By CJ Lotz

A study out of the University of California, Santa Cruz suggests that flexibility in diet might have given wolves and bears an edge that left saber-tooth cats and cave lions in the evolutionary dust. [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

Twenty-seven years in the wilderness, alone. That's how long a reclusive and locally infamous Maine hermit managed to survive in the woods before he was captured last week while burglarizing a cabin.

From this story on usatoday.com:
A man who lived like a hermit for decades in a makeshift camp in the woods and may be responsible for more than 1,000 burglaries for food and other staples has been caught in a surveillance trap at a camp he treated as a "Walmart," authorities said Wednesday. [ Read Full Post ]

by Phil Bourjaily

Of all the many things we can buy covered in camo that shouldn’t be camo-ed, flashlights rank near the top of the list, along with knives. Several years ago a big game guide showed me his knife. He had dipped the handle in some kind of rubberized bright orange paint. It was easy to hold onto, he said, and easy to find when he set it down somewhere.

Which brings us to the TerraLux Lightstar 80. I used one last season and found it to be in most ways a basic, serviceable light. It’s a fairly inexpensive ($30 list, sells for less) 80 lumen LED light that runs for five hours on a pair of AA batteries. It has a rubber ring around the end so you can hold it in your mouth comfortably, and the on-off switch can even be operated with tongue pressure.

[ Read Full Post ]

Everyone loves a story. But as outdoorsmen, we appreciate a good one more than most.

We'll let you get away with the yarn about the trout you took into the backing—even though the fish gains a pound with every retelling. We'll still act surprised that the buck you'd been chasing for ages suddenly appeared in the last minute of the last day—even though we already know the ending. We'll happily listen, and as soon you're finished, we'll tell one of our own.

A wonderful thing about hunting and fishing is how, if you spend enough time in the wild, stories will find you. We keep them, share them, and savor them when we can't be in the field. This month, between seasons, is one of those times. So we asked our best writers and wildlife photographers for the tales that they tell when they're sitting by the fire with other outdoorsmen. Most were inspired by a list of one word themes we provided them, because the best hunts and most memorable fish teach us something about who we are and how to live life. Other stories included show the small moments that capture the friendships, humor, and joy... [ Read Full Post ]

By Chad Love

For a number of years following the end of World War II, Japanese soldiers would occasionally emerge from the jungles in the Pacific theater, either unwilling to believe or unaware that the war was over. The last verified Japanese holdout came out of hiding in the Philippines and officially surrendered back in 1974. It's an incredible story, but a piece in this month's Smithsonian magazine tops it, in both longevity and in the sheer harshness of the landscape in which it occurs. In 1978, Soviet geologists discovered a family of six eking out a desperate existence in the depths of the vast Siberian taiga. They had been living there, completely cut off from all human contact, completely unaware of events like WWII, since 1936. [ Read Full Post ]

By Steven Rinella

Sometimes it’s difficult to anticipate sources of danger when you’re hunting in the backcountry. But on this sunny day, while hunting Coues deer in eastern Arizona, we never had any doubt that rattlesnakes were the things to be watching for.

I was hunting with the crew that films my TV show, Meat Eater. The last few days had been cold and wet. Now that it was warming up, our cameraman, Mo Fallon, commented that every rattlesnake in the neighborhood would be coming out of the ground. He also mentioned that this area was known for green Mojave rattlesnakes, a breed whose venom includes a rare neurotoxin that can make their bites 10 times more dangerous than typical rattlers. Because I was walking in the lead, I figured it was my responsibility to be extra vigilant. But I was distracted from my duties by the fact that we were traveling across fresh terrain, where I was more interested in looking for deer than reptiles. [ Read Full Post ]