Field & Stream No. 1 - 2020

YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED something different about this issue the first time you picked it up. It’s got a bit more heft than usual, wouldn’t you say? That’s because it’s the first chapter in the newest volume of FIELD & STREAM. And I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you. Starting with this issue, F&S will be published quarterly. Now, you’re first reaction might be something like, Great. So I’m going to get two fewer issues of the greatest magazine ever created in the history of journalism? Well, yes, but hear me out. (And thanks for the kind words, by the way!) Now that we’re quarterly, we’ll have more time and resources to be bolder and more adventurous with our storytelling. And with extra pages (almost 30…

In this issue, associate online editor Matthew Every wrote his first feature for the magazine, “The Truck That Owes Me Nothing,” (p. 80). CK: How long were you a hunting guide, before you joined FIELD & STREAM? ME: For about a year and a half. I guided in Idaho for pronghorns, elk, and mule deer, and in Kentucky and Indiana for whitetails. CK: How’s the truck running these days? ME: It’s in the shop now, but it’s still running strong. CK: What’s your favorite memory of the truck? ME: When I was guiding in Indiana, I picked up a stray beagle hound mix on the side of the road one day. Somebody at the lodge named him Fred, and he basically lived in the truck for a month. Every…

IT’S 5 A.M. AND FEBRUARY in northern Vermont. Virtually all of New England is asleep and cozy in their houses, wisps of wood smoke slipping from their chimneys. But not us. Norm and Marcel and I are in a dimly lit basement, in line with a bunch of other groggy and disheveled men, all of us clutching bait buckets. A guy in a T-shirt is standing behind a table with a minnow dipper in his hand and a money bucket in front of him. Behind him is a whiteboard listing the prices of the various sizes and kinds of live bait. Norm whispers that we’re being gouged by the shiner prices. The guy ahead of us turns and says, “Yeah, but if the fish don’t bite, you can fry…

Fresh snow cover can make figuring out a winter lake like trying to read a closed book. Where do you set your tip-ups? One strategy is to drill holes in a perpendicular line out from the shore, spacing them 20 or so yards apart. Doing this allows you to cover a variety of contours, which cruising fish often follow. For large panfish, pike, and walleyes, start at a sounded depth of 5 feet or so and end at about 25 feet deep; for trout and salmon, start at 20 and end at 40 or 50 feet deep.…

THERE’S A LITTLE PIECE OF meat under the clavicle of a duck that drives me nuts. To get at it requires a moment of dedicated concentration when filleting the breast. I have to halt the cut that severs the fillet from the keel of the breastbone, turn the knife spine at a downward angle—blade up and nearly parallel to the breast keel—and probe the narrow tip toward the neck to cut away cleanly along the underside of the collarbone. If I do this right, I’ll wind up with at least an additional1 ∕1,000 ounce of tasty duck flesh. I try to do it right with every single duck, but it takes a particular blade to get the job done. On a 3-pound bluefish—surely one of the finest fish you…

When you think of meatballs, your mind probably books a ticket to Italy or maybe Sweden. But as chef and outdoorsman Ford Fry reminds us in his cookbook, Tex Mex: Traditions, Innovations, and Comfort Foods from Both Sides of the Border, Mexico has a glorious meatball tradition all its own, called albondigas. We’ve taken Fry’s borderland version—which is cheese-stuffed, tortilla-laced meatballs roasted in a crimson ancho chile sauce—and made it a little wilder with the addition of some ground goose breast. But for a similar flavor boost, you can swap in duck, venison, or wild boar. To round out this filling meal, consider sipping a glass of tequila. Volans, a new premium tequila from a family of Idaho flyfishing guides, is worth seeking out. INGREDIENTS For the sauce 2…