Who Owns Field & Stream?

The Field & Stream name began in print. The outdoor magazine was founded in 1871, and the brand moved into merchandise when Gordon & Ferguson, a Minnesota clothing maker, licensed it for outdoor apparel starting in 1915. The trademark changed hands repeatedly through the 20th century as the magazine and the licensing rights separated.

That split heritage explains the famous 1871 date on the brand's logo: it refers to the magazine's founding, not a retail company's. For most of its existence, Field & Stream was a name consumers knew from newsstands and licensed goods rather than stores.

By the 2000s, Field & Stream Licenses Company, a private investment group that acquired the trademark business in 2006, controlled the name across dozens of product categories and licensed them out. Dick's Sporting Goods held an exclusive license for hunting, fishing, camping, and paddle categories before buying those rights outright in 2012.

Dick's turned the trademark into a retail format the following year. The first Field & Stream store opened on August 16, 2013, in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, positioned as a rival to Cabela's and Bass Pro Shops with a 4,000-gallon bass tank and in-store archery range. Grand openings drew television personalities and autograph lines, and the chain grew to about 35 stores at its peak across the eastern and central United States.

The stores carried deeper hunting and fishing assortments than flagship Dick's locations, including firearms and ammunition, archery departments, and fly shops. The format was, in effect, Dick's entry into the destination outdoor retail segment that Cabela's and Bass Pro had dominated for decades.

Expansion was aggressive through the middle of the decade. Dick's opened Field & Stream stores across Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Michigan, and other states, often in second-generation big boxes. At its peak the chain operated roughly 35 locations and employed buyers and specialists recruited from outdoor retail.

The format never reached the scale of its targets. Bass Pro and Cabela's, which merged in 2017, ran destination stores several times larger with destination drawing power Field & Stream could not match. Beginning in 2019, Dick's began quietly closing and converting Field & Stream locations, and in 2021 it recast the outdoor concept as Public Lands, a hunting-deemphasized banner with a conservation theme. The last Field & Stream stores were converted or closed, ending the chain's run as a retail banner.

The trademark survives inside Dick's as a private label. Field & Stream branded hunting, fishing, and camping gear, from rods and reels to kayaks and apparel, is designed by the parent and manufactured by contracted suppliers, then sold through Dick's stores and website across the country.