Tabla de contenidos para No. 1 - 2023 en Field & Stream

IN 1972, I went to Beverly Hills to attend the presentation of the Weatherby Award, which was given annually to the most accomplished big-game hunter Roy Weatherby could think of. It was a black-tie affair held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which was where I was staying, and I got there around noon. Since I had some time to kill before I put on my tux, I decided to visit Kerr Sport Shop, which was just a few minutes away on Wilshire Boulevard. Housed in an unprepossessing building, Kerr’s was the Abercrombie & Fitch of the West Coast, supplier of fishing tackle and hunting gear to the stars. It was founded in 1933 by a champion skeet shooter named Alex Kerr and closed its doors 50 years later. But in…

WAKE-UP CALL Any turkey that I can trick into gun range is, by definition, stupid. That’s true now, and it was truer years ago, when my law-student friend asked me to guide him to his first turkey. Seeking my help was Cody’s second bad decision of the spring. Turkey hunting while trying to pass the bar was the first. On opening morning, I picked Cody up at 4 a.m. He’d been studying all night. Along with his turkey-hunting gear, he brought a stack of index cards covered with case law and Latin to read by dome light while I drove us to the public-land reservoir. If turkeys gobbled at all on that cold, windy morning, we couldn’t hear them. Blind calling along a series of field edges seemed like the…

THE FIRST TIME I fished the lower Madison River, I felt small. I was 18 years old and had never been out West—and though I’d grown up trout fishing on the East Coast, I had never done so on a river big enough to accommodate drift boats. In the elevated, post-runoff flows of June, wading was limited. I could take only a few steps out and was quickly overwhelmed by a feeling of inadequacy. The best I could hope for was a willing trout in my casting zone—a meager 30-foot semicircle from the bank. Up- and downstream, as far as I could see, the water appeared to be the same depth and speed. Meanwhile, drift boat after drift boat floated by. Every so often I’d hear a “Woot!” as…

JUST OFF the shoreline, cutthroat trout are feeding noisily on the surface. I wade a few steps into a muck-fest and look over my shoulder at the wall of subalpine fir, red willow, and mountain ash that has the lake hemmed in. With no room behind me, I shake out some line, unfurl a roll cast, and watch my double-dry-fly rig—a size 14 Purple Haze behind a size 12 Humpy—float on a glasslike surface that’s incongruous in this high country, where, usually, the wind gets its mail. We’ve passed a hundred places already where we could have stopped and taken stock of why we’re here, but none so far is better than this one. I spot Trevor Hubbs and DJ Zor ease out of the thicket wall off to my…

“YOU GO,” I said. “You sure?” Jack asked. My son knows I don’t like giving up the casting deck of a flats boat. “Go, go,” I replied. “You want a permit worse than I do. But hurry up before I change my mind.” And there wasn’t time to waste. Two permit were already ahead of the boat, and our Belizean guide was frantically working the pushpole, trying to keep up. One fish was too far away, so Jack split the difference and cast a crab fly toward the blue gap between the sickle-finned fish. Nice, I said to myself, as Jack twitched the crab right across the permit’s face. But one thing all permit anglers know about these fish is that you just never know. This one wasn’t buying—and…

BIG CANADAS, little Canadas, snows, and specks lifted off the cornfield, streaming nonstop toward the lake to rest and get a drink. Noticing the pop-up blind sticking out at the end of the point, bunch after bunch detoured just out of gun range. Finally, one pair of specks set their wings and sailed by too close. And while there was no one around to hear the shots in very rural South Dakota, the reports from our suppressed guns weren’t as loud as the normal boom of a 12-gauge. The wadding we shot into the water would be gone by tomorrow. As the Lab swam out to fetch the birds, I realized I’d had my first glimpse of what might be the quieter, greener future of waterfowling. Noise and plastic…

FROM HIS WORKSHOP in Thomasville, Georgia, taxidermist Edward Harden has been stuffing everything from mourning doves to elephants for more than 40 years. He got his start by sending away for a mail-order Northwestern School of Taxidermy course at age 12. At 15, he took his first paying customer. After that, Harden went to college for biology and opened the doors at his 128 East Jackson Street shop in 1980. Today, he is a master at his craft. Harden takes on hundreds of shoulder mounts, fish mounts, and full-body mounts every year, and his customers wait in line for up to three years for bird mounts. But what’s most impressive about Harden’s Taxidermy is how he and his team have turned their storefront into a destination. The shop is like…

THE GOBBLER stood in the shade of a far-off cedar, very still, as if he were impersonating a decoy. It was noon and hot, and Tim and I were planning to leave Nebraska that very day, ending not only our weeklong trip but another spring of turkey hunting. Having struck out on the morning hunt, I was ready to go home. But Tim, who’d already filled both of his tags, talked me into having a go at the bird. He’d glassed the gobbler from a distance, so we parked his truck in a drainage between sandhills, maybe 400 yards away and out of sight of the tom, and I started after him. I snuck along a cattle path, crawled past yucca plants, and finally wormed myself into playing distance.…

THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL—and beautifully simple—dish inspired by an age-old goat preparation from the Mediterranean island of Crete. In traditional tsigariasto, cleavered chunks of bone-in goat meat are slowly braised with spring onions, oregano, olive oil, and just a splash of white wine—the succulent bone marrow infusing the braising liquid as it bubbles. To achieve that same effect, we use the often-disregarded venison neck, cleavered or sawed into 3-inch pieces—but bone-in chunks from any part of the deer are welcome here. (If CWD is a concern, use boneless stew meat.) Have some crusty bread on hand for sopping up the liquid. INGREDIENTS 2–2½ lbs. venison neck, bone-in, cleavered into roughly 3-inch pieces3 Tbsp. olive oil14 oz. bag frozen pearl onions2 tsp. dried oregano1 cup dry white wine6 sprigs fresh…