Field Honest Audio Stories
Honest hunting, fishing, field skills, gear, wild food, conservation, and outdoor stories, narrated for the road, the workshop, and the quiet hours after dark.
I Aimed at the Whole Deer and Missed a Buck at Twenty Yards
My Uncle Ray used to tell me that a man’s first buck is a coin flip between the best day he ever had and the worst walk of shame back to the truck. He never said which side I’d land on. I found out at twenty yards, which is close enough that you can count […]
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I Walked Into the Woods With a Dead Phone and a Compass I Couldn’t Read
The screen lit up with 3% and then went black, and I stood there in the dark trying to wake it back up like some fool shaking a dead man. The phone was my map, my compass, my way in and my way out, all wrapped up in one little rectangle I had never once […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 15: Wild Duck
The page after the softshell is chipped on one edge, and the corner itself is gone, torn away years back like somebody needed a clean place to wipe a knife. What’s left of the word at the top is drawn in heavy ink, pressed deep enough that it near cut the paper, and all I […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 14: Soft-Shell Turtle
The page after the gar is the last one I pulled out before I set the folder down for the night, and it nearly stopped the whole thing. The edges are darkened like the sheet laid a long time against something wet, and at the top, raised and set off by itself, is one word […]
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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 hit him. I mean I was twelve years old, sitting in a box blind my dad had built out of scrap plywood and a tarp, freezing my ass off and thinking about a video game, […]
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You Cross a Country of Alkali Flats Where the Only Water for Forty Miles Tastes Like Soap.
You wake because your tongue has gone thick and your head is splitting behind the eyes. It is late July, 1849, somewhere on the alkali flats west of the Sweetwater, and the water barrel under the wagon has been empty since yesterday noon. The sun is a white hammer. Your wife Hannah is already out […]
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I Threw Away the Best Cut of Deer for Ten Years
For the first ten years I killed deer, I threw the heart in the gut pile. Not out of disrespect. Out of habit, and out of a lazy little voice that said the heart was organ meat, and organ meat was for people who couldn’t afford steaks. I was wrong on every count, and I […]
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I Took the Shot at Last Light and I Knew Better. The Coyotes Found What I Left.
The shot was legal for about four more minutes, and I knew it. I had been watching the light die through the scope for half an hour, the way the crosshair turns orange and then grey and then gone, and the buck stood there broadside at maybe eighty yards with his head down on a […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 13: Gar
The page after the coot was the first clean sheet in the whole folder, no grease, no burn, no stain of anything. But the paper was thin, and when I turned it to the light I could read the first line of the next recipe straight through the back of it, in Amos’s writing, heavy […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 12: Coot
The page after the old hen had a corner burned clean off, the char running halfway down the margin and taking the first line with it. What was left near the top read “COOT,” and under it, in Amos’s writing, one word that survived the fire: “mud.” I turned the page over and held it […]
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I Used to Hunt With 61 Pounds of Gear and I Couldn’t Hold the Bow Steady
The scale said sixty-one pounds and I remember thinking that sounded about right, which should tell you everything you need to know about the kind of hunter I was back then. Sixty-one pounds for a three day archery hunt in September, when the lows at night would maybe touch forty degrees. My chest strap was […]
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I Got Skunked on the Same Lake Nine Times Before I Figured Out the Problem Was Me
I used to keep a little tally in the notes app on my phone. Not fish caught. Skunks. Nine straight trips to the same forty-acre lake with nothing to show for it but wet line and a sunburn, and every one of those trips I told myself the same lie driving home: the fish just […]
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You Fire Into a Thousand Buffalo and Take Only the Tongue. Now Cut Out the Meat and Move On.
