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What life teaches us about loss, and what loss teaches us about life. The deer woods should be a place that allows you to replace what the daily grind takes from you, so handle it with care.

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Author Bryan Burrough exhumes the gritty history of Old West gunfighters. From Billy the Kid to Wyatt Earp to John Wesley Hardin and dozens more, this collection of stories proves how very violent America's nineteenth century frontier actually was, and traces the blood-soaked history of the troubled men who made it that way. 

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Two is always better than one. This is true whether you’re talking about scoops of ice cream and, especially, fishing bait. Where it’s legal, using two baits, lures, or flies at once can, theoretically, double your catch rate.

Fishing two baits at two different water depths allows you to quickly figure out what the fish are biting. You just need to know how to rig them up and when to use different combinations.

Fishing with two baits is an incredibly effective strategy for everything from stocked trout to muskie to catfish. Generally, you either soak both baits on the bottom or suspend them under a bobber. In both cases, you want to rig a tandem bait rig by first attaching a floating or live bait to the top and then adding a sinking or dead bait to the bottom of the setup. Not only is this the most effective way to fish a tandem rig, but it also helps you prevent tangles when casting.

Start setting up your tandem bait rig by tying a barrel swivel to your main line. Next, tie one to two feet of stiff monofilament fishing line to the same ring of the swivel. Add a hook to the extra line, and then add two to four feet of line to the bottom ring of the swivel, and then tie on a second hook. Add a floating bait or a live bait to the top hook and a sinking bait to the bottom hook and you’re ready to fish.

Tandem bait rigs are a fantastic way to cover two areas of the water column at once. You can rig it with a live minnow on top and a worm on the bottom for panfish or a floating doughball and a hotdog or chunk of cheese for catfish and/or carp. With a large live sucker and a dead shiner, smelt, or store-bought mackerel, you can land big pike, muskie, or gar. If you have the right hook size and line weight, the possibilities for a tandem bait rig are endless.

Fishing with two lures is an incredibly effective way to fish deep and shallow water simultaneously while trolling, or when you want to mimic baitfish swimming together to trigger reaction strikes. You can even test the effectiveness of your lure size and color without having to constantly switch them out. However, choosing which two lures to fish and how to rig them depends entirely on which technique you’re using and which species you’re after.

Trolling with two lures at the same time is a great way to target walleye, lake trout, and salmon, or whatever’s up for biting. Like the tandem bait rig, you want to set up with a lighter, shallower running lure at the top of the rig and a heavier, deeper diving lure on the bottom.

To ensure effective separation, I recommend setting up a double trolling rig with a three-way swivel. Attach the swivel to your main line, and then add two to three feet of line to the next swivel loop for your floating or shallow running lure. Next, tie four to six feet of line to the last swivel loop and add the deeper swimming lure.

Tandem trolling rigs are excellent for pairing a large jerkbait and a heavy spoon together while trolling for roving predators like lake trout and chinook salmon. It can also be an incredibly effective setup with a spinner rig on top and a larger, deep-diving crankbait on the bottom when trolling for walleye, trout, or perch.

If trolling isn’t your game, you can still fish two lures simultaneously by fishing a Donkey Rig. Donkey Rigs are set up by fishing with two lures rigged on two barrel swivels, one free sliding and one fixed. It’s a great way to cast and retrieve lures like soft plastics and swim baits as well as topwater baits and jerkbaits simultaneously.

Set up a Donkey Rig by threading one barrel swivel onto your line so that it can freely slide up and down. Then tie a second swivel onto the bottom as a stopper. Next, tie a short, 10- to 12-inch line to the first swivel and add your first lure. Finally, tie 18 to 24 inches of leader to your fixed swivel and add your second lure. You can fish a Donkey Rig by casting it out and then retrieving it with a lot of jerks and pauses.

In the fly fishing world, the hopper dropper rig is a well-known way to fish both a dry fly and a nymph at the same time. Traditionally, it’s done by attaching a length of tippet to a large terrestrial fly and then adding a nymph. If you know how to rig a hopper dropper, you can fish a practically endless combination of multiple flies at the same time.

