Over the last few weeks I’ve been thinking a fair amount about the way hunters fixate on rifles. I’m not really a gun aficionado — it doesn’t matter to me whether my rifle has an embedded stock or a free-floated barrel, or whether a .280 shoots a little flatter than a .270 — but I’m fascinated by the fact that so many hunters focus on all the tiny details that go into a functional firearm. After all, a gun is just a tool — and last I checked, the majority of hunters are neither engineers nor tool-makers.

Even though my favorite high-country creeks didn’t dry up this past summer, by late June through August they were mostly unfishable. These creeks weren’t immune to the West’s outstanding heat and record drought, despite sitting at almost 9,000 feet above sea level. The landscape was so dry that the soil soaked up any extra water before it could drain off into the creeks, streams, and rivers.