I recently spent a week hunting along the Missouri River in the beautiful southeast corner of South Dakota and the experience was eerily similar to the decade that I spent chasing bucks (like “Steve”) on a certain ranch nestled in The Badlands of North Dakota (some of you will know what I’m talking about). That ranch sat on a few thousand acres that sliced alongside the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, making it feel as big and wild as Ben Cartwright’s Ponderosa Ranch. This piece of land is full of rattlesnakes, coyotes, lions, bison, muleys, whitetails, and bighorn sheep… paradise for any man that rises and falls with the sun and moon. I would travel there in my Tacoma (that had over half a million miles on it) and then borrow the rancher’s Polaris Ranger to transport my gear to the top of the coulees. From there, I’d hoof it a good bit to “my” plateau where I’d place my tipi and stove. I could see the entire night sky from this basecamp, including the stars that I didn’t know exis...