Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2022 från American Frontiersman

ABOUT THE ISSUE: If you love the American frontier and the Old West, you’ll also love Tom Simonton, the man who created this issue’s cover art. A modern-day mountain man living in rural Oklahoma, Simonton is a painter extraordinaire and he has devoted much of his life to putting oil on canvas to depict frontiersmen, cowboys and other figures of the era. Spending time as a child on his great-grandfather’s cattle ranch helped start Tom’s journey, which has led to being featured at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. You’ve already glimpsed some of Tom’s art on the cover. Don’t miss seeing even more, along with the story of his life and art, starting on page 8. While some people paint the American frontier, others live it. And author…

Adventure Ready Brands knows that an adventurous spirit loves to explore, and it’s dedicated to bringing the most innovative survival products to the forefront. These products are not designed with one type of environment in mind but instead can see use in water, on land and in air. They rely on the expertise of world authorities on survival techniques and wilderness medicine to develop their products year after year. This company owns and operates about 10 popular brands, including Survive Outdoors Longer, Ben’s, Natrapel and Adventure Medical Kits. Adaptability and change are two concepts that Adventure Ready Brands strongly embraces. SOL’s Stoke Camp Hatchet The acronym SOL stands for Survive Outdoors Longer. When it comes to purpose-driven equipment for adventures and survival, SOL is the first company that comes to…

“While beaver are an important part of the riparian and lacustrine ecosystem, there are times that they wear out their welcome.” Humans love to live near water. Rivers, lakes, ponds and streams are all locations that we build our homes and homesteads nearby. My family is no different. Whitetail deer, raccoons, mink, muskrats, ducks, turkeys and geese drift through our property. But one of our favorite river neighbors is North America’s largest rodent, the beaver. ❧The Animal Weighing up to 80 pounds, these aquatic rodents use their large, webbed back feet to effortlessly swim in even the swiftest current. Their large, scaly, paddle-shaped tail acts as a giant rudder. When threatened, the tail is used to loudly slap the water, alerting other animals in the area of potential danger. The…

• Yeti: Bigfoot’s Asian cousin, so to speak, is an ape-like creature that inhabits the Himalayan Mountains. The Yeti shares many of Bigfoot’s physical characteristics as well as numerous pieces of weak evidence of its existence such as dubious eyewitness claims, large footprints and grainy video footage. • Loch Ness Monster: A staple of Scottish folklore, this monster, also known as Nessie, is said to inhabit Loch Ness. It’s described by many as a long-necked, dinosaur-like creature with multiple humps on its back. It has drawn the attention of millions since 1933, and the evidence of it being real is only backed by poor photographs and questionable sonar readings. • Chupacabra: A more recent entry, the Chupacabra, was supposedly sighted in Puerto Rico in 1995. The creature is said to feed on livestock…

Originally from Oklahoma, Bart Mitcham grew up riding in rodeos, playing “cowboy” harmonica and being surrounded by the music of the Grand Old Opry. He went to college on a band scholarship and fell in love with the Dixieland sound, which led him to travel to New Orleans and first exposed him to the blues. Mitcham became obsessed with studying and recreating those blues sounds and soon found himself researching and building the various guitar models of old-school blues players. He built four-, three- and even one-string guitars but eventually settled on the sound, feel and versatility of the three-string. Though he often builds his guitars to be electric ready, his real appreciation and love is for the earthy and natural sounds of the classic three-string “gitty.” Mitcham can…

Land development and unregulated hunting pared black-bear populations. According to biologists at a 1977 symposium, bears were all but gone from Texas by 1900. Mississippi’s 1976 bear count: 15 to 25. In Louisiana’s 1974 bear season, the first in a decade, one bear was shot. Bears have rebounded locally since, though storied coverts hardly produce the cornucopia they held in the 19th century. Oddly, southern states have yielded more record-book bears, by skull measure, than has the Canadian Shield—as shown by the top 57 entries (40 placings, with ties) in the Boone and Crockett Club’s 1999 all-time list: Alberta and British Columbia, enormous provinces, claimed just one “top 57” bear each. With Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan—most of western and central Canada—they booked nine, the same as Arizona alone! Alaska put…