As a fly fishing guide, I rarely ever fish a single fly with my clients. Instead, I’ll use the hopper dropper rig to fish both a dry fly and a wet fly, two dry flies, two nymphs, two streamers, or even a streamer and a nymph at the same time.

All these setups are incredibly effective for targeting fish in different areas of the water column. It’s also useful for figuring out what the fish are eating during a cold front, high or muddy water, or when you’re simply prospecting a new area. You can also increase your catch rate or just have a lot of fun when fish like trout or panfish are on the feed, because it can lead to a lot of simultaneous hook-ups.

Fishing with two flies at the same time is a lot easier than fishing with two lures or baits—it doesn’t require any extra swivels or even tippet rings. Instead, you simply tie on a fly and then tie one to three feet of tippet (depending on your depth) to the shank of the hook and add a second fly.

It’s as simple as it sounds and works with almost any fly combination as long as you tie the larger fly directly to your leader and use a smaller fly as your dropper.

I’ll use the hopper dropper rig with a dry fly and nymph to drift the banks of rivers when I’m looking for summertime trout. I’ll also use it with a streamer and nymph or a large and smaller streamer when I’m hunting for big fish. You can fish a hopper dropper rig with an adult mayfly or caddisfly as well as a smaller emerger to match the hatch. You can also use it to fish two nymphs beneath an indicator when you’re hunting deeper water.

There are a lot of anglers who might consider fishing two baits, lures, or flies at the same time to be cheating. In reality, an effective and competent angler adapts and adjusts their presentation to different fishing situations.

Like using electronics or hiring a guide, fishing with multiple baits, flies, or lures at once is simply a way to get from point A to point B more quickly, so you can catch more fish and have more fun on the water.

Nineteen-year-old Ethan Owen, a wildlife and fisheries management student at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, rushed out of his general botany class at 12:50 on the opening day of Tennessee’s three-day velvet season. He had an hour-long drive between him and a big velvet buck he’d been watching all summer.

He made it home to Watertown, scarfed down something to eat, grabbed his Mathews Traverse bow, and by 3:30 p.m. was settled into his treestand.

Owen got the first glimpse of his target buck last summer, when it showed up on a trail camera overlooking a clover food plot. But the buck disappeared as quickly as he’d shown up. “Last year, he looked the exact same frame-wise and had the exact same tine curvature, but he had none of the junk. He was a completely perfect 9-pointer last year,” Owen told MeatEater.

He wouldn’t see that buck again until it reappeared in June on that same food plot. “All he had was a little bit of his main beam, a little bit of his brow tines, and I could just tell he was going to throw something weird on that one side. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was going to be, but I could tell he was going to be a little bit odd for sure,” Owen said.

But the buck only made rare appearances, sometimes going more than two weeks at a time without showing up on the trail camera. Owen figured that buck wasn’t living near that food plot, just occasionally passing through.

Owen moved his trail camera further up the mountain the last week of July to a small oak flat smack dab in the middle of thick cover. That’s where he hit pay dirt. Within two days, the buck was making near-daily daylight appearances.

Owen figured he found that buck’s living room. But there was just one small problem—getting to that oak flat would require hiking almost the entire length of the property and risk bumping the buck on his way to the stand. So he talked to a neighbor and got permission to access through their property, where he could get to his treestand by simply walking down a fence line.

With access figured out, Owen had one more detail to dial in. A few days before the velvet opener, he went in and moved his stand to get a better angle on the oak flat. The wind on top of the mountain was hard to predict, so Owen was counting on the thermals to carry his scent down and away from where he expected his target buck to come from.

By the time Owen climbed into his treestand the afternoon of opening day, he had another reason to feel good about his odds. The buck hadn’t shown up on camera for two days, which was unusual. But it made him confident that the buck was due for an appearance.

It was brutally hot, with temperatures in the 90s that afternoon, and Owen had heat and mosquitoes to contend with. He wasn’t in the stand for an hour when he heard something moving behind him.

