Field Stories
I Sold My Bow After Losing My First Deer, and Ray Talked Me Back Into the Woods
The deer was dead somewhere in the swamp. I knew it when the blood quit. Bright red for sixty yards, then a smear, then…
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Stories by
Field Hunter
Field Hunter is the Field Honest house byline for real field narratives shaped by the editorial desk. Stories may come from our own experience, friends and contributors, or reader submissions. First-person voice preserves the source narrator's perspective; the byline does not claim that one person lived every story.
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Field Stories
Amos’s Diary: Saturday, October 17, 1903
Two pages in the diary so far, and each one is a whole season by…
Fishing
I Set the Hook Too Early Every Day for Thirty Years
I have been setting the hook too early for thirty years and nobody ever bothered…
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Hunting
A Buck That Dropped Like a Stone and Then Ran Off With a Second Chance
The buck dropped like somebody cut his legs out from under him. One shot from the .30-06, a sound like…
Gear
I Spent Two Grand on Scent-Proof Camo Before I Learned the Wind Was Free
The first rifle season I took seriously, I spent more on clothes than I did on the rifle. That is…
Field Skills
I Bumped the Buck I Shot and Almost Lost Everything
Last fall I put an arrow through a big-bodied buck at twenty-six yards. Felt like a good shot. The deer…
Field Stories
The Sky Turns Green and the Hail Flattens the Prairie. Now Hide Your Family Where There Is Nothing to Hide Behind.
The Sky Turns Green Late afternoon, June 1849. Somewhere on the Platte, two days east of Fort Laramie. You are…
Conservation
The Lead I Left in the Gut Pile and the Bald Eagle That Ate It
I gutted my first deer when I was seventeen and I have told the same joke about it ever since.…
Wild Food
The Backstrap I Cooked Like a Hamburger and Blamed On the Deer
The First Backstrap a Man Destroys Every hunter ruins his first backstrap the exact same way, and I am here…
Field Stories
Amos’s Diary: Tuesday, January 20, 1903
The pages in the back of the leather folder don’t run in order, so I read them the way Amos…
Field Stories
The Plastic Deer That Bought Me a Seat at Deer Camp
For ten years I told people I was a hunter. I owned a rifle. I owned camo. I owned opinions…
Hunting
The First Buck I Ever Killed Was Small, and That Was Exactly the Point
I did not grow up hunting. That is the first honest thing I ever said about the subject, and it…