“The Indian War event at Fort Larned is a go—all we have to do is maintain social distance,” I texted my three buddies. After a 2020 reenacting season that was simply nonexistent, it was exciting to have a real, live event to go to, and we immediately began to make plans for the Memorial Day weekend event at Fort Larned in central Kansas. Fort Larned was known as the Guardian of the Santa Fe Trail, and as such would present a good venue for the frontier portrayals we were all contemplating. As a part of that planning, we began to send pictures of our impressions to each other. My good friend Todd from South Dakota texted me a picture of his outfit as a scout for the 1868 time frame…

When in doubt, make fish cakes. That pretty much sums up my strategy for how to deal with fish that are most often thought of as “trash.” For many of the less desirable species, the challenge is how to remove the edible parts from tough-skinned, armor-plated and often slimy fish. The cooking part is actually fairly simple. It’s always good to gut and bleed carp as soon as possible, preferably shortly after they’ve been removed from the water and placed on ice. Once cooked, the carp fillets will be milder tasting, and you won’t have to deal with disposing of the guts at home. To further simplify the process, don’t bother with the guts at all. Start by cutting along the gills on each side as you would when…

Adventure Ready Brands headquarters is located in the heart of the White Mountains in Littleton, New Hampshire. The company was founded in 1973 and incorporated in 1977, and it manufactures a full line of well-known insect repellents such as Ben’s and Natrapel, and the world-famous insect-bite treatment, After Bite. In addition, Adventure Ready Brands offer first-aid items such as Adventure Medical Kits and Easy Care First Aid kits along with survival products from Survive Outdoors Longer and burn-remedy products such as AfterBurn. Many products are packaged in innovative ways that allow them to be both convenient to use and environmentally friendly. For more information, visit adventurereadybrands.com.…

AS I stabilized my snare on a fallen log at the water’s edge, weeds rustling on the high bank behind me caught my attention. Seconds later, a 3-foot-long cottonmouth launched itself off the bank, over my head, and landed in the water with a splash and was gone. All I saw were ripples on the water, and all I heard was the pounding of my heart in my chest. Well, I thought, at least it wasn’t a gator. Trapping can be an adventure, whether it’s in the snowy north country or the deep south swampland. Every now and then, something raises the hair on the back of your neck and causes you to think twice about where you step next. The Florida swamps offer plenty of thrills, but they also…

To the uninformed, cryptozoology sounds like a formal science, but in reality, it’s the study of animals that are extinct, unknown or mythical using evidence that is either disputed or unsubstantiated. Cryptozoologists study a wide range of creatures such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Yeti, the Mokele-mbembe and other beasts of folklore. Cryptozoology is considered a pseudoscience by mainstream science professionals due to its lack of use of the scientific method and its collection of information based upon weak evidence at best. It is comparable to other pseudosciences, such as the study of ghosts and UFOs.…

RUGER WRANGLER Caliber: .22 LR • Barrel: 4.62 inches • OA Length: 10.25 inches Weight: 30 ounces (empty) • Grips: Synthetic, checkered Action: SA • Sights: Front blade, groove • Finish: Cerakote Capacity: 6 • MSRP: $269 DIAMONDBACK SIDEKICK Caliber: .22 LR/.22 WMR • Barrel: 4.5 inches • OA Length: 9.88 inches Weight: 32.5 ounces (empty) • Grips: Glass-filled Nylon, checkered Action: DA/SA • Sights: Front blade, groove Finish: Cerakote • Capacity: 9 • MSRP: $320…

In 1922, a Canadian trapper was sledding into the nearest town when he was attacked by a large number of wolves. The remains of his sled, dogs and himself were found by two Native Americans. There were the remains of seven dead wolves around the bloody patch of snow. His rifle with a broken stock was found at the site. Four of the wolves had been shot and three clubbed to death. The Native Americans—two brothers—went into town, stocked up on ammo and set back out to try to collect the bounty posted on wolves by the Canadian government. They were never seen alive again. After two days, other members of the tribe went searching for them and found the remains of their dogs and sled and parts of the…

HOLLYWOOD’S FASCINATION with John Colter’s run had an early start: the 1912 silent film, John Colter’s Escape. In the modern era, the original script for Cornel Wilde’s 1965 movie The Naked Prey was largely based on Colter’s escape from the Blackfeet. But in the magic of filmmaking, Colter’s Run was placed in Africa and was photographed there. Since then, films such as Run of the Arrow (1957) and The Mountain Men (1980) have incidents bringing Colter to mind. As does Across the Wide Missouri (1951), when Clark Gable  tells his captors he can’t run. An epic version of Colter’s Run was planned in 2006 and was the subject of an article in Casting News, January 26, 2006, after a previous article in Variety. Carroll Ballard (Never Cry Wolf, The Black…

