The MeatEater

Join author Bryan Burrough as he begins telling the epic story of the Gunfighter Era, the years between 1865 and 1901, when Old West figures such as Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp became famous for something unusual in 19th century America: Shooting other Americans. From Wild Bill Hickok to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, learn the true stories of the troubled men who left behind the frontier’s blood-soaked history and in the process created an American legend. 

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Most whitetail hunters play the early season game the exact same way, but that can be a mistake. Scouting fresh sign, especially rubs, can put you on mature bucks right now.

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Drifting on a capsized skiff, an Alaskan teenager was pulled to safety after multiple days in the Bering Sea. Kneeling on the overturned boat with his head down, the 15-year-old held the line that would haul him to shelter.

The rescue followed a fishing trip by two brothers and a cousin from the remote Siberian Yupik village of Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island. The three left Friday in an 18-foot skiff in search of halibut and were expected back by early Sunday morning. When they failed to return, Alaska State Troopers were notified Sunday afternoon. The troopers later alerted the U.S. Coast Guard.

In a press release issued by the United States Coast Guard on September 7, “Coast Guard Arctic District Command Center watchstanders were notified of the overdue vessel by the Alaska State Troopers at approximately 8:30 p.m. Sunday. Due to on-scene weather conditions and poor visibility, an aircrew in an HC-130 Hercules airplane from Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak launched Monday morning and has arrived on scene.”

Coast Guard aircrew located the missing vessel approximately four miles off the coast of St. Lawrence Island, with the lone survivor sitting atop the overturned hull. Although the aircraft had to divert due to low fuel, the crew coordinated the rescue with the Northwest Explorer, a 162-foot fishing vessel already operating in the general area.

The Northwest Explorer diverted and located the capsized skiff. According to theAnchorage Daily News the crew spotted the teenager while glassing with a pair of binoculars across the ocean. They got a line to the skiff and pulled him aboard. Multiple videos of the rescue show a crew member grabbing the exhausted survivor and hoisting him into a rescue stretcher lowered alongside the larger vessel. Showing signs of hypothermia, the teenager had trouble getting to his feet as rescuers moved him inside the cabin.

“That is one remarkably tough kid,” stated the captain of the Northwest Explorer, Adam White.

Once the 15-year-old was secure, the crew of the Northwest Explorer, with assistance from the Coast Guard, recovered the bodies of his brother and cousin. The survivor and the two deceased were transported to Nome.

In an online fundraiser, an aunt of the survivor said, “Our village is mourning the loss of two. My nephew tried to hang onto them as long as he could after they drowned.”

Known for its strong currents, treacherous weather, and frigid water, the Bering Sea offered little margin for error. That this young man survived multiple days and nights fighting for survival stands as a testament to the resilience of the people who inhabit the outer reaches of western Alaska and the Indigenous Yupik communities of the region.

Logan Beach of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and his wife, Kaylin, had a problem. It was the afternoon of September 6, the second day of Kentucky’s archery season. The couple was hunting the same ridge from different trees 16 yards apart, Kaylin with her recurve and Logan with a Prime Divide 31 compound bow. They were close enough to see each other, but not close enough to talk. They were hunting specific deer when a massive nomadic buck they weren’t expecting walked nine yards between their stands.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t discussed who got the shot on this one. The buck wasn’t a complete stranger to Logan. He had one close encounter with it last November at eight yards on the ground. His trail cameras picked it up sporadically since then, and neighbors as far as two miles away shared trail camera photos of the buck as well.

“He’s super nomadic for a whitetail,” Logan told MeatEater. “He wasn’t sure where he fit in. He just knew he needed to move around.”

Logan only picked up the buck twice this year on his trail cameras. The first picture came in on August 8 in the middle of the day. The second at 1 a.m., 16 days before he waltzed between the couple’s treestands. This wasn’t a buck Logan or Kaylin had on their radar. But, shortly after 6:30 p.m., Logan heard a sneeze from down the ridge that changed those initial plans. He scanned the direction of the sneeze and saw a little six-pointer. Then he saw the nomadic buck following behind him.

“I caught a glimpse of him, just the main frame, and I thought, ‘That’s a decent deer,’” Logan said. As the deer came closer, he recognized the buck from the trail cameras. “My first thought was, ‘I can’t believe he’s here,’ Logan said. “My second thought was that we didn’t have a plan for who’s shooting this one.”

The buck fed up the ridge, traveling with two smaller bucks, a four-pointer and the sneezing six-pointer. The Beachs were hunting a crosswind, and the trio was coming straight for their treestands. The big buck got within a few feet of picking up their scent before stopping. He pulled up nine yards between the hunters, but on both their weak sides, so neither could get a clean shot. It waited there for a few minutes, unaware of how much marital trouble he was causing, before heading toward a pile of corn.