You wake because the ground is shaking. Not much, just enough that the tin cup beside your bedroll rattles against the wagon wheel in a small patient rhythm, and for one long second you think it is thunder rolling in from the far thunderheads. Then you hear Eli Miller whisper it, the boy half out […]
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The Knot That Cost Me the Fish, and the Two I Learned to Tie in the Dark
The fish hit at the worst possible second, the way they always do. I had the drag set wrong, my thumb was on the line, and I was looking at my boots instead of the water. By the time I registered what was happening, the rod was bent double and twenty dollars worth of line […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 11: Old Hen
The brown ring on the page behind the corned venison turned out to be rust from some old iron lid, the shape of it burned into the paper like a brand. Under that stain the next recipe started plain enough, two words in Amos’s heavy hand: “OLD HEN,” and under it a drawing of a […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 10: Corned Venison
The page that tore away from Recipe No. 9 had left a sliver of the next one showing, and all I could make out was the top of a capital and the word “BRINE” in Amos’s heavy hand. When the sheet finally peeled free, it was thicker than the rest, stiff with something that had […]
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I Hunted Pheasants for a Season Without a Dog, and the Birds Taught Me More Than the Dog Ever Did
I have hunted pheasants for six years and for five of them I had a dog. For the one year I didn’t, I told myself it didn’t matter. The dog, I mean. I figured a man with a shotgun and a pair of boots could walk the same fields and find the same birds, just […]
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I Spent $480 to Start Hunting and Wasted Most of It. Here Is What Was Actually Worth Buying.
I got into hunting with four hundred and eighty dollars. That was the budget. I wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it to the fridge like an adult with a plan. I was going to be smart about this. I was going to research and buy quality and not waste a dime. Three […]
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I Threw Away a Deer Shoulder and Called It Fine. I Was Lying to Myself.
I threw away a deer shoulder once and didn’t think twice about it. That’s the sentence that still sits in my gut when I talk about conservation, because it’s the honest one. It wasn’t spoiled. It wasn’t shot up. It was just the off-side shoulder on a buck I’d already spent an hour dragging, and […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 9: Rabbit in the Pan Gravy
The page after Recipe No. 8 wouldn’t come loose, not clean. Three decades of dried gravy had glued it flat to the next one, and Amos’s biscuit recipe sat there sealed like a letter that never got mailed. I worked a butter knife along the seam for a good while, a sliver at a time, […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 8: Woodchuck Gravy over Biscuit
Recipe No. 8 sits on a page so greasy and brown around the edges that the gravy got to it before Amos did, and the heading is half eaten by the stain. What’s left of the words reads “WOODCHUCK GRAVY OVER BISCUIT,” and under it, in pencil that dug a trench in the paper, he […]
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I Watched a Coyote Get Bolder on Camera for Two Months and Did Nothing. Then It Killed My Best Hen.
The first time I saw the coyote it was on the trail camera at ten o’clock at night, and I did what I always do. I drank the rest of my coffee, flipped through the rest of the stills, and told myself the thing was just passing through. A coyote walking down the fenceline in […]
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You’re a Thousand Miles From the Nearest Lick, and the Pork Has Turned. Now Salt or Starve.
You wake because something is moving in the wagon, a low, wet sound like a man turning over in mud, and then the smell finds you. It is late September, 1847, and you are camped near the Sweetwater River, three weeks from the last trading post and a thousand miles from the nearest place that […]
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I Left My Soft Plastics in the Truck and Built a $15 Puddle
I found it in July, baking in the bed of my truck under the tonneau cover. I’d forgotten it in there after a trip to the lake in May, the way you forget a half-drunk bottle of water until it’s warm and useless. I popped the latches and the smell hit me first. Sweet and […]
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The Orange Sign That Stole My Season Was a Lie
The first time I saw the sign, I believed it. That was my whole problem, and it cost me a season and a half of decent ground before I figured out what was actually going on out there. It was an orange and white placard nailed to a beat-up oak on a stretch of land […]
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I Bled My First Fish Wrong and Ate the Proof
The walleye was still flopping on the stringer when I decided it was about to become the best meal I’d eaten all month. I’d watched a dozen YouTube videos on bleeding fish. Cut the gills, drop it in a bucket, watch the blood pour out, meat comes out snow white. Looked easy enough. I’m a […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 7: Groundhog
Recipe No. 7 lives on the last clean page before the folder’s pages start going soft at the corners, and Amos pressed so hard with his pencil that you can feel the letters from the back side. His heading is plain: “GROUNDHOG.” Under it, in smaller hand, he added the note that must have made […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 6: Muskrat
Recipe No. 6 is stuck to the page under it, and you can tell Amos spilled something sweet on it once, because the corner went stiff and brown. His heading is shorter than usual, like he was running out of both patience and pencil: “MUSKRAT. boil it first.” Under that, crammed toward the bottom of […]
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I Caught My First Musky with a Guide and Live Sonar, and I’m Still Not Sure It Counted
I caught my first musky at forty-one years old, and I spent the entire drive home trying to figure out if it counted. That is an embarrassing thing to type, and I am going to type it anyway, because it is true and because the whole point of this is to be honest about the […]
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My Dad Was Not a Good Fisherman. His Tackle Box Broke My Heart Anyway.