1. Fishing guide Richard Simms is known for filling the boat with huge catfish from the Chickamauga Reservoir near Chattanooga, Tennessee. One of his favorite cat baits is none other than whole boneless chicken breasts. 2. Lure tipping: When fishing gets tough, add live bait to the back hook of a conventional lure. You can add a mealworm to a trout spinner, a minnow to a crappie jig or a worm pinch to a streamer fly to catch just about anything that swims. 3. If you know of a nearby restaurant floating on water, go fish it! Customers often feed the turtles and ducks with leftover bread or provided pellets, also attracting hungry bluegill and carp. One of the most exciting fishing methods is using a bread or pellet fly…

For millennia, humans have used birch bark to make many useful and beautiful items in the global Northern Hemisphere, where this revered deciduous tree grows in abundance. Walk into any gift shop in the American North and you’re likely to find birch-bark items of several kinds for sale. These popular items mark the continuation of a tradition that extends thousands of years into our ancient past. Archaeologists have found hundreds of 1,000-year-old business and personal letters written on birch bark in an ancient Slavic language left by the Norse who settled in northwest Russia. In Denmark, a 5,700-year-old wad of pitch “gum” derived from birch bark yielded DNA that revealed the chewer was a young, blue-eyed girl who had recently eaten duck and hazelnuts. Not a bad dinner. Birch was…

“Hunting Bigfoot,” on the surface, sounds intriguing. But once those two words settle in, it seems a bit silly. Why? Perhaps it’s because to this day there is extraordinarily little substantial evidence that comes close to proving that Bigfoot even exists anywhere in the great outdoors. But then again, Bigfoot has become an icon of sorts within the past few decades. An incredible number of people have claimed to have had face-to-face encounters with the mythical beast, have lifted oversized footprints from the mud and even recorded the creature’s movements and sounds on video tape. So, what’s the real deal? Well, there’s no easy, please-everyone answer. To the scientific community, Bigfoot is a myth that stays in the minds of people due to those very people not letting it go…

“ Movies like O Brother, Where Art Thou? revitalized a sound and aesthetic of which the cigar box was an integral part.” Creating a musical instrument with found materials not only satisfies the desire to produce something handmade from scratch but also results in a product that allows further creation in the form of music. A cigar-box guitar provides instant gratification. It’s a particularly appealing homemade instrument to build given the quick assembly time and the ease of playability of this fun instrument. Though creative DIYers experiment with cigar-box guitars ranging from three to six strings, the basic and most common model (and the one we will detail here) is a three-string guitar. Putting together your cigar-box instrument won’t require much financial commitment to start. The two major components—the body…

FIELD & STEEL BANSHEE Blade Material: AISI 01 tool steel • Blade Length: 5 inches OA Length: 9.75 inches • Blade Thickness: 0.1875 inches • Grind: Scandi Blade Finish: Belt finish • Handle Material: G10 • MSRP: $480 H&B FORGE MEDIUM CAMP HAWK Blade Material: 1095 and 1019 • Head Length: 5.5 inches Edge Length: 3.5 inches • OA Length: 17.375 inches Blade Finish: Hammer finish • Handle Material: Hickory MSRP: $87.50 to $107.50 AGAWA CANYON BOREAL21 SAW Blade Type: Saw • Blade Length: 21 inches Packable Length: 21.75 inches • Frame Material: Anodized 6063 aluminum Handle Material: Fiberglass-reinforced nylon • MSRP: $75…

THROUGH THE USE OF LOW HEAT AND CONSTANT AIR CIRCULATION, dehydration as it applies to the preservation of food involves the removal of sufficient moisture from the item at hand so as to inhibit or prevent the growth of bacteria, yeast and mold. And honestly, that’s really all there is to the art of dehydrating foods. Well, perhaps it’s just a little more involved that simply throwing Item X onto a heat source for a period of time and hoping for the best, but truthfully, dehydrating—aka drying meats, fruits, vegetables, fungi and other thingsisn’t all that tough. It's time consuming, yes; complicated, no—if, that is, you’re privy to a few steps along the way. Drying foods as a means of preserving them isn’t anything new. I would venture to say…