Field Stories
The Click That Cost Me My First Grouse
The worst sound in the woods is not a twig snapping behind you. It is the click you hear when you squeeze a trigger…
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Field guide
26 published stories
Field Stories
First-person outdoor stories about mistakes, close calls, changing judgment, and the experiences that stay with hunters and anglers after the trip.
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Field Stories
You Melt Your Last Lead Into Balls by the Fire and Miss the Only Deer You See for a Week
You wake because the mold is lying empty between your boots, and the morning is…
Field Stories
You’re Four Hundred Miles From a Dentist and the Boy’s Tooth Is Black to the Root. Now Pull It With the Farrier’s Pliers.
The boy has been crying in the wagon for two days, and by the third…
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Field Stories
The Feeling After a Clean Kill Is Not Regret. It Is the Reason You Hunt.
I shot my first deer at eighteen and spent the next hour wondering why I did not feel like a…
Field Stories
The River Is a Mile Wide and a Foot Deep. Now Get the Wagon Across Without Letting It Drink.
The river tells you it is coming before you see it, because the air goes damp and cool in the…
Field Stories
The Axle Is Singing, the Nearest Blacksmith Is Two Hundred Miles Behind You. Now Fix It With a Green Pole and Wet Rawhide.
You know the axle is breaking before it breaks, because the wagon starts to sing. It is late May, 1849,…
Field Stories
A Twenty-Dollar Reel Outfished Nine Hundred Dollars of Gear
I did not catch a fish for eleven weekends straight. Not one. I borrowed rods, I studied maps, I watched…
Field Stories
Hunting Zones Explained: Which Rules Actually Apply Where You Hunt?
Your license is valid. The season is open. You are standing on public land with a tag in your pocket,…
Field Stories
You Come Out of the Mountains One Horse Short and Two Hundred Miles From the Next Post. Now Do the Arithmetic.
You wake before light because the chestnut mare is down. It is early June, 1848, on the north bank of…
Field Stories
The First Deer I Killed Was Shot by Mistake, and It Took Me Six Years to Understand Why
The first deer I ever killed was shot by mistake. I don’t mean I pulled the trigger on accident and…
Field Stories
The Bow Does Not Hold Steady Under Sixty-One Pounds
The scale said sixty-one pounds and I remember thinking that sounded about right, which should tell you everything you need…
Field Stories
Four Hundred Eighty Dollars Buys a Lot of Wrong Gear
I got into hunting with four hundred and eighty dollars. That was the budget. I wrote it on a sticky…