The release of our annual Gear Special is a good time to introduce a couple of special people. One is Curt Wells, our new Equipment Editor. Curt, who began bowhunting in 1981 with a Jennings T-Star, is no stranger to readers of this magazine. His first Bowhunter feature story, "Elk Education," appeared in the April/May 1986 issue, and he has written many stories for us since then. Due to Curt's hunting and writing skills, along with his commitment to Bowhunter Magazine and bowhunting, we added Curt to the masthead as a regular Contributor in 1997.
As Equipment Editor, Curt will continue to write the excellent adventure stories and how-to articles we have come to expect from him. In addition, Curt now will share his insights into the latest gear in a regular column, "Tried and True," as well as in features, such as his "The Broadheads for 2003" in this issue.
Curt, 48, and his wife, Patti, live in North Dakota. They have two sons, Jason, 28, and Jared, 21. Curt adds, "My pride and joy is my grandson, Carson, who is 1 1/2. He knows a buck when he sees one on TV."
The other, a new addition to the Contributors list on our masthead, but, again, no stranger to this magazine, is Pat Lefemine. Many of you know Pat as the host of the popular Internet website, www.bowsite.com. Pat not only directs traffic on his website, but he frequently takes viewers along on his interactive bowhunts for brown bears and other species across North America. Pat has written several stories for Bowhunter - the latest, "A Cupful of Persistence," appeared in our Whitetail Special 2002 - but he has played an even larger, if less visible, role as Webmaster of the Bowhunter website. That means Pat updates and maintains our website, www.bowhunter.com, a role in which, we are happy to report, he will continue.
A hard-core stickbow shooter, Pat, 38, began bowhunting when he was 14 years old. With his longbows and recurves, he has taken numerous whitetails, turkeys, black bears, caribou, mountain goats, mule deer, pronghorns, and African species. His favorite hunt is to stalk grizzly bears. He has nearly got himself eaten several times and he's going to try it again this fall.
Pat and his wife, Julie, live in Connecticut with their three children, Patrick, 7, Matthew, 5, and Abigail, 3. Pat writes, "They all shoot longbows, although Patrick is drifting over to the dark side ever since his friend got one of those little Buckmaster compounds."
On another note, you might notice we have changed the name of this issue from Gear Guideto Gear Special. Don't worry. You will still get the same incisive and detailed gear coverage. For consistency, we simply have standardized the names of our special issues. Thus, we have the Gear Special(on sale in May), the Big Game Special(on sale in July), and the Whitetail Special(on sale in September). What distinguishes these from our six regular issues? Primarily, they do not carry the columns and departments found in the six regular issues. Rather, they're packed only with feature articles related to specific themes – gear, big game, and whitetails, respectively. Thus, the content is special. And the issues are specials.
Of course, we consider every issue of Bowhunter special. We hope you do too.
North American Whitetall
North American Whitetail is designed for the serious trophy hunter. It provides authoritative coverage of world-class whitetails, the latest approaches to deer management and advanced hunting techniques.
