A dog standing on a hillside with the sun breaking through the clouds. Jeff Moore Editor’s Note: All this week, we are asking F&S writers and editors to pick their favorite—okay, one of their favorite—stories from the Field & Stream archives. Below, F&S executive editor, Dave Hurteau, introduces a modern classic on an an all-too common and difficult topic. When I was a young F&S assistant editor back in the 1990s, one of my jobs was to read unsolicited manuscripts sent in by readers. At the time, we had close to 2 million subscribers, and I’d say roughly half of ..read more

A spread from Field & Stream magazine called "The Lion Dogs". Hunters ride on horseback through a wild plain followed by their hunting dogs. Field & Stream Editor’s Note: All this week, we are asking F&S writers and editors to pick their favorite—okay, one of their favorite—stories from the Field & Stream archives. You can read the first three picks, “Tommy’s Fiddle” here, Ode to Joie here, and Ghosts of Africa here. Below, F&S editor at large, Matthew Every, introduces one of Bill Heavey’s best. Every time I got a new issue of F&S growing up ..read more

Field & Stream Archives We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more › For more than 100 years Field & Stream has been the wellspring of hunting and fishing knowledge. Since our wisdom is boundless, and can take a while to absorb at full length, we’ve distilled it into encyclopedia form. It’s a quick read, and at the end of it, you’ll be not only better informed, but a better person as well. A AND I DO NOT WALK ALONE Beginning in 1972, Field & Stream began a generational shift of its field editors. Many of them we ..read more

The author and his then 13-year-old GSP, Jed, go for an afternoon stroll in February. Dan Brouillette Jed froze on point, keeping his tail down the old-fashioned way, the same way he had for 14 seasons. Crouched, with his nose almost touching the ground, he was showing me that the bird was right there. I stepped forward, and the pheasant busted out of the grass and into the trees on the creekbottom. Roosters in the woods are my pheasant-shooting Achilles’ heel, and I only made my chances worse by thinking, I shouldn’t miss Jed’s last bird. So I missed it twice. To my surprise, I didn’t care ..read more

Adobe Stock / VisualStock We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more › Perhaps you’re occasionally checking your smartphone’s built-in mapping software while driving to a remote trout stream, or using Google Earth on a home computer to scout out new hunting and fishing destinations. Maybe you regularly rely on a dedicated GPS device like a handheld navigator or dog collar to keep track of whereabouts afield. Regardless of how you enjoy the outdoors, like most hunters and anglers these days, you’ve probably tapped into the G ..read more

Adobe Stock / 135pixels While most skunk sprayings don’t do permanent harm to dogs, they will make your dog stink and possibly make it nauseous, as the scent may cling to the dog for days. Skunks live throughout North America and are most active early and late in the day. Fortunately for hunters with dogs, cool weather makes skunks spend more time in their dens. Most hunting dog-skunk encounters take place early in the warm temperatures of the early season. If you live in a colder climate, you and your dogs may go years between skunk sprayings. In fact, in over 30 years of upland hunting, I’v ..read more

Tom Fowlks THERE’S BIG MONEY in competitive raccoon hunting. When the world championship left Kentucky in 2009, officials estimated that the loss would cost the state some $3.5 million in total economic impact. The hunt moved to the tiny town of Salem, Illinois, where the local Applebee’s now stays open 24 hours a day during the event to cash in. But it’s not just motels and all-night joints that stand to win or lose. Thanks to ProSport Kennel Club, founded in 2020 and known for its high-entry-fee competitions and huge payouts, a handful of hunters can now pull down enough prize money to ..read more

Brian Grossenbacher Your dog faces all kinds of hazards in the field, including porcupine quills, and it’s your responsibility to keep it safe. Sportsmen who take their hunting dogs into the woods in many parts of the United States risk encountering porcupines. Armed with 30,000 sharp quills, a porcupine can put a spiky end to a day’s hunt with a swipe of its tail. Although quills are almost never immediately life-threatening, they absolutely can prove fatal if they are not properly removed and infection sets in. Here’s what you need to know on the topic of porcupine quills in dogs. Editor ..read more

Greg Maynard’s coonhound Molly is barking up the right tree during a ProSport Kennel Club hunt with a first-prize payout of $100,000. Tom Fowlks GREG MAYNARD bows his head in prayer. It’s about an hour before sunset on a Friday in May, and the president of the ProSport Kennel Club is standing inside a clubhouse in western Indiana that looks like no place of worship I’ve ever been to. There’s a mural of two treeing walkers howling at the heavens alongside taxidermy and dusty trophies. Everything else is bare plywood—a low-ceilinged tinderbox plated with corrugated steel. Europe’s great chu ..read more

Field & Stream Archives Field & Stream has long celebrated the bond between hunters and their dogs. Our photo editor discovered these pictures dating from the ’30s to the early ’70s in our files. They show a very different era of hunting, when whitetails and turkeys were scarce in most places, and hunting, for a lot of people, involved bird dogs, retrievers, or hounds. These pictures show the bond between dogs and hunters, and the qualities that make us love them so much. Crime-Fighting Hounds Field & Stream Archives Some hunting dogs hunt people. This trio is all smiles in th ..read more