A reasonable bird would’ve left. This confident cardinal chose commitment.

As heavy winds turned a skinny tree into something resembling a bull ride, the bird clung to a branch and rode the whole thing out. No plan beyond “hold on.”

You have to admire that kind of stubbornness. It’s the same quality that convinces your grandpa his flip phone is still perfectly adequate. The internet called him Lieutenant Dan, the cardinal never saw the resemblance.

Birdie Eye 🎥: @ashmarie_22 ...

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You spend half your life wishing for the next season and the other half wishing you’d paid more attention to the last one.

Field & Stream Archival Project //
Old School Sunday with @yuenglingbeer ...

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The trip started and ended the same way: a steak dinner, a hot shower, and a dog bed in Bozeman.

Everything in between was horses, hounds, river-bottom camps, wet boots, legs that felt like fence posts, bears spotted a half-mile away, and enough wolf sign to keep everybody paying attention.

The plan was straightforward. Ride into Montana bear country with @kirkprice_’s pack of West Siberian Laikas—Gangus, Sever, Dixie, and Chooch—and see if they could do something nobody involved had ever seen before. As far as anyone knew, no West Siberian Laika had ever treed a bear in Montana.

The wolves were a problem. The bears didn’t always cooperate. By the time it was over, the Field & Stream Montana Adventure crew came home with a bag of stories and a full video. It’s worth a watch and it’s out now on the Field & Stream YT channel.

Comment “BEAR” and we’ll DM you the link.

And if riding horses through a big piece of Montana sounds like your kind of vacation, the Field & Stream Lodge is a mighty fine place to start—and finish. @fieldandstreamlodges ...

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If you’ve seen Meredith Powroznik in a Field & Stream Turkey Camp before, it’s because she’s the kind of hunter we’d gladly invite back.

She came to Oklahoma hoping to get a Rio with a longbow. The bow happened to belong to her dad.

What she got was a front-row seat to watch her 80-year-old father crawl under barbed-wire fences and cover ground in 90-degree heat like quitting had never occurred to him. As Meredith put it:

“He’s the reason I ain’t got no quit.
He’s the gravel where I got my grit.”

The turkey is memorable. Watching your 80-year-old dad hunt like that is something you’ll carry a lot longer.

For the dads who taught us everything….

Join or gift an 1871 Club membership to unlock exclusive Father’s Day gifts like the limited-edition tumblers and a bottle of Eric Church’s Whiskey JYPSI Bourbon. Drop an “1871” comment & we’ll DM you a link to the collection. ...

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His father wrote “A River Runs Through It.”

John N. Maclean spent much of his life answering questions about it.

Long before he wrote “Home Waters,” Maclean built a remarkable career of his own. He covered wars, reported on some of the biggest wildfires in American history, worked as a foreign correspondent, and authored multiple bestselling books. Yet one story remained largely untouched. The story of his father, Norman Maclean.

The story of his uncle Paul, whose life inspired Brad Pitt’s character in the film adaptation of “A River Runs Through It.” And the story of the Blackfoot River that connected them all. Then an editor asked a simple question: Would you ever tell the whole story?

Eventually, John went back. Back to the river. Back to the cabin. Back to the people behind one of the most influential stories in outdoor history. The result became “Home Waters,” a chronicle of the real family behind the legend.

The full return home story featuring John N. Maclean by Maggie Doherty is worth your time. Drop a RIVER in the comments and we’ll send you the full read.

Maggie Doherty’s Feature Story photography by: Rebecca Stumpf for Field & Stream.

Family images courtesy of John N. Maclean.
River foam photography by Christina Holmes. ...

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A South Carolina patrol sergeant was fishing a 40-foot-deep back eddy on the Pee Dee River when a giant flathead ate his Santee rig.

What followed was a 15-minute fight and a trip to the scales.

South Carolina DNR fisheries biologists ultimately certified the fish as the largest flathead catfish ever recorded in the state, shattering the previous record by nearly 30 pounds.

For perspective, the IGFA all-tackle world-record flathead catfish—caught in Kansas in 1998—weighed 128 pounds even.

