Innehållsförteckning för No. 3 - 2023 från Field & Stream

GREG MAYNARD bows his head in prayer. It’s about an hour before sunset on a Friday in May, and the president of the ProSport Kennel Club is standing inside a clubhouse in western Indiana that looks like no place of worship I’ve ever been to. There’s a mural of two treeing walkers howling at the heavens alongside taxidermy and dusty trophies. Everything else is bare plywood—a low-ceilinged tinderbox plated with corrugated steel. Europe’s great churches were built to last forever, but this place clearly seems built for the impermanence of tornado country. The nearest town—population 1,100 or so—has just been laid to waste by a twister. It happened so recently that the local bank’s marquee still reads: #SullivanStrong. Our hosts at the club put down their euchre cards or stub…

THE SCENT OF SKUNK didn’t come off the bell for days, but that happens when your dog takes two close-range blasts in the face. Sam was wearing the bell on the morning my wife, Pam, first came hunting with me. When it fell silent, we found Sam on point at the end of a waterway in a spot that often held a rooster. “Watch this,” I said, stepping forward to kick the grass in front of Sam’s nose. Instead of an explosion of wingbeats, a black-and-white tail curled up out of the grass. “Sam, no skunks,” I said weakly. It was not a command we’d worked on. Sam lunged. The skunk sprayed. I heard my wife say, “I’ll be in the house,” and she hasn’t gone hunting with me since.…

FIELD & STREAM has long celebrated the bond between hunters and their dogs. Our photo editor discovered these pictures dating from the ’30s to the early ’70s in our files. They show a very different era of hunting, when whitetails and turkeys were scarce in most places, and hunting, for a lot of people, involved bird dogs, retrievers, or hounds. These pictures show the bond between dogs and hunters, and the qualities that make us love dogs so much. CRIME-FIGHTING HOUNDS Some hunting dogs hunt people. This trio is all smiles in the picture, but Kentucky’s Captain Volney (V.G.) Mullikan and his bloodhounds were relentless on the trail. Mullikan caught more than 2,500 escaped criminals throughout the Southeast in the early part of the 20th century. He and his most…

RECENTLY, one of my editors asked me if I had to use just one shotgun for all my hunting and shooting, what gun would it be? I told him that it didn’t exist, but instead would have to be stitched together out of bits and pieces of several shotguns, combining the most useful features of each. “So,” he said, “a Frankenstein gun?” As someone who makes a living convincing people that they need to own lots of different shotguns, I initially found the idea of a do-it-all Frankenstein gun to be, not unlike the monster itself, frightening. On the other hand, once the idea is in your head, you can’t help pondering what your very own creation might look like. MONSTROUS MASH-UP I remembered that I actually saw a Frankenstein…

SAM In the beginning, Sam would take off at some point during almost every hunt. His departures were completely random, and not unlike those scenes in science fiction movies when a ship makes the jump to hyperspace. He’d blast off in a straight line at top speed, turn into a liver-and-white streak, and then disappear. Sometimes he would come back after a few minutes. Other times, I’d find him on the steps of our farmhouse, waiting for me when I got home. Even after he outgrew his random bolting, Sam never accepted the fact that he couldn’t catch birds once they were airborne. His worst offense came one November afternoon when I took him on a short hunt behind the house. The best cover was in the creekbottom, and we…

I GOT MY NICKNAME from an old hillbilly from Arkansas whose boat I captained up in southeast Alaska for about 10 years. He said working with me was like working with a barnyard rooster. * * * I was born on a dairy farm in western Massachusetts. We were the last farm to deliver milk door to door, and back in the late ’70s, and throughout the ’80s, I helped my grandfather run his trapline. The line was close to 200 miles long, and we’d drive it every day in November. The fur trade back then was pretty good money, especially for us dairy farmers. I learned a lifetime of lessons from my grandfather—not only about trapping, but also fishing, bird hunting, putting meat in the freezer, and the knowledge…

