GON Subscriber Exclusives

On the ride to the hospital, Mike’s right forearm had already swollen to nearly twice its normal size. The skin around the cottonmouth bite had blistered and turned a nasty dark purple. Bloody discharge oozed from two small fang marks just below his elbow. At the wheel, his hunting buddy Clark raced as fast as…

A thunderclap rolled over the swamp bottom of Beagle’s Demise, a harbinger of the heavy rain Mike Shaw dreaded. Stuck in mud with water up to his armpits, he cursed his luck. No matter how hard he stretched, he could not put a hand on his canoe. It was wedged under a blowdown just out…

Murphy and Charlie made it back to the hunting property a little after 10:30 p.m. to help Charles Lee drag The Ridgerunner from the top of the mountain. Charlie had hopped out of the truck to open the gate when Murphy’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. As the 16-year-old fumbled with the combination lock,…

With lungs sputtering short, spastic breaths, hands trembling and his right heel drumming the ground like a sewing machine, Otis Hicks forced in a deep breath, attempting to gain control of his adrenaline-soused faculties. Less than 150 yards in front of him, standing broadside in the crosshairs, almost as magnificent as the man’s dreams, was…

Murphy looked on in desperation as the scene unfolded before him with terrifying speed. Wounded, Attila the black bear was in mid-charge, and the targets of his aggression were Charles Lee and his teenage son Charlie. The two bowhunters were lying in a heap at the edge of a pine thicket. No longer the focus…

On one knee with his elbow propped on the rock in front of him, Charles Lee’s aim was steady. The big buck had disappeared, fully concealed behind a huge old oak just moments earlier, and Charles Lee was waiting for it to step out on the other side. At his shoulder, Otis Hicks was almost…

Clint jumped off the front porch and raced across the yard. He sprinted toward the trail through the pines with his heart choking his throat. “If anything has happened to that dog…” He had to block the thought from his mind. He was uncertain of exactly where the shot had come from after Mitzi had…

Silas drained the last of the coffee from his cup and pushed his chair away from the restaurant table. “That is one beast of a storm,” he said across the table to Zack, Cody and Jenna. Raindrops pelted like hail against the diner’s plate-glass window, and flashes of lightning periodically lit up the room with…

The pair of coyotes pursuing the deer were so focused on catching the white-rumped fawn running in front of them that that they did not notice the dog closing in rapidly from behind. The exhausted fawn was blowing hard and beginning to flag, falling farther behind the doe that bound ahead of her. The lead…

Silas McPhee was dead. He just knew that was going to be the outcome of being trapped in his truck with the rattlesnake. Petrified with fear, he sat bolt upright in the truck seat, afraid to move even to take a breath, but he was certain the drumming of his heart alone would surely trigger…