Wolving (With Complications)
It began with a lucky shot. a cave and a rattlesnake furnished the complications.
Do Constitutional “Right to Hunt and Fish” Amendments Really Matter?
By the time Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to hunt and fish in 2024, the movement had already spread quietly across much of America. More than two dozen states now have some version of a constitutional Right to...
Uganda: The Pearl
While rummaging through some of my father’s old books, I stumbled across African Game Trails by Theodore Roosevelt. It’s an interesting read regarding the exploits and African journeys of an American hunter and conservationist. One chapter, “Uganda, and the Great...
The Ones That Didn’t Get Away
I’m A.D.D. in the extreme. Have been all my life. If you’ve ever been associated with someone who has attention deficit, it can be a real “trip.” One idea births another idea and that one sprouts two more. Pretty soon, ideas seem to be coming rapid-fire and life...
Just Another Love Story
She was married when I met her but I took her fishing anyway. She was a fender-bender, a well-put-together willowy blonde with beer sign blue neon eyes. But she was wired for 110 and plugged into 220. When she shucked her jeans, the inseam read, “Lucky You.” Great...
Oh, Lucky Man! Sigbot “Bodo” Winterhelt
Na, ja, my father hated all hunting and hunters. He didn’t understand. He thought, first of all, that all they did was destroy, and my father lived only to preserve things. And hunters in Germany wear a uniform, green loden cloth, you know, and my father hated...
The Politics of Camouflage
For years, many of America’s largest sportsmen’s organizations and media brands have carefully cultivated the image that they stand above politics. They present themselves as guardians of conservation, wildlife habitat, public lands, and the future of hunting and...
The Great Goach Gag
Stink, stank, stunk...uh, need a word here...the nth-square-to-the-10th-power expression of extreme stinkiness. A word for the gasp, cough, spit, shake-yer-head, blink-yer-eyes, spin, gag, retch, vomit kind of stinkiness. ’Cause that’s what it was. Don’t know what it...
Classic Alaska Charters: Now Booking for 2026 and 2027!
Now Booking for 2026 and 2027! 2026 marks Classic Alaska Charters' 37th season navigating the protected wilderness waterways of Misty Fjords National Monument/Wilderness Area! They offer outstanding adventure cruises for 5 days and 4 nights, including saltwater...
Shallow-Water Ducks
When the ducks come—splayed feet anticipating a frigid plunge into shallows; wings cupped, rocking in a jerky side-to-side; keen eyes scanning—there is no finer experience in the hunting world. Oh, there is the enhanced palpitation of heart when distant leaf crunch...
Never Invisible
“For extended trips, where time is no object and cross country work is intended, the ox-wagon is the best means of conveyance, especially if a bulk of heads and skins is to be collected, and carried about. The hire of a wagon, with a full span of oxen native driver,...
Georgia on Your Mind? Don’t Miss These Sporting Gems!
I walk toward an orange and white English setter that is as motionless as a leopard before the pounce, the dog puffing quail scent like a man drawing the flicker of life into a cigar. I am only a two-hour drive from Atlanta but feel more like a half century removed...
Texoma Stripers!
“We’re almost over the top of them . . . start dropping ‘em. When they hit bottom, crank up three rounds.” Chris Carey instructed Luke Clayton, Jeff Rice and me. Turning toward me specifically, Chris said with a chuckle, “Larry start stripping!” Smiling wryly, I said:...
The Phantom Setter
Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, this story is one of the finest ever written about gundogs and grouse hunting. It is certainly the most chilling.
The Fog
The battered F-150 pulled onto the beach at 3:00 a.m. The air, heavy with fog, smelled of rotting kelp, salt air and wet sand. It was a scent that he seldom thought of, but today it made him briefly reflective. I took this crap for granted, he thought. If a smell...
Negley Farson Forgotten Giant of the Angling World
Over the years I’ve read what I personally consider one of the great books of angling literature, Negley Farson’s Going Fishing, three or four times. It’s a book, similar to Robert Ruark’s The Old Man and the Boy or Nash Buckingham’s De Shootinest Gent’man, that...
