Western Hunter Magazine March/April 2020 #74 | Page 6

T
oday I checked out the magazine newsstand
at my local grocery store. I didn’t see a single
hunting magazine, but there were three titles
dedicated to survival. Certainly there are more peo-
ple in Chandler, Arizona interested in hunting than
end-of-the-world survival tactics... right?
Out of curiosity I thumbed through each one of
them just to see what they had to say. The majority
of the articles were focused on topics like how to
cook without a microwave, what gear is needed to
survive a few nights in the wilderness, how to filter
water, basic land navigation techniques (and I do
mean “basic”) and how to read terrain. I would
venture to guess that just about every subscriber
to Western Hunter Magazine has not only thought
about all of the above but has spent many days ex-
ercising these skills each season.
Mastering these basic skills is what allows us
to venture away from the roads, hunt hard all day
and make it safely back to camp. But what happens
when things don’t go according to the plan? What
happens when the knife slips, a horse bucks, a bear
attacks or a serious fall occurs? Our purpose for this
issue is not to deliver a survival handbook to cover
all scenarios, but to cause us all to think about men-
tal and physical preparation.
Steve Opat, a flight nurse in Alaska, defines the
basic tenants of survival in his article Wilderness
Survival Rules and Tenets. What Steve hasn’t seen
himself, his colleagues have! You will want to read
the article, but I also recorded a interview with Steve
for The Western Hunter Podcast that I am sure you
will find entertaining and informative.
A few years ago Nate Simmons filmed Remi
Warren on a frigid January deer hunt in northern
New Mexico. The overnight lows were below zero
and the days never broke freezing, But each night
when they returned to camp, Remi would scoop
away the ashes from the previous nights campfire
until he found an ember and built a fire from it.
Fire building is a basic skill but it might be the most
critical lifesaving skill for western hunters. Remi
breaks this skill down starting on page 62.
Dan Hall interviewed Floyd Green, my business
partner and co-owner of Western Hunter. The in-
terview evolves into a story about a mutual friends
life-threatening situation and the importance of
backcountry communication.
This issue is packed with adventure and edu-
cation. Hopefully you find a few nuggets and some
food for thought.
Chris Denham, Publisher
About the Cover
W
e wanted this cover to be different. Our creative team bantered back on forth
on multiple ideas involving live photography, but we just couldn’t find any-
thing that we could all agree on. So we decided to start from scratch and create
something unique.
Chris Lacey is one of the most
respected wildlife artists of our
time. We have been friends for
more than two decades and I
am always in awe of his talent
and work ethic. I talked with
him about this idea and within
a week I had the finished drawing in my hands.
Our idea was to have a black and white cover with the Western Hunter
masthead in red but when we put it all together it just didn’t look as im-
pactful as we had all imagined. The team added the color and soon we
knew we had it.
Chris Lacey specializes in large projects, in fact he painted the wildlife
scenes found in many of the Cabela’s stores around the country. He is
also a talented wildlife photographer.
You can find him on Instagram @chrislaceyart. If you have a project
in mind you can send him a direct message.
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