For three days I averaged only a few miserable hours of sleep a night while camped out on the prairie. I alternated time between trying to get comfortable on my thin and far-too-narrow sleeping mat, scratching dozens of fresh mosquito bites, and ...
Opinion & Essay
Numb Decisions: An Essay on Ice
My fingertips have just regained feeling. The screaming nerves claw at my skin and burn the last half-hour of climbing into my brain. Below the belay I hear THWACK, THWACK — each placement of a tool cutting and holding ice 200 feet up this frozen ...
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 ...
Photo Essay: Elk Hunting Sucks, or The Life of an OTC Archery Hunter
For the last four years, I have been archery hunting Colorado’s over-the-counter, or OTC, units for bull elk — with mixed results. OTC means the elk tags are sold to the general public literally over the counter, anywhere you can buy a Colorado ...
Get Bit: My First Time Hillbilly Hand-Fishing for Alabama Lake Monsters
noodling (verb) A slightly deranged person holds their breath, submerges themselves under water, shoves their entire arm into a muddy hole, and then uses their hand as bait in order to lure a giant catfish into biting them so they ...
How Two Special Operations Veterans Found Each Other — and 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 ...
I Survived a Mexican Ambush in a Van Named Falcor
Have you ever fucked up so bad that time stops, giving some great ethereal fist the opportunity to slip past your teeth, punch down your throat, and choke stop the conversion of oxygen in your lungs’ alveoli? That’s how bad I messed up on my first ...
