round
My obsession had resulted in a collection of holes punched into various parts of our home. The need to bend the limbs back was constant. My bride and I were dirt poor and fresh-out-of-college newlyweds. I worked as a teacher and my wife as a ...
Guide to Buying a First Bow and Arrow for Kids
There are many reasons a kid might get a fire under their butt about archery. Maybe they watched Hawkeye, Brave, or one of the Hunger Games movies and want to give it a try. Maybe they watched some of the archery competitions from the 2020 Olympic ...
Good Excuses to Buy a New Bow This Year
Well, it’s a new year, and for most of us, the recent calendar flip means new plans, hopes, dreams, and commitments. Perhaps “buy a new bow” is penciled in somewhere on your 2022 to-do list. I say “penciled” just in case your mind isn’t made up. If ...
CO Rejects Blaze Orange for Bowhunters Proposal Spurred by Shooting
Colorado bowhunters will not have to remember to stuff an orange vest and hat into their packs this hunting season. State wildlife officials recently rejected a proposal that would have forced bowhunters to wear blaze orange during the period when ...
Chris Bee Q&A: How Archery Competition Improves Bowhunting Accuracy
If you pay attention to social media, perhaps you’ve noticed that some of the deadliest bowhunters are also competitive archers. Folks like Levi Morgan, John Dudley, Brady Ellison, and Chris Bee shoot tons of arrows all year round. They constantly ...
How a Pennsylvania Whitetail Hunter Arrowed a Public Land Booner
As a Pennsylvania whitetail hunter, you just don’t expect to shoot a Boone and Crockett deer. Pennsylvania is far from both Iowa and Wisconsin, but since the state implemented an antler point restriction in 2002, it feels like that distance has ...
Missouri Lawmaker Sets Sights on Archery for Official State Sport
Missouri may be home to some of the biggest whitetail bucks in the country, but it’s also home to one of the most important innovations in all of archery history: the invention of the compound bow. In a display of genuine Show-Me-State pride, state ...
Get in Bow Shape: A 21-Day Archery Lesson Plan
Are you hitting high, low, or burying carbon in the dirt? Yup, I’ve been there. Shaking so bad that you struggle to bring your pin down on a patch of brown hair, and when you do, you jab the release like a prizefighter? I was president of that camp ...
Chuck Adams, Archery Legend, and His New World Record Sitka Buck
The history of archery hunting has a short but highly venerated list of practitioners. Names like Howard Hill, Fred Bear, Saxton Pope, Art Young, Ishi, and “Chief” Compton populate it, and Chuck Adams is definitely included among them. He’s the last ...
Bowhunting Gear: How to Diagnose and Fix Your Setup in the Offseason
Fall is now a memory. For many reading this, it was an epic season of close encounters with a few blood-soaked arrows. For others, fall was, as it can often be, a season on the brink. Some of you want to delete the past few months from your memory ...
Don’t Risk Hunting Falls: How To Not Die In Your Treestand Safety Harness
Since states began mandating hunter safety courses, the number of hunting accidents, especially those involving firearms, has decreased dramatically. But every year, we read about a few tragic cases in which deer hunters die after falling out of a ...
World Record Bulls: The Top 5 Typical Archery Elk
There are big bull elk. Then there are really big, world-record-class bull elk. The Pope and Young Club awards North America’s finest archery-killed wapiti by size in two categories: typical or symmetrical antlers and non-typical or unsymmetrical ...
Trophy Elk: The Top 5 Non Typical Archery Bulls of All Time
An archery stalk on any elk is no easy task, but getting bow-and-arrow close to the biggest bull elk in the world is another thing altogether. Elk are uber wary, have highly evolved senses, and tend to vanish if they even think something isn’t right. ...
World Record Whitetail: The Top 5 Non-Typical Archery Bucks
No big game animal causes more American hunters to burn vacation days and abandon all adult responsibilities than whitetail deer. From New England to Florida, New Jersey to Montana, and in all the bread-basket, rust-belt, and Great Plains states in ...
World Record Whitetail: The Top 5 Typical Archery Bucks
There are non-typical whitetail deer with racks that are mind-blowingly massive, almost alien sculptures of bone. Typical whitetails are not that. Typicals are the clean, symmetrical, even “ideal” headgear that most hunters imagine when they think of ...
So You Want to Shoot an Archery World Record?
Potential world record big game animals exist no matter your home range. (There’s a freak in every crowd.) But some regions are just downright better than others when producing archery world-record animals. What makes these places so unique? No one ...
Is the New Garmin Xero A1i Pro Bow Sight Ethical?
Garmin just released the newest iteration of their Xero electronic bow sight. The Xero A1i Pro offers significant updates to the original. While many archery talking heads are making noise about this technological leap forward, not many are asking ...
6 Veterans Who Are Killing It on the Archery Range
Archery as a pastime has spread like wildfire among veterans. Quieting their minds and focusing on the simple task of aiming and shooting an arrow is therapeutic for some. Economically minded shooters can reuse arrows over and over until they break, ...
Bowhunter Finds Human Remains Identified as Hunter Missing Since 1968
An Idaho bowhunter stumbled upon a set of human remains on Friday, Sept. 17, while hunting near Hayden Creek in the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. When authorities arrived, they found a rotted wallet with the body that identified it as a fellow ...
Colorado Hunting Accident: Muzzleloader Hunter Shoots, Kills Bowhunter
A rifle hunter unintentionally shot and killed a bowhunter chasing elk in Colorado last week. It's the kind of nightmare scenario hunting safety instructors use to drive home the importance of properly identifying your target. On Friday, Sept. 17, ...
How To Be a Better Archer: Focus on These 5 Bowhunting Fundamentals
If you don't take a purposeful approach to shooting your bow with a focus on bowhunting fundamentals, things will get worse before they get better. I used to track the number of arrows I shot per day on a calendar. After all, the more carbon you ...
