Hunting
The Tack Driver They Told Me Was Too Small for Deer
For three straight summers I saved up for a rifle, and when I finally had the money I did the classic thing. I bought…
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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.
268 published stories
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Gear
The Rifle Cost Nine Hundred Dollars. The Scope on Top of It Cost Forty.
I saved for two years for that rifle. The whole time I did the math…
Hunting
Your Trail Camera Is Now a Legal Problem. Here’s What Changed in 2026.
I still remember hanging my first trail camera and the ritual that went with it.…
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Hunting
Three Years of Backyard Practice, and the First Live Deer Still Made Me Freeze
I practiced for three years before I ever drew a bow on a live deer. Three years of shooting in…
Field Skills
I Mounted My Own Scope Wrong and Let My Rifle Open My Eyebrow. The Buck Was Grateful.
The first buck I ever had a clean shot at, I never got to shoot. I got to bleed instead.…
Field Stories
You Run Out of Flour West of the Sweetwater and Learn to Eat the Country That Has Been Feeding You All Along
Late August, 1846. Somewhere west of the Sweetwater, three days of empty skillet behind you, and your stomach has stopped…
Conservation
The Deer He Shot and Never Ate, and the Old Man Who Said the One Thing That Rewired Him
I was twenty-three the first time I shot a deer I didn’t eat. Not because I couldn’t. Because I didn’t…
Fishing
The Night a Six-Pound Catfish Almost Drowned Me Over a Trotline
I almost drowned over a channel cat that weighed maybe six pounds. That is the kind of sentence that sounds…
Field Stories
The Rifle That Never Left the Safe Until the Man Was Gone
Grandpa left me a rifle when he died. I locked it in the safe and hunted with a black synthetic…
Hunting
The Opening Day I Spent Mad at a Man Who Wasnt Even in My Tree
The Three-Hour Drive That Died at the Gate Opening day, and I got out of the truck at five in…
Conservation
A Blood Trail That Stopped at Three Hundred Yards, and the Search a Lost Bear Is Owed
The bear didn’t drop. That’s the sentence I keep coming back to, even though it’s been a full year. I…
Conservation
The Lost Bear and the Search That Taught Me What a Recovery Owes an Animal
The bear did not die where I shot it. That was the first thing I got wrong, and I got…