Stories

WARNING! GRAPHIC CONTENT – When Cody Shipman, 24, and Hayden James, 15, set out to hunt Mallards one frosty January morning on the Snake River in Oregon, they expected the excursion to end like any other: with birds in the boat. But what should have been a successful hunt turned near-fatal after a simple mistake left Shipman with a gruesome wound that’s taken four surgeries to mend.

Bagging 30 coyotes in a 2-day contest? Most would agree that a total that high is virtually impossible and as history has proven, they would be correct. Coyote hunters have only imagined killing that many in a 2-day, day-time only calling contest because it’s a feat that has never been accomplished.

“If it was easy, everyone would do it.” That was the thought going through my mind as I woke up to my alarm clock obscenely early yet again. The coffee pot was gurgling away as I dressed in the dark and tried not to wake my sleeping wife.

I thought readers might like to hear about one heck of a migration that occurred in 1955 and really given the weather we are seeing now, could occur again.  Snow in Alberta, North Dakota and South Dakota, falling temperatures, huge fronts and all the pieces needed to move ducks in 2018.

A caribou hunt in the Aleutian Islands proved to not only be a test of hunting skill, but of navigating harsh weather and the hazardous Bering Sea.

Sometimes a hunt comes down to luck. My hunt was about to end early with a broken bowstring until I found a buck at the last moment.

Hunting for black bear just isn’t the same without the help of trained hounds. They’re efficient, intense, and make any bear hunt more likely to succeed.

A first-time bowhunt for pronghorns. Throw in a bit of hubris and a couple of small mistakes, and here’s a list of do’s and do-not’s for your next hunt.

Within an hour of my first hunt, we saw four coyotes and killed one. And we did it in the rain. Was that just luck? Hardly.