Field & Stream April 2017

THE BEST SPRING BREAK I ever took was a colossal failure. Senior year of high school: While many of my classmates escaped to Florida, I was driving in an old minivan with my buddies Joe and Andy. Our destination was a Kentucky trout stream. This was my first road trip, and I was sure that it would be the Greatest Fishing Trip of All Time. The trout never stood a chance. Of course, for the trout to have never stood a chance, there needed to be trout to catch. And there were not; we never saw a single fish. Oh, and that old minivan? Broke down on the second morning. We wasted almost an entire day at an auto shop. Break was a bust. I remember the drive home was…

LOCATION: EASTERN WASHINGTON Late last April, in eastern Washington near the Idaho border, Garry Green walt carried a mature Merriam’s gobbler out across a wildflower meadow blooming with arrow leaf balsam root and lined with ponderosa pines. Green walt guides for whitetails, turkeys, and predators on his family’s 240 acres, which they have managed for more than 25 years with food plots, hayfields, CRP, and timber. This is Palouse country, lush farmland planted in wheat and legumes amid rolling hills and small mountains. Green walt, who’s been hunting the land since the age of 10, had been watching this turkey all season. “He was a smart old bird that outwitted me the previous weekend,” he says. “I called too much to roost him, and in the morning he headed straight…

PRIMAL APPEAL “On the Trail” (A Sportsman’s Life, Dec. 2016–Jan. 2017) perfectly describes how hunting is wired into my reptilian brain. Doug Allin, Tolland, Conn. ROARING SUCCESS I’ve hunted red stag in New Zealand, and I can vouch for Anthony Licata in “Where Monsters Roar” that the trip is well worth it. The scenery and the game are top-notch, plus it’s easy to travel with a gun into the country. Every sportsman should put this adventure on his or her bucket list. Wade Boardman, via Facebook RISKY BUSINESS “The Big Gamers” was so good. The gator guide’s story definitely scared me the most; I would have flipped out had I fallen into the water at night with big gators. I deer hunt in a swamp, and even wading through water…

F&S readers reveal the unorthodox ways they’ve landed a fish. I tied a leader and Woolly Bugger to a remote-control boat and trolled it around. I caught a dozen fish, and the boat had just enough juice to bring them over to my float tube. —TREVOR HUTTON I was fishing at night when a bat got tangled in my line. It thrashed in the water, but before I could untangle it, a bass smashed it. I caught a bass and a bat all at once. —SCOT RATHBUN • My granddad took me fishing as an infant and tied a line to my big toe. Every time a fish would bite, I’d cry out and he’d pull it in. —ERIC VANLANDINGHAM…

My buddy shot an elk that morning, so I had tied it to my fourwheeler and was dragging it back to camp. Well, as I headed up an incline, I drove into a juniper thicket. I turned the wheel to adjust but accidentally ran over some low-hanging limbs. With all the weight on the back, the front of the ATV just shot straight into the air—and I fell right onto the elk. One of the antlers lodged into my back, and suddenly, a river of red started pouring down my legs. My first thought was I never thought I’d die like this. I tried to stay conscious, though, and after a moment, I lifted myself off the rack and collapsed. My three buddies found me soon afterward. Fortunately, we always…

NEWS AND STORIES FROM THE EXPERTS • THE SEASON • THE WILD CHEF • THE TOTAL OUTDOORSMAN • SPORTSMAN’S NOTEBOOK • RIFLES • SHOTGUNS • HUNTING FIE CAMPFIRE THE TINY white rental house was perfectly isolated, set back across the railroad tracks on the far side of a field. No TV. No Internet. No cell service. One of my favorite pools on New York’s Delaware River flanked the backyard. It was 65 degrees and sunny when I arrived that afternoon, and it took no time to hook a fat brown on a dry fly 10 steps from the door. Then everything changed. The problem with April in the Northeast is that it can never decide if it wants to be spring or winter, and by 10 P.M., my idyllic little…