According to my wife, I’m a late bloomer with a lot of things. She’s not wrong, but one that she doesn’t care about but which bothers me a lot, is that I’m just starting to really incorporate decoys into my deer hunting strategy. I’ve spent so much time hunting public land and other pressured places...

Recently, I tested a semi-auto waterfowl shotgun that costs around $500. It’s a clone of a popular Italian shotgun. It hit where I pointed, ate just about any duck load, and dropped birds like any shotgun I’ve ever shot. There’s a black version of the same gun for around $400, making this...

Opening day has come and gone. The October Lull is fading in the rearview mirror. And, now, the whitetail rut is staring us right in the hairy eyeball. It’s just about here. As you might have guessed by now, my opening day plan did not go as I’d hoped. In fact, the two bucks I’ve been after in...

Here’s a scenario most new hunters and gun owners have experienced. You’re at the gun range when the friendly fellow at the neighboring bench offers to let you shoot his rifle. You happily agree, but when you sit down at the bench and get behind the gun, you realize that you don’t actually know how...

As the saying goes, there’s a grain of truth in every lie, just like when your hunting buddy “passes” up a buck to let him grow another year. How many arrows did you start the hunt with, bud? All joking aside, there’s definitely an ounce of truth to every widely held whitetail belief. But the fact...

Let’s face it: hunting can be a relatively inexpensive sport, but for most of us, it isn’t. Once you factor in guns, ammo, binoculars, clothing, gas, truck maintenance, and the whole slew of other bells and whistles, all the spending really adds up. A new economic report released by the Sportsmen’s...

On the Texas stop on the MeatEater Tailgate Tour, Jesse Griffiths, Danielle Prewett, and I got in a good old-fashioned Texas dove hunt before cheering on the Longhorns and cooking up some grub for hungry fans. Dove hunting is one of the best ways to spend a day in the field, but if you’re like me...

Some of my first hunting experiences occurred at a deer camp. Looking back, that camp persisted on nostalgia and the culture it fostered in a rural Mississippi community. Occasionally, someone would shoot a big buck, and I don’t mean big for the pine hills of Mississippi. They would have been big...