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I'm about to assemble a crossbow for the first time. How hard could it be? CONGRATULATIONS ON your new Aggravated Assault 9000 crossbow by Neurotoxin! The AA represents a previously [...]

I'VE RENTED A HOUSE IN the D.C. area to be closer to my blue-haired (this month) daughter as she enters her final year of high school. After graduation, Emma's mother [...]

AMERICAN DOMINANCE of the universe is under siege. Major League baseballs? Made in Costa Rica. Levi's jeans? Ninety-nine percent come from 35 countries, none of which were made in the [...]

WHICH OF the following is something you will never hear a man say? (A) I have no sense of humor. (B) I'm actually a lousy driver. (C) I'm terrible at [...]

BETWEEN THE AGES of 40 and 60, men age steadily but slowly, like the wine stain from a glass you didn't realize you'd knocked over. True, you lose a step, [...]

OUTDOORSMEN know the importance of situational awareness (SA), defined as 'knowing that you've just wet your pants.' Wait, that's saturational awareness, which comes right before it in The Big Book [...]

AS A KNIFE GUY OF MORE devotion than knowledge, I was delighted last October at scamming my way into a by-invitation-only show in Nashville, Ark. The Micro Invitational, a.k.a. the [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey The right hat makes all the difference DURING NAPOLEON'S retreat from Russia in 1812, doctors noted that bald men were the first to die from the cold. [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey I THOUGHT I KNEW HOW I FELT ABOUT HUNTING I WAS ON AN EARLY-SEASON deer hunt in western Kentucky this year when I ran into a guy [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Slicing and dicing with four popular folders LESS IS OFTEN MORE when it comes to the knife that you keep in your pocket and use all the [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Scent-reducing choices for warm, cool, and cold weather IF YOU WERE a clothing manufacturer in search of the ideal garment, you'd look for a harmonic convergence of [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Grab your six-shooter and come slap leather at End of Trail, the biggest gathering of cowboys, desperados, and old-time gun nuts west of the Mississippi WILD BILL [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey A short-time pro gets the biggest win ever Last August, a guy who has been fishing the pro circuit for only three years became the first angler [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey MY DAD AND I WEREN'T AS DIFFERENT AS I THOUGHT I AM 13, as sullen as they come, sitting on what my father insists I call the [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey How to guide a driver through nasty terrain YOU'RE OFFROADING WITH a buddy, and you come to a hairy bit of ground. It's your duty as copilot [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey A LONE TREK TO A TROPHY BUCK FACTORY REVEALS AMAZING LOCAL GRACE, SHOT-UP PHONE BOOKS, AND A HARDSCRABBLE LAND WHERE WALL-HANGERS SKULK AND PROWL AT THE MOMENT [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey MY STRUGGLE TO OVERCOME A SERIOUS SEASONAL DISORDER DO YOU EVER find yourself thinking about deer when your mind should be on other things? Have you drifted [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Who answers the phone when you call Cabela's? An army of specialists who know what hunters and fishermen want--even when you don't. An inside look at the [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey BROADHEADS? KETCHUP? MY VEHICLE HAS IT ALL I DIDN'T WANT to clean out my car. My mama made me. 'You are not driving Aunt Joyce to the [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey 'I like to play indoors better,' a fourth grader told Richard Louv, 'because that's where the electrical outlets are.' In his bestselling 2005 book, Last Child in [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey MY NEW JOB: BLUEGILL GUIDE I KILLED MY COMPUTER the other day, an action I can't recommend highly enough. The cause of death was coffee, the original [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Hunting for red stag in Scotland is a gentleman's pursuit. Our roving editor went anyway and discovered a mix of forbidding country, refined culture, and guiding skills [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey SEEING DEER THROUGH THE EYES OF A 7-YEAR-OLD I WOKE THE DAY BEFORE EASTER to find an inch of fresh snow outside and the house echoing with [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey HUNTING FOR SHEDS--AND MAYBE A FEW ANSWERS THE CROSSBEAMS OF MY WORLD have been buckling lately, and as is my custom in such situations, I've been spending [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey CUBA'S NATIONAL BASS FISHING TOURNAMENT IS JUST LIKE THE BASSMASTER CLASSIC, EXCEPT THERE ARE NO MOTORBOATS, NO SPONSORS, NO TV CAMERAS, AND NO CASH PRIZES. MAYBE THAT'S [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE OF HUNTING, AND IT'S EXPENSIVE ORLANDO ALREADY HAS one magic kingdom, but the hunting industry recently gave Goofy and friends a run [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey HE MAY HAVE A PERVERSE SENSE OF HUMOR, BUT RAY EYE IS ALL BUSINESS WHEN IT COMES TO TURKEY HUNTING 'Call', commands Ray in the half-light of [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey HOW I FINALLY SALVAGED MY DEER SEASON IT WAS NOVEMBER, the great hinge on which the deer hunter's year swings, and the only thing that mattered was [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey ALYSSA IACOBONI WASN'T GOING TO LET CANCER STOP HER FROM BECOMING A HUNTER, AND NEITHER WAS HER FAMILY OR THE STRANGERS WHO GAVE HER THE HUNT OF [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey MY ANNUAL PROGRESSION FROM CONFIDENCE TO DESPAIR I STARTED THIS DEER SEASON with the usual optimism, wondering if Milo Hanson and I could save on expenses by [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey HOW WE ARE HELPING THE ANTIS EVER WONDER WHY so many folks have a less-than-flattering image of hunters? Let me explain it to you: There be morons [...]

