Shane Townsend

MeatEater — Search & Rescue (SAR) teams are on call 24 hours a day to help get hunters, hikers, and other outdoors explorers out of tight spots. Many SAR missions could be avoided or made easier with a little preparation by those who might need rescuing. In that spirit, Sydney Lear, a SAR instructor with the Blue Ridge Mountain Search & Rescue Group (BRMRG), talked to us about some things we can all do to help avoid a rescue—or at least make it easier should we need one.

MeatEater — The hunt is on. We drop off the wind-whipped mountain road and descend through the fog toward the rain-drenched forest below. Tight lips belie heavy chests, high hopes, and the highest stakes. Our boots thud and click and slide under an urgent pace along the plummeting trail. Tabs stick from cut greenbrier stems where deer have recently fed. I wonder if any black bears are up and at ‘em yet for the spring feeding. But we’re not chasing mountain bucks or big bruins for meat and memorabilia. We’re searching for a father’s child. With every search and rescue team following their training and a little good fortune, everybody can go home to their families tonight. But if there’s no good news by dark, it’ll mean another night alone in near-freezing temperatures. Every second counts.

MeatEater — Imagine, if you will, that COVID-19 is behind us. You're downtown in some state capital-hopefully for a day of advocacy with the BHA family, or maybe just for conference with a bunch of knuckleheads you really need to escape. Either way, it hits you: I need to catch a damn fish. Your kayak’s on the pickup. Your fishing bug-out bag is behind the seat. And, you have 60 minutes for lunch coming your way.

MeatEater — The old saying goes: "Red on yella, kill a fella. Red on black, a friend of Jack." Another variant says: "Red against yellow, you're a dead fellow. Red against black, you're OK, Jack." Outdoors folks from Arizona to the Carolinas have long learned such poems to help distinguish the highly venomous coral snake from harmless look-alikes. But can this reptilian rhyme really prevent an early elegy?

MeatEater — Pond, puddle, reservoir, impoundment, tank-for many folks these words conjure images of mud, manure, cattle, and catfish-or just mud and manure. But it would be a mistake to look past the pond. Not so long ago an image popped up on my phone. Kevin Davis sits aboard a tiny craft at the...

MeatEater — Disasters, like politics, are local. So, ask about the baddest storm and chances are you'll hear " Sandy" in the mid-Atlantic, " Katrina" in New Orleans, " Camille" in Mississippi, and " Andrew " in Florida. But the truth is this: America's deadliest storm hit 50 years before storms wore official name tags.

MeatEater — A couple cold "Cocolas" and two packs of salty peanuts buy us the OK to park my Jeep at the country store where the creek and the highway cross. I hop into the pickup and we head up a gravel road and thump-thump-thump over a cattle gap. We creep through crunchy truck ruts and along rusted barbed wire common in our part of Mississippi. I hop out and squeak open the gate—it was hung red and true but hangs mottled and crooked these days—and make damn sure to lean into it, setting the chain link over the head of the bent 20-penny nail. Letting a cow loose’ll cost you access and a cussin’, even with your kin.

MeatEater — "We was feeling pretty good after breakfast, and took my canoe and went over the river a fishing, with a lunch, and had a good time...," Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," 1884 As Americans we have access to more water than any one of us could float in a hundred lifetimes. The United States is home to 3.6 million miles of rivers and streams; countless lakes, 250 of which have a surface area of 10 square miles or more; and a coastline that stretches 95,471 miles. Even better, getting out there doesn’t have to break the bank. MeatEater’s “Das Boat” proves that if it’ll float, it’ll fish. So, whether you have access to a kayak, canoe, packraft, paddleboard, pirogue, dugout, duckie, or slightly rusted feed trough, there’s likely a trip you can do nearby.

MeatEater — The best cowboy is the one who’s in the way the least. Same goes for greenhorns—those of us who’re curious enough to try new things and ain’t afraid to suck. If you’re headed out on your first offshore charter trip this summer, here’s what to expect no matter where you are in the world. Get ready. A sailfish bursts through the slick surface shining purple and blue and silver and gold. It tosses its head around like a bull three seconds into a PBR final. “Reel reel reel!” Captain Pete yells from the bridge. But it’s too late. The greenhorn in the chair has one job: allow no slack. But I blow it. I stop reeling. Get caught watching. And let my first sailfish tail-walk off into the sunrise.