A Master of Stellar Heights
On a summer afternoon long ago in Bozeman, Montana, a grouping of paintings stopped me in my tracks. These were not major works by painter Ralph Oberg, but depictions of high elevation lakes in Glacier National Park of Montana. Their water, set in bowls carved out by...
Arrow for a Battlewagon
It may sound strange to talk on the subject of hunting an African rhinoceros with a bow and arrow. In fact some folks thought the idea insane, and to attempt the feat sheer suicide. Despite such a negative attitude, I believed a seasoned bowhunter could do it. But I’d...
The Call of the Surf
There are fish in the surf that will take the angler half off his feet with the violence of their attack and cause him to shout aloud in the excitement of the combat. Game and fish are fast disappearing as our remoter sections become settled, as lakes and bayous are...
Ghost Light on the Land’s End Road
I was suddenly awash in pale blue phosphorescence and I briefly reckoned poor ventilated Private Quigley had his chilly arms around me! Right turn at Frogmore, south down a dozen miles of two-lane island blacktop, through woods and swamps and fields, to old Fort...
Russell Moccasin 2026 Patina Thunderdome Boot
The Stitchdown Patina Thunderdome is an annual institution in the boot world. Its a chance for enthusiasts to show off their boots and how they age. This year we are building a dedicated boot specifically for folks who want to enter a pair in the competition. These...
Grizzly Encounter
Rick bent to one knee checking blood splatters on three-day-old snow crunching under his weight. It appeared pinkish—possibly lung blood. Staring up the hill, his gaze followed the mule deer’s tracks running straight to the top before disappearing into exposed rocks....
A Door in the Woods
“Good boy, Rex, easy now. Whoa on the bird!” The gathering gloaming of the approaching evening made it rather difficult to see what I was doing as I fought my way through the wicked tangle of greenbrier vines draped across the dense trees in front of me. I struggled...
The Back-up Plan
Magnum raindrops pelted the north wall of the lodge. Early pre-dawn temperatures continued to drop. I loved it! For the past several days, the afternoon highs had been in the mid-80s, not what most would consider “ideal deer hunting weather.” The falling temperature...
How to Become A Great Fly Fisherman
I had an interesting phone conversation with angling legend Tom Rosenbauer. Tom, who has been the face of Orvis fly fishing for as far back as I can remember, called and wanted to talk trout fishing. Specifically, he asked me what folks need to do to become truly...
The Bird Wrangler
For South African Trevor Comins, perfection is a safari on the fly. The beast is dead, but that’s when it becomes dangerous. Forty yards in the sky, the 22-pound spur-winged goose plummets toward my blind like a feathered meteorite. When calculating the lead on the...
A Battle for Survival
Precariously perched in the small tree, the hunter peered into the night, his eyes slowly adjusting to the eerie light cast by the moon. The year was 1903; the place: Sabi Sands, South Africa. Harry Wolhuter was shaking from a combination of cold and fear. What was...
The Killer of the Wynaad
To the south-west of the city of Mysore lies the heavily forested area of the Kakankote jungles, for centuries the home of many herds of wild elephants that are partial to the kind of jungle that grows in this district. The rainfall is heavy and the vegetation is...
Boundary Waters Vote Provides Fuel to Raise Money, But the Reality is Far From the Posturing
You’d think, listening to the loudest voices in the outdoor community lately, that the Boundary Waters had just been handed over to a mining company with a bow on top. Fundraising emails, social posts, and urgent alerts have painted a picture of imminent, irreversible...
Colonel Colt and His Pistols
For nearly two centuries, Samuel Colt's firearms have been changing the course of history. And the legacy lives on. By all indications, he never should have succeeded in life, and if he had listened to what others told him, the name of Samuel Colt would probably be...
The Legacy of James Purdey & Sons
In the long and storied history of gunmaking, there is no name more renowned than that of James Purdey. His rise to fame began 200 years ago, give or take, when he opened a small shop at 4 Princes St., Leicester Square, London, for the purpose of making and selling...