AS A HUNTER, I live a paradox that many of us feel but rarely talk about. It's this. While I love the hunt, I dread the kill. That this idea [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey I'M HEADED INTO THE WOODS. PLEASE SEND HELP The problem with safety-rigging that first cup of coffee in the death-camp glow of a 7-Eleven when you're racing [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey SKETCHES FROM A FOUR-DAY PHEASANT HUNT I was celebrating the end of a successful quail hunt in a roadhouse in a one-gas-station Texas town last year with [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey MASTER A FEW SIMPLE TRICKS WITH ROPE, AND YOU'LL BE THE MOST COMPETENT GUY IN CAMP I recently came across a travel blog in which the author, [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey BUCK FEVER WILL TURN A GROWN MAN INTO A SHAKING MESS. FORGET ABOUT CURING IT, BUT YOU CAN MASTER IT The first time I saw a legal [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey DON'T BE A SKEPTIC. FAKE DEER REALLY DO WORK So you're considering using a decoy but aren't sold on the idea. Your fears are: (1) It seems [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey SOME ANIMALS STAY WITH YOU ALL YOUR LIFE My father's mind is slipping away, cell by cell, and as the architecture fragments and falls, he often speaks [...]

Byline: David E. Petzal, Jay Cassell, Catherine DiBenedetto, Bill Heavey, Philip Bourjaily The best new stuff for sportsmen 1 DON'T BE A DULLARD If you are sharpening-challenged, here's hope. The [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey LIFE WOULD BE EASIER IF I COULD PITCH JERKBAITS ON THE FLATS Saying 'Bonefishing in the Bahamas' to the average flyfisherman is a little like saying 'naked [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey FORGET BEST OF THE BEST. HERE'S WHAT WE REALLY NEED This is the annual gear issue, when the otherwise-unemployable 'experts' at this magazine review and recommend stuff [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey SOME THINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN A PERCH RUN Did you ever have one of those days on the water when you happened to be in exactly [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Similar appearances can be deceiving with this year's new crop of bows The 2006 compounds are hitting the racks at your local retailer right now, and you, [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey I had envisioned all sorts of hardships on my first caribou hunt above the Arctic Circle: cold, exhaustion, being constantly wet, even the frustration that comes when [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey, Thomas McIntyre For Capt. Bucky Dennis, the action at Boca Grande Pass started just before high noon on May 23, when he tossed in a live stingray [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey POACHERS BEWARE: PAULA SMITH IS WATCHING YOU An internet dating service would never have paired us. There's me: married with kids, heavily mortgaged, and semi-gainfully employed. There's [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey GIVE A MAN ENOUGH ROPE AND HE'LL IRRITATE THE DOG Like many ineffectual people, I am addicted to the transitory endorphin buzz that comes from impressing somebody [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey LIFE AS A HUMBLE FARMER LOOKS PRETTY GOOD TO ME NOW Last summer, Jack Unruh, Illustrator of this column, and I, with no more sense than a [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey I never should have tried to outhunt my boss NOT LONG AGO, THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF of this magazine, Sid Evans, invited me on a two-and-a-half-day deer hunt at [...]

Byline: Bill Heavey Look sharp, American bass pros--there may be guys who are even crazier about your favorite fish than you are: the Japanese. They've been on the competitive scene [...]