Salt Fork Ranch, LLC.

10/28/2026

A moose hunter was mauled by two massive brown bears in Alaska, and every time he moved, they attacked him again. This is one of the craziest hunting survival stories I’ve ever come across. In September 1985, Rollin Braden was hunting about 50 miles south of Soldotna, Alaska, with his father, brother, and friend Darrell Rosin. With just one day remaining in the season, Braden heard movement in the brush that he believed was a bull moose. He separated from his friend during the final half-hour of daylight to investigate. What came charging out of those bushes wasn’t a moose. It was two brown bears, and they were only 40 feet away.

Braden pulled his .338 r***e and fired from the hip, but missed. Before he could chamber another round, both bears were on top of him. They knocked him facedown and began biting and clawing his head, back, and legs. Somehow, Braden remembered the advice to play dead and forced himself to remain completely motionless while the bears tore into him. Eventually, they backed away. But when he slowly turned his head to see if they were gone, both bears charged back in and attacked him AGAIN. This time, when they finally backed off, Braden didn’t move a muscle until he was absolutely certain they were gone.

When he finally stood up, he realized the skin on the back of his head had been ripped loose. Imagine surviving two bear attacks, standing up in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, and realizing you’re going to have to hold your own scalp on your head just to get out alive. That’s exactly what Braden did. With one hand holding his scalp in place, he pulled off his shirt with the other, wrapped it around his head, and started stumbling through the woods screaming for his friend. Rosin had heard the gunshot earlier but thought Braden had killed his moose and was celebrating. Instead, he found his hunting partner fighting to stay alive.

Getting him out was almost as unbelievable as surviving the attack itself. The men loaded Braden onto a mattress in a trailer and hauled him six miles through the wilderness behind a four-wheeler, only to discover their truck had a flat tire. When they finally made it to Soldotna, there were no available planes to transport him, so one had to come from Anchorage. Braden didn’t reach Providence Hospital until around 3 a.m., where Dr. Jim Scully spent five hours cleaning his wounds and putting in roughly 200 stitches. Braden spent eight days in the hospital, including four in intensive care, and somehow survived without permanent disfigurement. I don’t know about you, but holding your own scalp together while hiking out of the Alaskan wilderness after getting mauled TWICE by brown bears is a level of toughness that’s hard to even comprehend.

— Stephen Ziegler
Outdoor writer | Rack Junkies Podcast

10/25/2026

10/24/2026

Vehicle collisions have claimed some incredible whitetails throughout the country.

Link to learn more: https://realtree.me/4cymlh0

10/24/2026

FIRST WILD ANIMAL CONFIRMED WITH FLESH-EATING SCREWWORM IN THE CURRENT U.S. OUTBREAK!

The USDA has confirmed New World screwworm in a female elk harvested by a hunter on a game ranch in Pecos County, Texas. Announced October 21, this is the first confirmed detection in U.S. wildlife during the current outbreak. The parasite’s larvae feed on living tissue, creating wounds that can become fatal without treatment.

I spoke with Rear Admiral Michael Schmoyer, who leads the USDA’s screwworm response, back in August. During our conversation, he described eradication as a matter of national security. The strategy includes releasing millions of sterile flies to prevent reproduction and push the outbreak back south toward Central America. The U.S. previously eradicated screwworm through a massive sterile-fly program.

This latest detection raises concerns because wildlife is much harder to monitor than livestock. Hunters are being urged to inspect harvested animals for unusual wounds or visible maggots and report suspected infestations to Texas wildlife officials.

Aaron B. Futrell, Author, The Deer Stand Devotional

10/22/2026

Between the fall of 1954 and the fall of 1957, Abilene High School played forty nine football games in a row without losing one, and no Texas school in the largest classification has matched it since. 🏈

The coach was Chuck Moser, who arrived in 1953 and ran a program that looked more like an engineering department than a football team. He kept written records on every boy in the system, scouted opponents with film and typed reports while most schools were still working off word of mouth, and built a feeder program down through the junior highs so that players showed up at Abilene High already knowing the offense. He finished 91 and 7 and 1 in seven seasons and won three straight state championships in 1954, 1955 and 1956.

The streak ended in 1957 against San Angelo, and that town talked about the game for forty years afterward. 🏆 Moser walked away from coaching in his thirties and spent the rest of his working life as an administrator. The record he left sat untouched through the entire modern era of Texas football, through every powerhouse program the state has produced since.

Forty nine games. Three straight titles. One West Texas town.

10/22/2026

Anti-hunting groups are funding a campaign disguised as a pro-hunting organization to stop a constitutional right to hunt and fish in Colorado. I’ve obtained the campaign contribution records showing that the anti hunting organization Sierra Club donated $30,000 to a group called Colorado Hunters and Anglers for Sensible Wildlife Conservation, a “hunter organization” against the constitutional right to hunt and fish led by Eric Washburn. But it gets worse. The Center for a Humane Economy, an organization that helps push hunting bans, contributed another $100,000 in cash and $8,254 in campaign materials. That’s over $138,000 coming from organizations with a history of fighting against hunting.

This is incredibly dishonest. They’re calling themselves hunters and anglers while taking the overwhelming majority of their funding from organizations that have worked to restrict hunting. They’re actively campaigning against putting the right to hunt and fish into Colorado’s Constitution, all while pretending to represent hunters. I absolutely hate when politicians and organizations pull this garbage. They want you to believe they’re hunters fighting against a constitutional right to hunt, but follow the money and you’ll find the anti-hunting groups paying for it. Sorry, but when I follow the money and see who’s funding you, I don’t trust a word you’re saying anymore. Don’t be fooled by this sneaky campaign trick.

— Stephen Ziegler
Outdoor writer | Rack Junkies Podcast

10/19/2026

I was involved with a conversation about CWDwhen a whitetail biologist said, “The real overarching problem is that we have lost control of by the people and for the people long ago. Elites and donors determine all policy. CWD was always intended to be the weapon by which to destroy an ideological enemy: deer, elk, and exotic farmers and high fence in general. It’s just as much an anti-high-fence initiative as anything.”

And then the famous, wise philosopher, a man some might even call a poet, Ted Nugent, responded with these beautifully articulated words: “Either way it may have been a genuine concern for a year or two but then it turned into a bureaucratic money laundering Somali learing center tax torturing scam and everybody should be ashamed of themselves. And in the meantime monster tyrannical bureaucrats destroyed family businesses slaughtered healthy deer herds trampled on private property rights and s**t on basic American freedoms and they all should be strung up in the town square I’d be happy to supply the rope and a cattleprod.”

— Stephen Ziegler
Outdoor writer | Rack Junkies Podcast