John Soloman

STARTING WITH THE December 2007 issue, we began a series of two new columns -- Survival by John Solomon and Fit to Hunt by Dan Staton. In that December issue, we ran Solomon’s survival column in a regular slot for the first time, and in this, the Jan/Feb 2008 issue, we introduce Staton’s fitness column. These columns will alternate in our six regular issues, meaning each will appear three times per year.

IN RECENT YEARS, John Solo-mon has written occasional survival features for Bowhunter, and we now welcome John as our survival columnist and as a masthead Contributor.

John, age 35, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his wife, Ashley, and their two sons, Adam, six, and Sean, four. John grew up in the West, loving the outdoors and especially archery. He started shoot-ing handmade sapling bows in his grandparents’ backyard at the age of five. Two of his uncles, both accomplished bowhunters, bought John a fiberglass Indian recurve when he was seven. During high school, John worked for an outfitter in Montana, packing horses and setting up camps. Since then he has hunted in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania, taking whitetail deer, mule deer, and elk with archery equipment. He considers his best trophy a 334-inch (green score) elk taken recently in New Mexico.

John has taught survival for 16 years. Fresh out of high school, he joined the Air Force and volunteered to serve as a Survival Instructor. After eight months of training, including survival techniques in Arctic, rainforest, ocean/coastal, desert, and combat environments, he went to a field unit in which he taught basic survival skills. Twice he was selected as Instructor of the Quarter, and he also had the honor of teaching survival skills at the Air Force Academy. Over the years he has volunteered as a survival instructor for summer camps, youth groups, and Boy Scout campouts. He is now creating an Instructor Workshop on survival skills for the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. He finds great pleasure in volunteering as a Bowhunter Education Instructor.

Dan Staton

DAN STATON, AGE 26, passed the hunter’s safety course at age 10 and shot his first deer, a whitetail buck, at age 13. High school sports then occupied much of his time until, at age 19, he killed a bull elk with his rifle. The next year he bought his first bow, a Martin Phantom, and has hunted only with a bow since, mostly in the Western states for elk, mule deer, whitetails, bears, turkeys, and caribou in Alaska. Dan belongs to the Pope & Young Club and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.