Story by @travishallmedia
📸: Joseph Driggers ...

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Mike Lee’s “Roadless Rule Nullification” amendment has been added to the Wildfire Prevention Act, advancing a proposal that could remove protections from millions of acres of backcountry national forest lands.

For hunters and anglers, the debate goes beyond roads. Many of the country’s best elk, mule deer, and trout waters exist inside roadless areas—places that have remained undeveloped for more than two decades under the Roadless Rule.

“Hunters and anglers stand to lose more from the elimination of Roadless Rule than anyone else,” said Trout Unlimited President and CEO Chris Wood. “The biggest bulls and bucks are in roadless areas. The finest fishing for native trout is in roadless areas.”

The amendment was adopted by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a party-line vote and now advances as part of the broader wildfire legislation.

Swipe through to see what the amendment would do, who supports it, who opposes it, and what it could mean for public land hunters and anglers.

Story by @travishallmedia ...

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A lot has changed in fishing over the years. But one thing hasn’t. Catch a big enough bass, and somebody’s going to be happy for you. Even if you’ve never met.

A week earlier, his personal-best bass weighed 5.5 pounds. Then he landed a 9.3-pound California hawg.

When he posted the new PB, he mostly wanted to share the video. Instead, another angler pointed out something he didn’t know: the bass qualified for California’s division of r/BassFishing’s Trophy Fish Club, where the largemouth benchmark is 8 pounds or 23 inches. Soon after, an invitation showed up in the comments.

The fish was impressive. The response was better. The angler later explained that he didn’t know anyone around him who fished and had only picked up the sport because he was looking for something new to do. After the congratulations started rolling in, he wrote, “It’s awesome groups like this exist.” ...

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Meet @morgankonenn Morgan Kate: the angler who landed this monster. “I remember yelling that its head looked about two feet wide, and nobody believed me…they all thought I was exaggerating,” she said.

An hour later, they did.

Fishing with @killgoreadventures in Idaho’s Hells Canyon, Morgan Kate hooked a white sturgeon that would eventually measure 9 feet 7 inches long with a 50-inch girth. At one point during the fight, the fish launched itself out of the water. Morgan Kate was the only one who saw it.

Then the fish went deep. For a while, nobody was sure they were gaining any line at all. Fishing a hole roughly 30 feet deep, the crew repeatedly thought they had snagged the bottom. Instead, the sturgeon had wrapped itself around rocks below the boat. When the fish finally surfaced, Morgan Kate knew she had a story for a lifetime.

Story & photos by: @morgankonenn ...

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For nearly two decades, Paul Rosolie has been working to protect this corner of the Amazon from logging, mining, and development.

Today, @junglekeepers and its partners help safeguard roughly 138,000 acres of rainforest, with another 170,000 acres still left to protect. This trail cam photo is the reward.

Rosolie says he’s only seen a handful of pumas in 18 years in the Amazon. Then, at 2 a.m., one walked past his trail camera within a protected reserve. A few years ago, this stretch of forest was slated for logging before conservation efforts helped keep it intact. Now, one of the Amazon’s most elusive predators is still moving through the watershed and, according to Rosolie, raising the next generation there.

Photos & story: @paulrosolie / @junglekeepers
Card 1 Photo credit: @thomasstephane
Card 2 Photo credit. @mohsinkazmitakespictures ...

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If you’d like to speak up about the potential amendment, contact your senator via the Capitol Switchboard (202-224-3121), particularly if they serve on the Senate and Energy Natural Resource Committee, which Mike Lee chairs. ...

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Fair warning: some of these photos aren’t for everyone. Most hunters think of whitetails as strict vegetarians. But deer have been documented eating fish, birds, snakes, rabbits, eggs, and bones.

One of the strangest examples came from a Texas forensic research facility, where a trail camera captured what researchers described as the first known evidence of a whitetail scavenging human bones. The bizarre story was originally covered by Bill Heavey for Field & Stream.

Drop a “WHITETAIL” comment and we’ll DM you a link to Whitetail 365—weekly stories, expert tips, gear reviews, and news for hunters who think about whitetails all year long. ...

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