That’s when Logan started trying to figure out what Kaylin was thinking. From his tree, the buck was wide open, but his wife hadn’t taken a shot. “She hadn’t shot, so maybe she’s thinking I’m going to shoot,” Logan said. He drew on the buck while it fed on the corn pile, but he let down when it turned to face him. He drew a second time when the buck turned broadside at 30 yards, but hesitated, wondering if Kaylin might still shoot.

“I drew back and anchored in and kind of waited 10 or 15 seconds,” he said. “Then I was like, I can’t let him sit here no more.” He settled his pin and released, sending a G5 Mega Meat broadhead straight through both lungs.

“He didn’t jump or buck or anything,” Logan said. “It was right there in the money.” He watched as the buck ran about 25 yards and then piled up. “We were both ecstatic,” Logan said. “Both our trees were wiggling. We were air high-fiving and everything.”

Once the excitement calmed down a little, Logan climbed down and walked over to Kaylin’s tree. His wife had a few things to say to her husband.

“The first thing she said was, ‘That deer’s a lot bigger than you think he is,’” Then she asked a question Logan wasn’t expecting. “You couldn’t have given me one more step?”

“I thought you couldn’t shoot,” Logan told his wife. “From my angle, it didn’t look like you were doing much.” But Kaylin had her camera running the whole time, and footage wasn’t exactly going to help Logan’s case.

Kaylin likes to shoot her recurve at 18 yards or closer. The buck had been standing just 22 yards from Kaylin’s stand. But just before Logan released his arrow, it had stepped right into her shooting lane. The video from Kaylin’s camera shows her raising her bow and putting tension on the string. “Then you see a lighted nock come from somewhere in outer space and tear up the party,” Logan said.

When the couple first approached Logan’s velvet buck, they immediately noticed the buck’s mass, which looked like a “cactus.” The buck’s rack wasn’t particularly wide, but he had 42 2/8 inches of mass and 22 scorable points. It grossed 164 1/8 inches in Buckmasters scoring. Fortunately for Logan, Kaylin has been a good sport about the whole thing.

“She was excited for me,” Logan said. “There hasn’t been any couch sleeping or divorce papers or anything.”

Photos courtesy of Logan Beach.

The MeatEater Crew hits the sporting clay range for a friendly competition. The winner gets a jar of bear grease. Presented by Sound Gear

Along the Atlantic and gulf coast resides the only brackish water terrapin in the United States. This white beaked, diamond backed, crab and snail eating turtle has more to offer than just unique looks. It has a fascinating history in our country, and has earned itself the nickname, keeper of the salt marsh. Come along as we tag along with a field biologist to see if can get our hands on one.

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Steven Rinella talks with Drs. David Meltzer and Metin Eren on: huge Clovis points; human mammoth scavenging; the overkill question; and more!

Find their paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X26003317?via%3Dihub

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MeatEater Live: The Christmas Tour! is headed your way. Steve, Janis, Clay, Brent, and Randall are gearing up to pound the pavement this December for a 6-stop tour of the Midwest, taking our live theater show to Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota.

We’ll bring a very merry MeatEater holiday cheer with us along with our usual takes on hunting, fishing, conservation, and wild foods while delivering the laughs (and prizes). Each stop will include special guests, giveaways, and banter. As usual, we’re not recording, so you won’t see or hear this experience anywhere else.

At every live event, we’ve set aside a limited number of VIP tickets that get you a whip-ass seat and the chance to hang with us and tell hunting stories before hitting the stage. We’ll sign whatever merch or body part you want, which is only available to pre-show VIPs.

Our presale starts today at 10 a.m. and goes until September 25, when the general sale starts. The pre-sale code is: “HUNT2026.” Use this code to sign up and secure your seats before they’re available to the general public.

Grand Rapids, MI @ 20 Monroe Live

Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall Ballroom

Madison, WI @ Barrymore Theatre

Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom

Minneapolis, MN @ Pantages Theatre

Fargo, ND @ Fargo Theatre

Head over to our events page for more information and to purchase tickets. We can’t wait to see you out there!

If you’re a fan of Anthony Bourdain at all, you likely remember the iconic moment he sat down with Barack Obama at comically small stools to clink a couple of beers and have a meal. The steaming bowl of broth, meat, and noodles they tuck into is bún chả, a local street food. The dish originated in Hanoi, where the now-famous meeting occurred.

Classic Vietnamese preparation uses pork, but these flavorful grilled patties are well suited for a variety of game meats, from ground goose to bear. Just be sure to use a grind ratio with a fat content of at least 20% to help the patties stick together and retain moisture.