My old man kept his tackle box in the bottom of the hall closet, under a stack of rubber boots and a cardboard box of old phone chargers. I found it the week after he died, when my mother asked me to help sort through the house. I didn’t want to. You never do. But […]
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Millions Watched a Wild Eagle Live an Entire Life. Then the Camera Couldn’t Tell Them What Was Happening.
She started out as Jack. That is the detail people forget when they talk about Jackie, the bald eagle from Big Bear Valley, the one whose nest cam turned her into something close to a household name. Before she was Jackie the matriarch, before the snowstorms and the late-night feedings and the fifty-four thousand name […]
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You Carry Fire, Not Matches. Lose the Coals Once and You Learn Why.
You wake because the cold has crawled through the wagon bed and settled in your chest. It is early April, 1846, somewhere west of the Missouri River, and the last of the coals have gone grey under their blanket of ash. You know before you lift the cloth what you will find. You lift it […]
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I Almost Bought a Magnum Rifle Before I Learned How Far 300 Yards Actually Is
I spent most of last March convincing myself I needed a new rifle. Not because there was anything wrong with the one I had. Because the internet said so, and I let it talk me into feeling undergunned. I was shooting a .308 Ruger American I bought for four hundred dollars, and for three seasons […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 5: Raccoon Roast
The folder’s got a grease stain now that wasn’t there before, right over the corner of Recipe No. 5, like Amos wiped his fingers on it after checking a trap line. The heading is short and honest, same as the man: “COON. dont eat the fat if you can help it.” Under that, in the […]
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Before the Hollywood Buck, There Was a Deer Named King
Before the Hollywood Buck there was another deer. A big one, people said. The kind of buck that made a man pull over and stare, the kind that got a name the way most deer never do. They called him King. Nobody can tell you much about him now. That is the strange part. For […]
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Great-Grandfather’s Leather Folder, Recipe No. 4: Snapping Turtle Soup
The leather folder is starting to smell like river mud, which tells you how far along we are. Amos never fussed over a clean pantry. Recipe No. 4 has a boot print on the corner and a heading he wrote in pencil so hard it tore the paper: “SNAPPER. nothing else.” Underneath it, in pencil […]
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I Spent $240 on a Stove That Broke the First Time I Touched It
I bought the best backpacking stove on the market and never used it once. When I finally took it on an elk hunt, the handle snapped off in my hand at 22 degrees. Here is what that taught me about trusting reviews over real-world testing.
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I Butchered My First Deer Watching YouTube. My Girlfriend’s Dad Still Hasn’t Forgotten.
The first deer I shot, I butchered in my garage with a YouTube video playing on a laptop balanced on a tool chest. The guy in the video made it look like surgery. Clean cuts, perfect seams, beautiful roasts that looked like they belonged in a butcher shop display case. His knife never slipped. His […]
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I Was the Idiot Who Carried 40 Pounds of Gear for a 3-Hour Deer Hunt
The first time I walked into the deer woods by myself, I carried 42 pounds of gear. I know this because I weighed my pack afterward, out of pure self-loathing. I was 24 years old, hunting a patch of public land in Missouri, and I was prepared for every scenario known to man except the […]
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I Started With a 38-Pound Pack and Ended Up With One Knife and a Granola Bar
The first year I hunted, my pack weighed 38 pounds. I know this because I weigh everything now. Back then I didn’t, and that was part of the problem. Thirty-eight pounds for a four-hour morning sit in a box blind my buddy built out of scrap plywood and hope. The blind was maybe 300 yards […]
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