Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 1 - 2023 i Outdoor Life

“WE PAY CASH for true adventures.” Outdoor Life first published a version of this long-running deal in June 1940, along with a 12-panel comic strip titled “This Happened to Me!” That inaugural comic was printed in black and white, and it depicted a dozen crocodiles attacking a reader’s canoe in Mozambique. We announced that the story was the first in a new series, and we asked readers to send us their “actual, true-life” hunting and fishing experiences (“thrilling or humorous”) so our artists could illustrate them. Eight decades later, This Happened to Me is arguably our readers’ all-time favorite department. Its popularity has less to do with the money (people got sick of filling out tax forms in the mid-2010s) and more to do with seeing themselves appear in print…

A LONE DOVE soared over us, and Kent abruptly stopped his Tacoma on the side of a dirt road. He and I debated whether to get out. We’d hiked 5 miles that morning in futile pursuit of doves and jackrabbits and were about ready to call it a day. But then the dove landed atop a Joshua tree, maybe 50 yards away. We didn’t want to leave empty-handed, so we grabbed our shotguns and stepped out to turn that symbol of peace into an afternoon snack. We spread out and moved on the dove. As we drew closer, I casually clocked Kent’s location on my right. Finally, we arrived in range. Kent gave me a thumbs-up. I clicked my safety off, took a few more steps, and checked Kent’s position…

IT WAS THE DRIEST year on record when 21-year-old Paul Gatschet saw the advertisement in the local paper. Volunteers wanted, announced the Hays Daily News. Farmers near La Crosse, Kansas, had a jackrabbit problem and they needed help corralling the crop-destroying critters. So one afternoon, Gatschet and his younger brother, George, drove south from Hays to join the rest of the volunteers. Neither Gatschet had participated in a rabbit drive before, but they were willing if it kept local farmers from losing their crops. This particular drive was slated to comb four sections of rolling prairie. Organizers loaded nearly 80 volunteers—all boys and men this day—into cars and farm trucks, then dropped them off again along the perimeter. By the time everyone was in position, the hunters had formed a…

I WOULD NOT be here, behind the complicated controls of a Cessna single-engine airplane droning in the dark 7,000 feet above Interstate 35, ferrying a butchered whitetail and millions of dollars in paper checks, were it not for my brother’s golden tongue. As the lights of Des Moines glowed on the horizon, and I wondered how I’d land this plane, my brother’s words took on new meaning. “Enjoy the ride,” he told me when I boarded this plane on a dark tarmac in East St. Louis, Illinois. “It’ll be an adventure.” But Hugh was back on the ground, and my only companion besides my rising anxiety was my copilot, asleep in the seat next to me. The problem: He incorrectly assumed I knew how to fly. Worse, he also thought…

I HAD ALL the primal cuts spread out on the table and countertop. I was only a few sips into my first can of beer. My knife was still shaving-sharp as I sliced away silver skin from a backstrap. What a nice way to spend an afternoon. Then I heard a knock on the door of my tiny Brooklyn apartment. Surprised, and a little annoyed by the disruption, I wiped deer meat from my hands. I cracked the door open until it hit the chain lock and saw a short, middle-aged man standing in the hallway. “What’s up?” I asked, doing my best impersonation of an indignant New Yorker. “Have you seen Wilson today?” he asked. “I’m Wilson’s friend.” Wilson was an older man with a potbelly and a wispy…

BY THE TIME we started glassing for moose the morning of Sept. 17, I figured the worst of our troubles was over. I was with my buddy Cal Stefanko and his dad, Craig, and this was a bucket-list trip: my first fly-in Alaska moose hunt. It was a do-it-yourself hunt, and the only help we had was from the air taxi that had dropped us and our gear at the lake we were camped by. I was lucky enough to kill a big bull during our first day of hunting on Sept. 13, but I quickly learned how difficult it is to pack such a massive animal across that unforgiving and uneven country. I had shot the moose 2.5 miles away from where we were camped, and it took us…

IT WAS EARLY in the morning on the first day of our hunt when we started climbing. The skies had cleared over our small camp in the Baranof Island backcountry, but the ground was still wet from rain the night before. We were already halfway up the mountain, but our plan was to climb another 800 vertical feet to where we hoped the mountain goats would be. Our guide, James*, led the way up the ridgeline with my girlfriend, Melody Orozco, right behind him. I was third in line, and my buddy Adam Ericksen brought up the rear. The three of us carried ice axes, which were handier than I thought they’d be in this steep, green country. With every step we’d drive the pick into the soft earth and…

THE BEEF GOT REAL when they cut the lines on our boats and sent them drifting down the Alagnak River toward Kvichak Bay. Fortunately for us, the boats didn’t make it very far before spinning out of the main current and jamming up broadside against a beaver lodge. The two unmanned skiffs were spotted the following morning by our chief pilot, who was flying a load of cargo back from King Salmon. While another pilot might’ve worried if there were any fishing guides to rescue, he recognized the boats and knew we were all back at camp for the day. He also knew about the budding feud between our crew on the Kvichak and a rival lodge here on the Alagnak, but this was a big step up from idle…

WHAT STARTED as a normal morning in the deer woods turned out to be the scariest day of my life. It was March 2020, and my friend Billy Phillips and I were hunting one of the suburban properties we have permission on in northern Virginia. Our state has an extended urban antlerless season that ends in late March, and this particular hunt occurred right after the state of Virginia announced the “Stay at Home” order during the early Covid-19 pandemic. That particular order allowed you to leave home for a couple of reasons, and hunting was one of them. We were hunting in a neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes on three- to five-acre lots, and the property we were on that day was a double lot of 10 acres total. In…

I CAN SEE the pasture through my binoculars. Dry grass and dead clusters of arrowleaf balsamroot poke through patches of snow. Lichen-covered boulders litter the drainage, crumbs that tumbled down from the rock spires shooting out of the piney ridgeline above. There is no “above treeline” in these foothills of Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. The pine forest starts around 6,400 feet and continues up until it crosses the national forest boundary, carpeting the closer peaks. The pasture itself has a lazy incline. It rises to a bare saddle between the timbered ridge on the west and a giant rocky outcropping to the east. My dad and I are on my first elk hunt here. We both have cow tags, but there’s not a cow in sight. Dad’s been hunting elk on…