by Lawrence Pyne

In all my travels, I have never been anywhere like the North Maine Woods. About the size of Yellowstone, Glacier and Yosemite National Parks combined, it is home to some of the wildest rivers and lakes in the East, including the 92-mile Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Yet it is neither park nor national forest.

Instead, the North Maine Woods is almost entirely commercial timberland, which is open to the public for a reasonable daily fee. It is a forested world unto itself and hunting and fishing paradise, even if while scouting for moose, deer or a promising place to cast, you must also keep a sharp eye out for logging trucks. Because they do, in fact, own the road.
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by Kirk Deeter

Sam Perry had something special in mind for the last day, and he told us to bring our hiking shoes. We were going to hike into a remote feeder creek—Groundhog Creek—and sight fish to big browns and rainbows in water not much wider than a city sidewalk. The hike was only a couple miles long. Thing is, it was also 1,000 vertical feet down.

Now, the going down will stress your joints more than your lungs, but with every step, one can’t help but wonder what the climb back out is going to feel like. I was taking a break to ponder that, when I caught a whiff of something strong and pungent in the air. I knew that smell from the years I had spent elk hunting in these mountains.
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by Kirk Deeter

The Upper Dolores River in southwestern Colorado is one of those special places in the West where the story doesn’t revolve around memories of what the flyfishing or hunting was like “back in the day.” The “prime time” experience—when wild, lightly pressured trout attack gaudy dry flies with almost reckless abandon, and massive elk herds roam aspen-lined mountains and valleys—is happening right now.

The Dolores is a home river of sorts for me. I have fished its upper branches and small tributaries for 25 years, and I don’t think these waters have ever fished better than they do at present. I feel the same way about the hunting. That’s partly because the region’s relative isolation from big cities like Denver, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City keep it just out of reach for most weekend warriors, and partly because those hunters and anglers who have discovered this region have worked to maintain its pristine value.
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by David Stalling

I awoke a few times during the night and early in the morning from the sounds of my tent rattling from the strong winds. I was glad to have some shelter from it. Dave, on the other hand, had decided to just throw his sleeping bag out under the stars and managed to sleep well. By the time I got up he was already working his way around the lake catching fish. After a breakfast of oatmeal and coffee, we took a break atop a large, rocky outcrop with a spectacular view of the Upper Truckee watershed, looking north toward the town of South Lake Tahoe and the large, bright blue waters of Lake Tahoe itself. As far as I could see there was nothing but forests, lakes, rock and snow.
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by Darren Dorris

The day after the hunt, I boarded the Fairweather, a high-speed catamaran run by the Alaska Marine Highway system (AMH) and one of the fastest in its fleet. In a scant four hours, I would travel the 150-plus miles to Juneau. Getting around the Tongass is very unique, with 656,000-plus square miles of islands and water, travelers must go either by air or boat. The AMH makes traveling this region simpler with stops in all the major ports.

While all ferries offer vehicle and passenger space, depending on the length of the trip they offer cabins, restaurants, game rooms and more. The ride from Petersburg to Juneau was filled with the stunning scenes of the famed inside passage. As tired as I was from the previous day’s hunt, the sheer beauty of the glaciers, icebergs, snow capped mountains and whales made it hard to even blink for fear of missing an instant, let alone some sleep.

Juneau is Alaska’s state capital, yet not a single road connects this city to the rest of Alaskan mainland. The only ways in and out are by plane or water, and in this city most visitors arrive by water.... [ Read Full Post ]

by Hal Herring

Hansen Meadows is about five miles away. We’re on a fairly level trail that skirts the toe of mountains that wall the north side of the valley. Gary Peters is leading on his mule, pointing out some of their hunting country as we travel. The creek is far away, but we can hear it sometimes through the harsh jumble of deadfall and obstacle course of thimbleberry, fireweed and young lodgepole.

It’s been 100 years since the 1911 fires, and a glance at the mountains all around shows the lodgepoles that were born in 1911. They’re now dying from old age and beetle infestations. A lodgepole is a tree that it truly native to the Western mountains. It has adapted to the one constant of the Western mountains: fire. That’s because lodgepole cones are serotinous, meaning they will only release their seeds and start new trees after being burned. A big black bear spooks out of a patch of elderberry on the hillside and glides downhill into the bottomland tangles, moving with a grace that seems impossible for its size.

We bail off the trail as the country suddenly opens, ride across a wide sucking bog of horsetail... [ Read Full Post ]