“Caring Karen” Messer Goes Bream Fishing
As those who have read previous episodes of the ongoing misadventures of Mollygrubs Messer will recall, his nosy, busybody, and termagant-in-training mother, who in rather grandiose fashion styled herself “Caring Karen,” was, to use a description common in the...
Last Moment Grizzly
We were hunting just west of the line that divides Alaska’s coastal brown bears from inland grizzlies on a broad river where both grizzlies and black bear lived along with a few red and dog salmon as well as delicious Dolly Varden trout. With me was my guide, Blake...
Some Grouse You Never Forget
He was a young man, barely past his 25th birthday, slim and fit in the way of young men who follow dogs in the high mountains. His companion, Big Sam, was a huge, muscular, raw-boned pointer with a head like a mule—in size as well as temperament. Sam was a “big-going,...
The King of Birds and the God of Thunder
It is said that in the early days of the world, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata; in Maya, Yuum kuutz) was a bird of pedestrian plumage with a melodious voice while the nightjar (Antrostomus badius; in Maya, Pu'ujuy) was clothed in resplendent finery. So, Kuutz...
Lone Eagle
He drove 70 miles of rugged road carved through bush country in the Outaouais region of western Quebec. The final leg of a long haul. Three weeks into May along the Canadian Shield meant rutting bears. Jack had bow sights set on a big boar. He followed camp owner...
The Problem With Non-Resident Fee Increases
There is an old understanding in the American West—one that predates wildlife agencies, tag lotteries, and glossy brochures—that the land belongs to all of us. Not in the romantic, abstract sense, but in a very literal one. Millions upon millions of acres across...
The Photograph
It hangs on the wall in my study, framed and matted, and like all photographs, freezing one fleeting moment in time. I call it One Old Double in a Field of Autos, but actually, the title isn’t totally accurate. The “field” really consists of four autoloaders and four...
Fishing for Night Crawlers: A Mollygrubs Messer Angling Adventure
In some senses you have to feel sorry for the seemingly endless mélange of misery which Mollygrubs Messer somehow managed to become involved. A prime example involved an out-of-state trout fishing trip with a buddy and a couple of adult companion. The plan was for the...
The Lasting Legacy of Nash Buckingham
Regrets are scratches on the furniture of our lives that can never be polished away. The scars of fate that shoved aside dreams, the wounds of choices ill-chosen, the lesions of opportunities lost or dreams abandoned. Some are shallow; some are deep. Some settle...
The Waterhole
At the muddy little pond, a 12-year-old boy would find his place in the world.
A Record-Book Bruin
Two hunters head out after moose and wind up in the record books instead.
Grand Canyon Bucks
The legendary hunter and gunwriter pursues big mule deer in the shadow of the Grand Canyon in this 1938 classic.
Trout Magic in Words: The Anatomy of a Fly Fisherman
More years ago than it is completely comfortable for me to ponder, I wrote a series of profiles on celebrated angling writers for a little publication, Fly-Fishing News. The bimonthly offering, featuring noted sporting scribes such as John Gierach, Lefty Kreh and Paul...
NRA Reloaded: Returning to the Fold
I’ll admit it plainly: I was among the early and unflinching critics when the National Rifle Association’s internal failures came into public view. I wrote about it, spoke about it, and—like many longtime members—wondered how an institution with such a storied history...
New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns
Storied is not exclusive to price tag or class. Occasionally the twain rub shoulders and have a bountiful supply of tales to tell, but there are no guarantees. This Purdey, however, had it all. Scratches and dings and rubbed-smooth spots. Cost? Likely something...
Highly Desirable Turkey Books From The Library of an Icon
Soon after the National Wild Turkey Federation was founded in 1973, the organization began publishing its house magazine, Turkey Call. The publication’s first editor, Gene Smith, was a veteran in the field who had cut his editing teeth working for Florida’s state...
Brays Island Plantation: Your Sporting Life Awaits
Spring has arrived at Brays Island, and owners get to enjoy all that the change of season brings: turkey season; hungry redfish in the waterways surrounding Brays; cobia season; and perfect weather for a day on the sporting clays course, golf course, or equestrian...
