Classic Outdoor Life Covers Are Now Available as Prints and Posters

The photos and illustrations that graced Outdoor Life magazine’s print covers captured some of the most iconic scenes in all of hunting and fishing. Scroll through these old covers and you’ll recognize moments that you’ve likely experienced yourself. 

One of the all-time most common cover scenes is a hunter momentarily distracted — maybe by a cup of hot coffee, or a pipe that needed packing, or a fence that needed crossing — while a big buck charges by or a rooster flushes from cover. If we were to illustrate this moment today, the hunter would, undoubtedly, be looking at his phone. But there’s also the scene that all anglers have witnessed of a monster fish skyrocketing into the sunset ready to spit the hook with a tremendous head shake. There are also a handful of what I’d call “ope moments” depicting an outdoorsman bumping into a bear or suddenly noticing the mountain lion lurking over his shoulder. 

Now you can browse all of these scenes, and many more, at our online cover shop. Here you can order posters and quality framed prints of the Outdoor Life covers that mean the most to you. You can peruse categories that focus on different critters and scan through a variety of decades (you’ll see photography start appearing in the 1950s and illustrations before then). Once you find the right cover, you can choose one of 11 different sizes, dozens of frames, and more customizable options.

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These covers make ideal gifts, especially for the outdoorsmen who have everything under the sun. They’re also the perfect art pieces for hunting camps and cabins.

While scanning through these covers I noticed an illustration that not only looks like a moment I’d recognize, but it looks almost exactly like me. It’s the May 1950 cover, which ran 37 years before I was born. Adding to the accuracy of this illustration is the fact that I am a god-awful fly fisherman. The times that I have caught trout on a fly rod almost certainly looked just as chaotic and uncoordinated as this. 

I think I’ll order this cover and hang it over my desk just to remind myself not to take things (especially fishing) too seriously.