Finishing an endurance event like the Sunbelt Bakery Ironman 70.3 North American Championship in Chattanooga has a special meaning for everyone from the top finishers to the final athletes to cross the finish line. The accomplishment means something different to each person.

Besides an innate suspicion of everything, which helps them survive, mountain turkeys have an ally that protects them: the sometimes horrendous topography in which they live.

The magic hour is about to happen. Turkey hunters already know this, but the magic hour is that wonderful time just as the world wakes up for another day.

It has been a while, but we have talked about this before: Falling down is often a big part of the life of a hunter, fisherman or outdoorsman.

If you have never experienced Route 60 on Gauley Mountain in West Virginia at 4 in the morning during a rainstorm, you may (or may not) want to give it a try.

I wish someone would have told me all of this back then. But would I have listened?

The scene was all too familiar. A beautiful piece of woods, a bright spring morning, the songbirds in full chorus.

Not long after I started terrorizing the local woodland population of birds and mammals with a BB and pellet gun, my dad gave me "the speech."

The past couple of years have been a wild ride for most of us, including any of you in the shooting and hunting world.

I got up at 3:30 am the other day. In case you don't know, this is a dismal, evil hour of the night. It is very quiet, to the point of being ominous, with wraiths and werewolves skulking about.

My third cup of coffee did not seem near as good as the first. I looked into the murky depths of the mug and hoped for some help there. You know, the clouds in my coffee thing?

Gun writers, I have been told, are supposed to be stern, hardhearted and insensitive.

I could not deny it felt like coming home. When the car turned down the lane to the Southern Sportsman Hunting Lodge, I knew I would see old friends.

Eliot Berz remembers once watching a bobcat stalk two turkeys along a dry creek bed in Marion County.

Some things are just hard to talk about. They simply are. It's no different when it comes to hunting, fishing and other pursuits outdoors.

As I have shared with you here many times before, I don't really think of myself as older, at least not yet.

The whitetail deer is the most important animal in the woods. There, I said it.

I have been to Alaska one time, and I want to go back.

I did a pretty cool and unusual thing this morning. I applied for a license to take an elk this fall. In Virginia.

Would you agree that most hunters think of themselves as rugged and self-reliant?

Here's the deal, my brothers and sisters in camo: We all like shooting, and we all want to be better at it, right?

Right about now, some of my brothers and sisters in camo are feeling a little let down and discouraged.

Well, I don't how we got here, but another new year is upon us.