Best Tick Repellents 2026: Ranked Picks to Protect Against Ticks
A ranked guide to the best tick repellents for 2026, covering permethrin clothing treatments, picaridin and DEET skin sprays, the gold-standard layered combo, and safe tick removal.
Survival Skills
Cold Weather Layering Systems That Actually Work Outdoors
A cold weather layering system has three jobs: a base layer moves sweat off your skin, a mid layer traps warm air, and a shell blocks wind and wet. Last updated: Sep...
Read the articleSurvival Skills
Skills that keep you alive and comfortable outdoors — weather and ice judgment, tick and hazard avoidance, wild food identification, and cold-water rescue basics.
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Morel Mushroom Hunting 2026: Where to Find Them This Week, How to Identify Them, and What to Avoid
Morel mushrooms peak across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic from late April through May. Where to look, how to ID true morels vs the look-alikes that will hurt you, harvest etiquette, and where foraging is legal in 2026.
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Winter Fishing Safety: Ice, Cold Water & Abort Criteria
Winter fishing safety means defining hard limits, standardizing your procedures, and treating every winter outing as a cold-exposure operation. Operating principle: Abort criteria guardrails come first. Always assume worst-case. Standard definitions used throughout this article: Winter fishing: Any fishing activity when air temperatures are near or below freezing, ice is present, or water temperatures are…
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Adventure | Campfire Cooking | Camping | Camping & Survival | Fire Making | Hunting | Hunting Experience | Primitive Survival | Survival Kit | Survival Skills | Survival Tips
Your Dream Hunt Could Be a Movie & Leupold Can Help
Leupold is offering hunters the chance to see what it’s like on the other side of the glass. Ever watched those hunting shows on TV or streaming and wondered what it took to create a narrative out of the star’s hunt? The answer is both “quite a lot” and “not much, really.” That’s because hunting…
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Are You Ready for SPRING BEAR MAYHEM?
Over, under, around, or through … if a bear wants it, the bear will have it. It’s springtime, when everyone makes jokes about coming out of hibernation. You know who isn’t joking? The bears. That funny commercial starring Dean Winters isn’t an exaggeration; if anything, they’re underplaying just how much damage a hungry bear can…
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DIY Emergency Food: Dehydrators vs. Freeze-Drying
Collecting guns, ammo, and a bunch of high-speed gear is the sexy part of being prepared for a crisis. But at the end of the day all that equipment won’t do you a damn thing if you don’t have the nourishment to keep yourself on your feet. When was the last time you looked in…
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Campfire Cooking | Camping | Camping & Survival | Fire Making | Gear | Hunting Gear | Survival Gear | Survival Skills
The “UnPewFessional’s” Spatchcock
Giving Thanks for Spatchcock Just because the power is out does not mean we can’t give thanks. It turns out one of my favorite ways for cooking poultry, with my Big Green Egg smoker. Is still feasible if the power grid goes down. But even if the power did not go out, who really wants…
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Predators & Prey Part II: California Mountain Lion Attacks Tot
Just a few days ago, we sponsored a lively discussion on North American predators and how to best manage them. Today, we have news from California that highlights the importance of that discussion. California has long shied away from allowing managed mountain lion hunting … and it shows in the number of attacks on humans…
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How To Do the “H8ful Eight” Shooting Drill
This excellent training video from CrossBreed Holsters is much easier to watch than that Tarantino flick… Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is a pretty good film (if you like Tarantino), but it’s three hours long and drops the “n-bomb” about 65 times, so it’s not the easiest movie to watch. This excellent training video from…
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How Do Experienced Outdoorsmen “Disappear”?
When tenderfeet get lost, nobody wonders. But how do experienced outdoorsmen just “disappear”? Every year, hundreds of thousands of hunters head into the woods, and the overwhelming majority of them come home a few hours later. But every so often, experienced outdoorsmen go missing…and we’re left wondering how it could possibly have happened. A few…
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Fishing Foul-Ups: How to Un-Hook Yourself
Editor’s Note: Today’s great outdoorsman tip comes to us courtesy of the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. Have you ever had to end a great fishing trip early due to accidentally hooking yourself? Even advanced anglers may find themselves needing to remove an embedded hook in their skin. It’s one of the more common accidental…
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Hurricane Warning: Critters Evacuating, Too!
Gators, snakes, and bears–oh my! If you live in the path of Hurricane Laura and have chosen to shelter in place, there’s something to remember: The swamp critters are seeking higher ground, too. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) urges the public to be especially alert to wildlife forced into populated areas by…