A smaller 8-pointer that he described as the deer’s running buddy appeared. He had several trail camera photos of those two bucks traveling together all summer.

“That deer came up and worked directly underneath me. I heard something behind him, and then I could see legs coming through the trees. I would have bet you money it was going to be him,” Owen said. But it wasn’t. Another smaller buck was trailing the 8-pointer. For the next 25 minutes, he watched those two bucks feed under his stand before they split up and went in different directions.

“I was glad when they got out from underneath me because the bugs were bad. I wanted to swat the mosquitoes,” Owen said, laughing. Despite the relief, Owen thought it was strange that the bucks had split up. It was the end of August, when bucks were still traveling together in bachelor groups. He didn’t have much time to ponder it, however.

Around 6:30 p.m., Owen caught movement in the direction one of the smaller bucks had gone. The deer he’d been thinking about all summer was working a small tree with his antlers at about 80 yards from his stand. Owen watched him work the tree for about 10 minutes before making a beeline for his stand.

As the big buck closed the distance, Owen saw the two smaller bucks coming in behind him. “I guess he had sent his scouts in and determined that the coast was clear.”

The buck seemed to check up a bit at 30 yards, which made Owen nervous. He even considered going ahead and sending an arrow, even though the buck was still standing partially in thick cover.

Then the other two bucks passed the big one and waltzed right through Owen’s shooting lane. That seemed to be all the encouragement the big buck needed. As soon as he stepped toward the gap, Owen drew his bow. The buck reached the gap and stopped broadside, and Owen released.

“The shot was just a hair high,” Owen said. “But I had hung that treestand really high because I was worried about my scent. It was high enough that the exit went out perfectly.”

The buck spun around and headed back the way he came. Owen watched him run about 70 yards, almost to the exact spot where he’d been working his antlers on that small tree. Then the buck fell.

“My first phone call was to my dad,” Owen said. “I don’t know who had wanted me to kill that deer more. Me or him.”

Then came the hard part. The buck was too far back and the terrain too steep to drag him back up the mountain the way Owen hiked in. So Owen, his dad Jim, and his friend Levi McPeak spent hours dragging the buck around the base of the mountain. It was 11:00 p.m. before they finally got him out.

The buck is now at the taxidermist, waiting for a shoulder mount. It’s the biggest buck Owen has killed to date, with a rough score of 160 7/8 inches in velvet. “All them drop tines as a cluster were over 18 inches,” Owen said. “That was what really made him impressive.”

Steve enlists outfitter Mike “Buck” Bowden to take him down an unnamed river in Western Alaska in search of bull moose. Mike shares stories from 40 years of guiding the Alaskan wilds.Presented by Busch Light

Steven Rinella talks with author Eric Jay Dolin about the Wreck of the Mentor: whalers, shipwrecks, and strandings.

Find Eric’s work at: https://www.ericjaydolin.com/books

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Maria Davidson is the North American large carnivore program coordinator for the Safari Club International Foundation. She has spent the vast majority of her career working with bears, including helping the restoration work with black bears in Louisiana, and now currently working with grizzlies in British Columbia. This conversation includes details of her past work, her current work in darting and collaring grizzlies, as well as discussing the several controversies surrounding bears and bear hunting.

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This week, Cal delves into a truly shocking public land swap involving an iconic national park, more reasons not to like feral felines, and recent Wyoming sage grouse lek data.

Presented by First Lite

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Join Brent Reaves and Josh Spielmaker in this Q&A interview to hear behind the scenes details from Brent's Manitoba Moose hunt that didn't make the film. Brent chronicles the trip from start to finish and shares some surprising insights gleaned from his experience. He also answers some viewer questions about the hunt.

Watch the film now on MeatEater's YouTube channel.

Presented by Can-Am: maker of the best ATVs, SxS, and Utility Vehicles www.can-am.brp.com

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Brent's opening up the police files for this one. He's detailing a case that turned dangerous and quick reactions saved the day. You have the right to remain silent get a rare glimpse into Brent’s past that he seldom talks about.

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