A SHORT SEASON

A woman with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, a 10,000-year-old skeleton in an English cave, and what wild fish and game had to do with the genetic adaptations.

There’s no better shared meal than a pizza made by hand. Here’s my dough recipe.

Wild game tastes different when it’s shared. A short essay on duck, vodka, elk, and the people who make a meal a meal.

I dial the scope turret and settle the crosshairs on the cat’s shoulder. I squeeze the trigger. When the rifle resettles on the gut pile, the cat is gone.

I killed the ugliest deer of my life in Sonora, then tried to give the meat to the cartel so I wouldn’t have to pack it four miles out. That’s how we ended up on a mountaintop, unarmed, waiting for the boss to decide what to do with us.

hopscotching down a steep sandy hill trying to stay on the broken slabs of sandstone. Deep sand captures a large puddle of blood like kitty litter clumping spilled motor oil. The bull I’m following is bleeding out both sides of his chest making it easy to follow the puddles. We edge around a rock bluff gaining a vantage of the

We draw heavy criticism from people who don’t hunt. To them, hunting looks like an exercise in ego, domination, and “toxic” masculinity. I grew up hunting, so their criticism is as bewildering to me as hunting is to them. When I respond to critics, I try civility first. But after a round or two, I lose patience, and the conversation

It’s type-two fun. The kind of fun you hate. The kind of fun you dread. It’s the kind of fun that’s only fun looking back on it. The kind of fun that results in tingling feet, raw hips, and sore backs, but also a freezer full of goodness. On Monday, Chase killed a great Arizona bull in a rugged unit