MeatEater — “The pirañas were eating the boy there,” José said, pointing down the red dirt bank to the muddy Amazonian water. I studied the water and considered what we were about to do. “Okay,” he continued, grinning, “let’s go swim.” And with that we joined the group of Chiquitano kids hollering and splashing nearby. I slipped into the middle and stood stob still.

MeatEater — "May the mullet brown in abundance upon his frying pan." -Traditional Biloxi, Mississippi, Blessing In our recent Trash Fish Tuesday: Striped Mullet article, we celebrated the deep Southeastern tradition of catching, cooking, and sharing mullet. The once-staple and newly trending fish...

MeatEater — Corpus Christi Bay is tequila clear and cellophane slick this morning. When my kayak slipped over the oyster bed a moment ago, a thousand calcium and carbon blades scratched the hull and scraped off any boats on my tail. Now I stand up in the sit-in kayak, invert my paddle, and pull a camo sock-hat over the yellow blade. I push myself slowly through the skinny water, still-hunting. A grumpy aghh, aghh snatches my eyes to a trio of white ibis wading the shallows, probing ­­ up and down, protesting the empty wake at their shins. A pair of roseate spoonbills seem to side-eye the ibis and shake their heads side-to-side as they filter food from the brine.

sportingclassicsdaily.com — Silence is as close as a Bose headset on a passenger plane. But not quiet. Quiet is the sound of a rainbow trout in a bankside lie slurping mayflies from the film; it's the bay of a lone beagle in six million acres of wild America, and the whoosh of a merganser's rise from the fog; it's the ache in your body, the falling in your gut, and the rise again; and on the last day, it's the easy in your chest recalling the journey.

amazon.com — From the canyons of Big Bend to the cypress swamps of Pine Island Bayou, the waters of Texas have something for most every type of paddler and every paddling mood. One might float the diminutive Comal River, argued to be the shortest river in the world. Another might dig deep and follow the...

Garden & Gun — Looking back, I'm not sure if he was my dog or if I was his pet gringo. We met in Marquina, a freeze-dried and sun-scorched Quechua village in the foothills of the Andes in Bolivia. After a three-thousand-mile journey, I hopped out of a Land Cruiser and took one step toward what would become my new home for a short while.

USA TODAY Hunt & Fish — “Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of a trigger.” ― Sun TzuMany hunters are giving this updated tool a try. Here's what you need to know to get started.

Field & Stream — Photo by Gorman Studio If I could have only one tool, it'd be a machete. People around the world have long relied on the machete, kukri (shown here), and other close kin to hunt, fish, farm, build, process food, and fashion all types of tools.

MeatEater — Why do we consider some fish iconic and others aquatic refuse? In this series, we focus on American fishes not officially designated as "game fish." These species, though native, get lumped into a category of "trash fish," a distinction that's more than just...

Hatch Magazine — Catch a tripletail on a fly rod: That's the plan. But as anyone who's spent a year south of I-10 knows: plans conjured from afar are best printed on cork so at least they'd float. At oh-my-God-it's-early, we bark tires out of south Austin headed east by southeast in a hurry.

MeatEater — Our fate hangs by a thread just around this bend. If the limb-line is taut, we'll dine on fresh catfish fried crispy in cornmeal and lard. If not, it's creek-side potted meat and crackers for supper. We're canoeing Mississippi's Black Creek for a few days. We lit the...

Hatch Magazine — Cold fog hangs white like muslin over the Juneau morning, masking the waters of the Taku River. To the Native Tlingit, "taku" is "salmon." The river has long been central to the lives of people here and it's one of the most important salmon fisheries in the world.

Hatch Magazine — Scone, Scotland may not be the epicenter of the flyfishing world; but this morning, it feels like it. A hundred thirty miles north, the River Spey runs past the Gordon Estate where in the mid-1800s, the spey cast was born.

sportingclassicsdaily.com — Silence is as close as a Bose headset on a passenger plane. But not quiet. Quiet is the sound of a rainbow trout in a bankside lie slurping mayflies from the film; it's the bay of a lone beagle in six million acres of wild America, and the whoosh of a merganser's rise from the fog; it's the ache in your body, the falling in your gut, and the rise again; and on the last day, it's the easy in your chest recalling the journey.