You’ve got questions. We’ve got answers (and if we don’t, we’ll make them up). Every day, fellow MeatEaters send us more than 100 emails regarding hunting, fishing, cooking, conservation, and more. So, we decided to publish a series dedicated to our favorite FAQs. This is Ask MeatEater.
Several years ago on a late-season muzzleloader hunt, I jumped a nice whitetail buck at close range in waist-high grass. As he bounded away, the deer made a 9...

If I could only have one set of binoculars for the rest of my life, I would carry 10x50s. This size has an excellent field of view, with enough magnification to get the detail needed to find an antler tip in the sage brush.
The range of binocular choices and manufactures are wide and the decision making process can appear complicated. But if you can be honest with yourself, picking your binoculars is damn simple. What do you do the most, how...

Hunters have been watching or reading about the mule deer’s decline for so long that some worry they’ll witness its end.
Writers and speakers often quote Professor Valerius Geist’s opening lines of Chapter 8 in his 1990 book “Mule Deer Country,” where he warned: “For all its current abundance, the mule deer, so different, so uniquely American, so young and promising, is nevertheless a species marked for extinction.”
Geist’s next two sentences...

The third week of September coincides with the peak of the elk rut, when bulls are fighting, bugling, and chasing hot cows with reckless abandon. Last year, the timing was perfect for calling in an aggressive bull during Colorado’s muzzleloader season—unless you’re one of those hunters that swears a full moon shuts down or delays the elk rut.
I’ve killed elk during all moon phases, so I’ve never wasted much time on that line of thought. But I’ll...

A 66-year-old elk hunter in Oregon is dead after getting attacked by a bull he wounded with his bow.
Mark David, who was archery hunting on private ground in northwest Oregon, arrowed a bull on Saturday evening. He was unable to recover the elk that night but returned with the landowner the following morning to continue the search. When the duo located the bull around 9:15 a.m., David tried to make a follow up shot on the still-living elk...

You’ve got questions. We’ve got answers (and if we don’t, we’ll make them up). Every day, fellow MeatEaters send us more than 100 emails regarding hunting, fishing, cooking, conservation, and more. So, we decided to publish a series dedicated to our favorite FAQs. This is Ask MeatEater.
Hunting is not monolithic. Every person that takes part in the pursuit does so with their own motivations and rewards.
That’s why I think your defense of hunting...