This meal is served slightly deconstructed, with the patties placed in nước chấm warmed with boiling water alongside a pile of rice noodles, fresh herbs, and pickled vegetables. This makes this meal highly customizable to your tastes—if you like it hot, add more peppers; if you don’t, leave them out; if you want it more brothy, add more water to the nước chấm; or ditch the soup factor entirely and place all the ingredients in a big leafy green and eat it like a lettuce wrap.

To me, this is the epitome of an early fall dinner. Still clinging on to grilling season, but easing into the warm, brothy comforts of colder weather cooking.

Summer is an unbeatable time of year for trail cameras in the whitetail woods. Deer are calm, movement is consistent, and patterns are easy to find. Unfortunately, the easy living of summer never lasts. Every year, nose-diving camera feeds make hunters across the country question everything in the critical weeks before September openers. As sudden and confusing as the photo drought often seems, the driving forces behind it are well-explained by whitetail science.

Both bucks and their environments become increasingly dynamic as August draws to a close, with nearly every key component of deer movement changing all at once. The most evident, and often most frustrating, is their diet. If your camera intel happens to go dry, don’t panic. A brief understanding of what’s going on with whitetail food should calm your nerves.

Destination food sources are obvious throughout the summer when bucks prioritize high-protein forage to support rapid antler growth. Soybeans, alfalfa fields, and clover plots are great places to catalog resident bachelor groups, but they tend to give hunters a false sense of confidence about their early-fall prospects.

As summer wanes, forage quality drops, and protein needs dry up along with velvet. Fats and carbs take the lead in a whitetail’s fall diet to prepare for the energy demands of the rut and impending winter. Perhaps not coincidentally, this transition almost perfectly aligns with the acorn drop.

While oak species and mast-fall timelines vary from region to region, the presence of energy-rich acorns in any capacity can have a huge impact on early-season deer feeding patterns. A Virginia study published in 1993 found that whitetails dedicated a staggering 50% of their foraging time to acorns during peak mast and were solely responsible for 70% of acorn consumption during that timeframe.

With that monumental level of preference, it’s not surprising that the same study observed collared deer altering their home ranges specifically to incorporate hot oak stands into their daily rounds. None of that bodes well for a September bean field that looked like deer mecca a month ago. And, to make matters worse for your summertime hotspots, consider that sugary soft masts like persimmons and apples can be as big of a draw as acorns and have roughly the same seasonal timing. If your food plot cameras have become purely ornamental, mast is a likely culprit. But it’s not the only one.

One of the most popular deer hunting strategies is to get between a buck’s preferred feeding and bedding areas. Changing feed and bed patterns make this strategy tricky.

While research has shown that bedding bucks prioritize thermal cover in close proximity to high-quality forage throughout the summer, their tastes switch with the onset of fall. In addition to forage becoming less of a draw, cooler temperatures mean bucks no longer need to tuck away in scarce microhabitats that offer slightly cooler temperatures and some respite from the bugs. They have more options to spread out and not a moment too soon.

As with diet, shifts in fall bedding are largely tied to physiological changes. Bachelor groups that shared a grassy swale in early August are suddenly not so stoked to be roommates by early September, and a camera targeting that swale might go from 100 to zero in a week as the band breaks up. Solitary bedding sites become key in the early season. In the summer, deer bed for comfort. In the fall, they bed for survival.

The abandonment of summer bedding also coincides with range expansion. All of the hormones that lead a buck into his reckless November scramble start to ramp up in August. That means you’re more likely to have random new bucks show up on early-season trail cameras, but you also might not see resident bucks as often as you did while their antlers were growing.

The whole program has changed in the last couple of weeks. Clinging to dried-up cameras and planning to hunt on summertime memories is a good way to doom yourself to a slow and painful opener. Luckily, it’s not too late to get back on track.

Whitetail hunters have long been conditioned to be ultra-cautious with early-season bucks. The overwhelming message is to minimize your presence in the woods to avoid educating deer to your presence ahead of the pre-rut.

The thing is, there are weeks between most archery openers and the pre-rut, and the key to filling tags in that time period is to scout. Scout with trail cameras where you can, but you should also use onX, binoculars, and a good pair of boots. Trail cameras are a convenient method to passively gather intel, which makes it easy to forget that they’re only one piece of the puzzle and an especially fickle one this time of year.

Early-season bucks don’t leave as much sign in the woods as they will around Halloween, but they’re also not covering nearly as much ground. September marks a unique time when fresh rubs and scrapes can tell you exactly where to intercept your target. If your trail cameras are dead, pull a few and take a hike.

Combine some old-fashioned grunt work with cutting-edge technology. You’ll find bucks somewhere. And when you do, you better hunt them, because the season of consistency is over. Until next summer, every week will be different in the whitetail woods.