Hunting

The black bear’s nose follows the elk’s vertebrae, carving through a fog of flies. Its jaws dive into the open ribcage, teeth plying through viscera. Flesh peels with a tug and rewards the bear’s hyperphagic appetite. Three cubs weave into the camera’s view through a bitterbrush maze, ready to paint...

Whether used for war, self-defense, or hunting, guns that can stuff more cartridges into less space offer their users an advantage. That’s why Sig Sauer’s “high-capacity micro handgun,” the P365, was such a sensation when it dropped in 2017 and why other gun companies wasted no time mimicking their...

White-tailed deer are ubiquitous in North America. It seems like half of the country heads out into the woods to pursue the enigmatic species every fall and winter, to experience the great outdoors and fill their freezers. But there’s one subspecies of whitetail very few hunters know about, in a...

In the realm of the average hunter, elk are king. While the one-percenters busy themselves with $50,000 sheep tags, or African safaris to quickly fill up their trophy rooms, the Rocky Mountain elk remains at the top of the heap for most hunters. Why shouldn’t it? Bulls can weigh four times that of a...

In my home state of Minnesota, the firearm season opens the first weekend of November. This means that for many years, bowhunters relinquished the woods to the orange army within the first few days of the month. When I was younger, that bothered me a lot. I wanted to hunt the rut, but it just wasn’t...

MeatEater Season 12 premieres October 12, 2023, on TheMeatEater.com and MeatEater's YouTube channel. Weekly episodes will drop every Thursday through November 16. We're stoked to share that this new season of MeatEater is presented by SCHEELS. If you’ve been wanting to check out First Lite and FHF...

One of the great things about whitetail hunting is that it isn’t hard to find a suitable cartridge. Whitetail are America’s most popular big game animal, and ammo makers have developed dozens of options for that specific pursuit. Plus, as a Class 2 critter (according to Chuck Hawk’s categorization...

For most hunters living on the East Coast, hunting elk usually involves traveling hundreds of miles to the Western wilderness stronghold states of Montana, Wyoming, or Colorado. But, after decades of absence in the East, they’re starting to reclaim their former range. They’re not as abundant as...

How much would you pay to hunt any season, any weapon, any species? Your dream hunt, dream unit, and all the time in the world to get it done. $10,000? $50,000? Try $370,000. That’s how much the state of Oregon received this year after a “governor’s” tag auction for a coveted sheep tag. Most western...

When I sit in a treestand and a deer (or some other big game animal) makes its way toward me, the closer it gets, the more I believe it’s in trouble. When I’m out west crawling across the prairies or some mountain basin, the closer I get to the animals, the more I feel like I’m in trouble. With an...

Last week, the US Fish and Wildlife Service published an annual Waterfowl Population Status Report, outlining declining duck and goose populations across North American flyways. This spring, American and Canadian federal biologists flew transects throughout the north-central US, Alaska, and Canada...

I’m not afraid to say it. The shot size system makes zero sense. Sure, you can remember that #7.5 is good for doves and BB is good for waterfowl. But do you know why 10 is smaller than 1? Or why the system changes from numbers to letters as the pellets increase in size? Rifle calibers are simple...