The Best Grouse Hunting Writer and More?
Some years ago, I was bird-hunting in Idaho with the brothers Wayment: Shawn, a veterinarian who blogs as the “Bird Dog Doc,” and Andy, an attorney who also happens to be the author of Idaho Ruffed Grouse Hunting. One afternoon, walking through a golden seam of...
Training Across
Those of us who spend lifetimes hunting and fishing learn in time that skills attained wild serve very efficiently in the struggles that eventuate in tamer, but trying, environs of modern living. Attributes of stoicism, self-discipline, perseverance, determination,...
Attacked by a Leopard!
Although Robert Ruark was regularly exposed to dangerous animals during his hunts, and though he had a great many narrow escapes, he only got hurt once. This happened on shikar in 1962, in the Madhya Pradesh region near Betul in Central India. There, a wounded leopard...
The Winchester Model 97
The first time I saw the 97, I knew where it came from: that era, that time around the turn of the century when men just hunted and really did not ask the question, “Why?” That is simply what they did; you can see it in the eyes of the men in an old photograph from...
Thumping “Button Trout!”
It’s like someone thumped the middle of your back with their fist, firmly, but not too hard,” Capt. Justin explained. “When you feel that, tighten your line and strike the fish with everything you’ve got.” But before the “thump” happened, I needed to sling a...
Cheju Do Pheasant Hunt
Back in 1968 I was doing penance for some perceived past sins at Kwang Ju, a remote air base in Korea. I had arrived there on a hot, sweltering night in mid-August to serve a 13-month tour as an Air Force munitions officer. As I staggered out the rear cargo door of a...
In Pursuit of the MacNab
I’m very sorry, sir, but you cannot take a handgun to the United Kingdom. Confused, I responded, “I understand that, Ma’am. Handguns are also prohibited in Canada.” Yes, but your booking form says you are bringing a “shot gun,” which is a type of handgun. Err . . . ...
Little Windy and the Wingshooting Woman
She was a green-eyed freckle-faced redhead, long of hair and limb, married a couple of times before I met her but neither lasted too long. Her name, literally translated, meant "the daughter of an angel of bright shining light," and it was true, mostly. She was a...
The Gift Bird
There wasn’t a turkey gobbling anywhere as I moseyed toward the log landing where Jill and I were to rendezvous at midmorning. We’d selected the spot because it was convenient, because we could both find it with no problem from where we’d each started, and because it...
The Borrowed Gun
Our son, Jamie, is 10 years old. Today, after much pleading, he is with me at a cabin on the South Island of New Zealand, a long way from anywhere. There at the head of the valley, the snow looms high overhead, waterfalls cascade off the mountainside and fingers of...
Little Guns Big Birds
I’ve always had a healthy respect for the .410 as long as it was restricted to small birds at short range.
Fishing Up Emmaus Way
To this day I’m still not certain where he came from, and for the briefest moment he startled me. It doesn’t much matter where I have been or where I am going; I still can’t quite decide which is the better part of a fly fishing day, the Going In or the Coming Out. It...
Watch: Chasing Light
Wildlife photographer Wyman Meinzer is, more than anything else, a Texan. After years as a hunter, trapper & marksman, this outdoor pioneer traded in his rifle to stare down the barrel of a zoom lens. https://youtu.be/iPQrCMadE1U?si=U5ieYNyakuyPMKHH In this YETI...
A Russian Wolf Hunt
During the winter of 1882, business complications made it necessary for me to take a journey into a wild and remote part of Russia. The house with which I was connected had had some very unsatisfactory dealings with one of its branches, and thing’s had come to such a...
Pat McManus: Into the Twilight, Endlessly Making People Laugh
The last shall be first, we’re told, and for many years, when Outdoor Life arrived in the mail, readers would skip straight past the latest on guns and gear to get to the back page. “I heard that almost daily,” says Todd W. Smith, who served as editor of the magazine...
