THIS MAY COME as a shock to some readers, but I’m not the breezy ray of sunshine you might imagine from reading this column. I’m actually a prickly, antisocial loner who won’t answer your call if I don’t recognize your number. (Once the male-supplements people get your digits, everybody has them.) Being socially distant was never a personal aspiration. But if normal people frighten you and you feel most like yourself in the company of outsiders and whack jobs, it happens. In fact, some of my best friends have been stunned to learn that they are my best friends. A few have been made visibly uncomfortable by the news, as if learning that Mitt Romney’s wife has a crush on them. In such situations, I quickly explain that I don’t even like many of my closest friends. They’re just guys I’ve resented for so long that I’ve gotten kind of attached to them. I suspect this characterizes a great many more male friendships than is commonly thought, because more than a few of them seemed to get it.
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LIVING THE DREAM
After the author arrives in Maine’s fabled North Woods with a moose tag in his pocket, an adventure he’s been wanting to take his entire hunting life, reality sets in, and he learns a valuable lesson: Be careful what you wish for
Get the Drift
How to make an accurate windage call under pressure
First Sit
An icebreaker outing in a pristine spot produces the rut hunt of a lifetime
A Local Haunt
The author finds a sense of place in an overlooked creek, close to home
A Hop and a Pump
Jump-shooting rabbits with classic upland guns is about as good a time as you can have in the outdoors
Welcome TO camp
Is there any place better than a good hunting camp? It has everything: great food, games and pranks, and of course, hunting. Shoot, we don’t even mind going to camp for grueling work days in the summer. Here, our contributors share their favorite stories, traditions, and lessons learned from camps they’ve shared. So come on in and join us. The door’s open.
THE DEERSLAYERS
Before you even claim a bunk, you need to eyeball the hardware your buddies have brought. In the process, you’ll see that the guns at deer camp are changing. What was walnut and blued steel may now be Kevlar and carbon fiber. The 10 rifles featured here aren’t your father’s deer guns. They’re today’s new camp classics
THE JOURNEY TO PIKE'S PEAK
Last summer, the author and three friends ventured off the grid to a remote fish camp in Canada. They hoped for great fishing, but what they experienced was truly something else
Stage Directions
When early-season whitetails vanish from open feeding areas, follow this woods-edge ambush plan
Rookie Season
A pup’s first year, from preseason training to fall’s big show
