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Feb 5, 2025 | 
themeateater.com | Adam Moore |Tony Peterson |Lakhan Clark
No one wakes up addicted to meth. Just like no one casually strolls into the backcountry to hunt elk. There’s a natural progression of slipping into hunting madness, and turkey hunting can be the gateway drug that sends a person down that rabbit hole. Tags are cheap, it requires little gear, and I can’t think of anything more fun than watching a tom strut and gobble his head off on the other side of a shotgun bead.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Lakhan Clark
For over 10,000 years, the Indians of the Great Plains and the American bison were inextricably linked. Bison were a key species for both spirituality and survival. To kill a single buffalo, a 2,000-pound animal that can run 40 miles per hour, with nothing but spears and axes is no easy task, let alone killing enough of them to feed an entire tribe. But that is where the buffalo jump comes in.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Eli Fournier |Megan Plete Postol |Lakhan Clark |Jordan Sillars
If there’s a universal truth about hunters, it’s that they can’t help but brag a little—even if it’s about something illegal. Any well-seasoned game warden knows this; and knows that the best place to find a criminal is at the local bar, running his mouth. In south central Montana, a textbook example played out this spring, beginning when a wildlife biologist in Carbon County caught wind of a secondhand story about a guy who captured two bear cubs and staged them for a photo shoot with his son.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Kubie Brown |Lakhan Clark |Eli Fournier
If you were to look at the world as a living being that thinks and grows just like every other creature, then salmon would be its lifeblood. For millions of years, these magnificent fish have made their way up the veins of great rivers, bringing nutrients distilled from the Pacific Ocean along with them as they struggle upstream to spawn and eventually die. An infinite number of creatures benefit from the salmon’s sacrifice, from microscopic insects to the largest trees in the world.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Jordan Sillars |Lakhan Clark |Tony Peterson |Steve Schwartz
Not long after Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, the Harris campaign released what they say is the “most iconic political hat in America.”A certain red-hatted former president might contest that lofty claim, but the message behind the camo “Harris/Walz” headgear is clear: Tim Walz is a hunter, and he’s proud of it.
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May 10, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Lakhan Clark |Spencer Neuharth |Travis Hall
Camels are perhaps the most unexpected of inhabits of Australia’s modern deserts. On a continent otherwise dominated by marsupials, reptiles, and cattle stations the size of small countries, these giant nomads seem both alien yet perfectly adapted to the vast desert scrubland they now call home. Their presence isn’t without controversy, but a growing group of outdoorsmen are pursuing these animals in their new habitat and reaping the rewards of their delectable meat.
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Apr 15, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Lakhan Clark |Jordan Sillars |Eli Fournier
The bears of modern-day North America are arguably some of our most charismatic megafauna. They strike awe in the eyes of many and are reminiscent of a wilder time. If you venture a bit further back in time, to when the very first Homo sapiens were crossing the Bering Strait some 14,000 years ago, the diversity of Urisids was far greater. Here are a few of the giants we once walked the earth with and the stories behind their disappearance.
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Mar 5, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Eli Fournier |Mark Kenyon |Jordan Sillars |Lakhan Clark
It’s a quiet Sunday morning—nothing out of the ordinary for this sleepy, central Montana town. Well, almost nothing out of the ordinary. I’m on my hands and knees, creeping around a decrepit ranch house, half sunk into the earth, windows shattered or blown out. It feels like a set from the Call of Duty video game.
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Jan 30, 2024 | 
themeateater.com | Lakhan Clark |Eli Fournier |Michael Adams |Kubie Brown
The Pleistocene was an epoch filled with charismatic megafauna, from the likes of the giant mammoths and mastodons to the iconic saber-toothed cats and short-faced bears. But little attention is drawn to the diverse assemblage of extinct cervids that roamed alongside these prehistoric giants. They’re just as weird and wonderful as their more well-known counterparts, and their extinctions tell an important story about how to preserve their modern relatives.
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Nov 30, 2023 | 
themeateater.com | Maggie Hudlow |Hannah McKinney |Megan Plete Postol |Lakhan Clark
On Wednesday, November 22, Brock Maksymiw received an alert from his SPYPOINT trail cam and thought it might be acting up. The image looked like something out of a horror film. Later on that evening, Maksymiw received another image notification confirming that what he saw was no trick of the lens. It wasn’t a big buck shaking its head or some prank played by local punk kids.