I WASN’T going to shoot either deer. Nor did I want to risk spooking one and send it huffing and puffing through the deep woods just as my hunt got started. So I eased the rifle down, leaned against the tree, and watched from my stand. The young doe had emerged first, from straight behind me. I could hear her crunching acorns. By the time I twisted around to see what was shuffling toward me, she was only 15 feet away. I froze. It’s one of the things I like most about a simple, open ladder stand or climber: If you stay still and if you stay quiet, you’re sometimes rewarded with an intimate perspective into the life of a deer. The doe kept looking over her shoulder, so I…

ON A BITTER November afternoon, my neighbor Alan wrapped up his 15-year-old son, Tanner, like Ralphie’s kid brother in A Christmas Story, then put a muzzleloader in his hands and led him to a blind overlooking a cut cornfield. Though it was still early in the afternoon, they bumped a trio of does feeding in front of the blind before climbing in. Snow, pushed by a stiff breeze out of the northwest, dusted the smattering of cornstalks still standing around the hide and coated the tree limbs along the wood line just 30 yards off. As Tanner settled into his chair and dug through his pack for handwarmers, his dad spotted two other does trotting through the timber. “They’re getting chased,” he whispered to Tanner. “Get your windows open and…

AS WE BOUNCE onto the cornfield aboard the school bus, I’m reminded of the last time my dad and I rode in one of these together. Running school buses is our family business, and when I was a kid, I’d ride with him to drop off vehicles at drivers’ houses. Today, I can see he’s thinking the same thing as he smiles at me and points out the Blue Bird logo next to the driver—the same make as the ones he used to drive. But the old bus we’re on today is different. For starters, all of the seats have been turned to face toward the middle aisle, so my dad and I—plus a handful of fellow hunters—sit facing one another like paratroopers about to leap into occupied territory.…

IT STARTED WITH a single knock—just one quick bounce of the rod tip. If the fish committed, within two seconds the ancient chipped and scuffed Ugly Stik would bow over and not pop back up. “Here we go, bud,” I said to my 5-year-old son, Jamie. “You ready?” He hustled to my side of the drift boat, tripping over anchor ropes and coolers and knocking over his Gatorade in transit. In the time it took him to get to me, the rod had bent in the holder right down to its shredded foam grip. I wrenched the rod out and handed it to the kid. To me, the fish felt, at best, like a sizable channel catfish. But to Jamie—all 42 inches of him—I may as well have been handing…

STREET-FOOD STAPLES in Vietnam, these butterflied quail are marinated in a slurry of oyster sauce, fish sauce, spices, garlic, and honey before being pan-fried and then—just to gild the lily—drenched with lime and black-pepper-spiked butter. Little birds, massive flavors. You can opt to grill the birds instead (also, partridges or chukars work just as well here). Serve with steamed rice and a quick salad of tomato, mint, cilantro, and basil. INGREDIENTS 8 whole quail, gutted, plucked, and backbones removed2 Tbsp. oyster sauce1 Tbsp. soy sauce2 tsp. fish sauce2 tsp. Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry1 tsp. five-spice powder2 tsp. honey2 shallots, minced3 garlic cloves, minced½ tsp. crushed red pepper2 Tbsp. salted butter, melted1 lime, juicedOil for fryingKosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste DIRECTIONS 1. Using kitchen shears,…

I LOVE playing with fire. I like making, lighting, and tending it. According to anthropologists, I suffer from a case of arrested development. But so do you. The scientists point out that in Indigenous cultures, children are encouraged to play with fire almost from birth. They make fires and cook mud pies. They burn themselves. They learn fire’s ways. Consequently, their fire curiosity is satisfied before they reach double digits. After that, fire becomes just another tool. Like a hatchet, only hotter. Thirty years ago, on my only trip to Africa, I saw just how arrested my development has been. In a Masai hut, I encountered a fire so expertly banked that it seemed to consume nothing. It was asleep and would be revived when needed. Another day, a group…