Great Writers and Their Guns
If the thought that literary liberals once hungered for London doubles doesn’t fill you with doubt, then read on. Russian author Ivan Turgenev, whose efforts to free the serfs produced the Sportsman’s Sketches, bought a Joseph Lang gun. Ernest Hemingway acquired a...
Sporting Classics Shooting Event April 18, 2026
Time: April 18, 2026 (9:00 am until 5:00 pm) Location: River Bend Sportsman’s Resort, 1000 Wilkie Bridge Road, Inman, SC 29349 Click Here to Register Today! Join Sporting Classics for a day of shooting and fine guns at River Bend Sportsman's Resort. Set on nearly 500...
Back Woods Quail Club
It was literally zero degrees when I left Bucks County, PA. The everlasting snow had a thick crust of ice, and this, combined with the deep chill factor, had kept us out of the fields and off the range for weeks. I was antsy and really looking forward to heading to...
Lt. Colonel J. H. Patterson: A Life on the Lunatic Express
A Life on the Lunatic Express Some four decades ago, when both this magazine and writer were young, I wrote a feature bearing the title “The Lunatic Express.” It later appeared as the lead story in an anthology of grand tales of derring-do carrying the title Africa:...
Dawn At the River
We pulled off into the gravel roadside parking area just in time to witness the bright moon setting behind the bare trees and the sun thinking about rising in the pink eastern sky. We were the first ones on the river that day in early March . . . just the way we had...
Bringing Back The Years
From a time-worn and battered old leather-bound hunting journal, a dried sprig of heather slipped from between embrowned pages. It was picked from the moor on a walk up grouse shoot spent on the Glorious 12th in the Scottish Highlands many years ago. As I read the...
A Collector’s Guide to Parker Shotguns
I guess I should tell you up front that I have some misgivings about this column. Not because it’s bad stuff, but because I have a lot of friends who may not be too happy about it. You see, I make an annual pilgrimage to the Southern Side-by-Side Championship in...
One Dog Night
In the early years, African leopards commonly preyed on cattle and other livestock, and even humans. But their favorite prey of all was the dog.
Sparkplug Marlin
About that time it dawned on me that we had probably made a bad decision! Many years I owned and operated several huntingpreserves.in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Now that I'm retired, my wife Rita and I spend our Winters in Rincon de Guayabito, a small resort village...
Night at the Opera – A Woodland Spectacle
It was late afternoon when I came off the mountain near the old Indian Mound and started following the winding downhill trail that led out to the highway. Opening morning would arrive in three more days and my anticipation level measured about a 12 on the Richter...
Hunting England’s Vampire Deer
“What was that?” I questioned Merwyn Manningham Buller, host for our roe deer hunt near the Castle Corfe, built in the 11th century by William the Conquerer. “Couldn’t have been an apparition or ghost, and I don’t think it was a fox . . .wrong color and too big and...
Socrates Becomes a Hunter
A boy's dog named Soc finally proves his worth as a gundog by flushing pheasants for the boy and his uncle. That first spring together evolved into a long, hot summer, seemingly endless for a boy hankering for his first pheasant season. Sweating through chores, I...
Music In the Forest
Traveling south on I-20, I cross the Savannah River at Augusta and ease into the Peach State. Determined to slow life’s pace and enjoy this 200-mile trip, I’ve silently vowed to take the backroads. So, I leave the frantic pace of the interstate, lower the passenger...
March in Montana: Auction Results
Collectors and dealers alike descended upon Great Falls for an energetic weekend during Western Art Week, highlighted by a record-breaking sale at the Elk’s Lodge for the 39th Annual March in Montana Auction. The event once again demonstrated the enduring strength of...
Snow Grouse
When I stepped out on the balcony that cold, damp, late February evening to sniff the weather, the stars had disappeared. It was very still, and felt like snow. Re-entering the warmth of our little apartment, I heard the phone ringing. It was Gary calling to discuss...
Polar Extremes
The hunt for the tundra’s legendary white bears. In the land where the geese, fox, owls, hares and grouse are white, why should the bears be any different? Head to the western shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay and you’ll find yourself amid the richest polar bear territory...
