WHILE OUTDOOR LIFE COVERS can stand alone as works of art (and make great wall decor), it’s more interesting to compare them. From one month to the next, copies of OL looked similar. The subject on the cover might change—a whitetail fawn, a jumping trout—but the style didn’t change much. But flip through the decades and you’ll begin to see how Outdoor Life covers evolved along with hunting and fishing, and our national attitude toward them.
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Once the editors figured out that the cover should help sell the magazine, they started commissioning unique illustrations for each. The last of the Wild West and its mountain men appear on our earliest covers, while midcentury issues were cheerful and relatable to most readers. In the 1960s and ’70s, the illustrations began to depict more far-flung adventures before leaning into big bucks and bass around the millennium. In recent years, we’ve begun revisiting the ever-popular illustrated cover.
Choosing a cover is more art than science. OL has had its fair share of duds but, more often than not, the editors knew a good cover when they saw it. The following pages include just a few of the more than 1,300 that have appeared on OL in the past 125 years.
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