I was twenty-three when I killed my first whitetail. It was a small six-point, nothing special to anyone but me. I sat in a ladder stand on my buddy’s uncle’s property from 5:15 AM until about 4:00 PM, freezing my ass off in jeans because I didn’t own insulated pants, and when that deer finally […]

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We were set up in a layout blind on the edge of a cut cornfield. Four of us. Early November, eastern shore of Maryland. The kind of morning where your fingers go numb inside your gloves and you seriously question every decision that got you here. The decoy spread was solid. About six dozen full-bodies […]

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I spent my first three seasons hunting the same way: find a spot, sit down, stare at the woods, go home. Sometimes I saw deer. Usually I didn’t. I told myself it was bad luck. Wrong wind. Other hunters pushing them around. The deer just weren’t moving that day. That’s the easy story to tell […]

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There’s a picture of me somewhere on my cousin Dave’s phone. I’m standing next to a campfire, holding a blackened chunk of what used to be a deer backstrap, wearing an expression that can only be described as “I have made a terrible mistake and everyone is watching.” Dave still sends it to me every […]

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I paid forty-three dollars for my first pair of hunting boots. That should tell you everything right there. I was twenty-two, had just moved to Montana for a seasonal job, and had exactly enough money for rent, gas, and a six-pack of something cheap. Hunting season was three weeks away. I needed boots, and I […]

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I drove two hundred and forty miles with an empty gun. Let me rephrase that. I drove two hundred and forty miles with a fully functional rifle, a brand new scope I’d spent three weekends zeroing, a backpack packed like I was deploying to a combat zone, three different jackets because I couldn’t decide on […]

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There’s a specific kind of stupidity that only exists when you’re standing in a river at 6 AM, convinced you’ve cracked the code, and you haven’t caught a fish in three hours. That was me. Every Saturday. For about two years. I started fishing when I moved to a town with a river running through […]

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I spent $450 on a rangefinder three years ago. Not because I needed one — I’d been hunting whitetail in thick eastern woods my whole life, where 80 yards is a long shot and you can practically count the hairs on the deer’s nose. But I’d been reading too many Western hunting magazines, watching too […]

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Every hunter has at least one story they’d rather tell after a couple of beers. The kind of story where everything went so perfectly wrong that all you can do is laugh — preferably once you’re safely back in the truck. We dug through Reddit’s r/Hunting and pulled out five of the funniest hunting fails […]

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I showed up to my first public land hunt with everything I’d read on forums. Camo head to toe. Scent killer sprayed on my boots. A climber stand I’d practiced with exactly twice in my backyard. I was ready. I was not ready. The 4 AM Disaster I pulled into the parking area at 4:15 […]

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