A stalk on a mule deer buck starts with a brisk climb, followed by long bouts of complete stillness until the deer is spotted. Then it’s time to step up and close the distance.

Elevation is the stalking hunter’s best advantage over mule deer. A perch on a rise provides a crow’s nest view from which to scan the country with a binocular to look for a buck. Look to the east first thing in the morning, before the view is obscured by the rising sun. Then turn and glass to the west. With the sun at your back, deer stand out like lighted candles. [ Read Full Post ]

“If this was a vegetarian food festival, everyone would have left by now,” said the complete stranger in between bites of spit-roasted short ribs, as the rain poured down and drenched his hair and t-shirt. I looked at him from under my hood, took another bite of grilled rib steak covered in bone marrow butter, nodded, grunted, and grinned.

Officially, we were under a tornado watch, but not a single one of the hundreds of gathered meat lovers considered heading for the exit. Not that there was anywhere to go. We were on an island—specifically Randall’s Island—in the East River between the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, at an event dubbed Meatopia. [ Read Full Post ]

Locals call it the “Lunch Counter,” but you won’t find that name on any map. It’s a soaring plateau of wind-blasted limestone and withered wildflowers that, at 10,000 feet above sea level, presides over a confusion of lesser ridges that march west into Idaho’s Snake River Plain.

A rumor of elk—told to a friend who told a friend who told me—has brought me to this southwest corner of Wyoming. The topography that appealed to me on maps is confirmed by the view from the trailhead. If I can grind my way to the top of the Lunch Counter, I should find a wide, grassy, miles-long mesa, a table whose top stays well above the tree line but whose shoulders drop into dozens of timbered drainages. [ Read Full Post ]