Mr. Theodore Castwell
An enchantingly beautiful chalk stream, perfect cast after perfect cast, big trout rising to the fly each time it alights on the water... For Theodore Castwell, it seemed that St. Peter had indeed given him very special consideration. Mr. Theodore Castwell, having...
The New Essential Riflescope
Having grown up hunting November hardwoods, where riflescopes were scarce as clean socks in deer camps, A. B. Learned could be forgiven a provincial view: “I always use open sights,” he declared, “preferring their speed to the somewhat slower peep sight. I have...
Browning A5 20-Gauge
To me, the Browning A5 seems as old as time itself. My father had one when I was a teenager, and that was a long time ago. The A5 wasn’t new even then. In fact, the old man’s was an old, “used hard and put away wet” specimen that we found and revived from near dead...
To Bite the Bullet
An overturned jeep, no water, and a charging elephant in the night. What else could go wrong?
This Hunting Life
We were learning the world. It is that learning I speak of as hunting. In the house I rent hangs a photo of me taken as a teenager. I'm lying next to my dog in some tall reeds by a river. For a long time I wondered what made me frame that picture and hang it. Tika and...
Ruark On Safari: Politics
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. Up until the last year or so of Bob's life, there was always a great urgency in his writing, an impatience in his attitude toward his work, and the desire to get on...
The Turkey Drought Breaks
An amusing story to be retold on those long, hot days in the blind between birds.
Parker Whedon: The Last Of The Old-Time Turkey Hunters
When Parker Whedon died on March 16, 2012 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and the myriad complications associated with the illness, the world of turkey hunting lost perhaps its final direct link to the sport’s great names of yesteryear. From the time...
Fangs!
“Now that one’s interesting! Looks like a saber-tooth cat crossed with a teddy bear!” said a DSC Convention attendee as she passed by the photo of a Chinese water deer on display in the Scandinavian Prohunters booth. In the booth, John Langraf and I were visiting with...
A Camouflage Calamity
I’m gonna have to have a little talk with that Toxey Haas fellow. You know, he’s the one who makes Mossy Oak camo. Way back in the ’80s when he started making camo, one of the first patterns he invented was Bottomland. Since I’m an old Southern turkey hunter who likes...
Hard Rain, White Noise
Hitch Barlow was a tall, bone-thin young man who worked with nails in his teeth and carpenter tools in his hands, when he was not sighting along the barrel of a big-bore rifle at a buck deer or floating line, leader, tippet and a fly across pebbles at the head of a...
The Room
There is a room in my house that is mine, and mine alone. It is where the camouflage resides, along with various styles of hunting boots and waders. A place where all of the duck, goose and elk calls hang from nails on the wall. Tents and sleeping bags are piled along...
Watch: The King
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ix42HwHapA In the spring woods, everything revolves around one bird. The Eastern Wild Turkey. Not just because he gobbles. Because he decides the game. Where he roosts. Where he walks. When he talks. When he disappears. Every move we...
The Price of a Dog: Part 3 of 3
Part Three: The Devil’s Money Click Here to Read Part Two When I arrived home, I was excited to tell Mother about the double and, of course, the twelve-hundred dollars. I removed the rubber band and began counting the money onto the kitchen table. “…eight-hundred,...
1919 Savage Model 99 – Law Enforcement Raffle
The National Office of Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) recently received the extraordinary gift of a 1919 Savage Model 99 takedown rifle from Dave VanBoxtaele that he had been restoring since February 2020. Click Here to Enter VanBoxtaele said his intent was...
Taking Stock: Confessions of a Custom Stock Convert
I had always been a little dismissive of the idea of a custom stock. I say this at the risk of confirming my ignorance, but hear me out: I already had an adjustable stock on my Krieghoff K-80, and I preferred it without any adjustments. Therefore, that contraption was...
Elgin Gates: A Legendary Big Game Hunter
Mention the word “legendary” in connection with big game hunters and hunting literature, and thoughts of most serious readers likely turn in one of two distinct directions. Most will look back to the wealth of books produced by the pioneers who sampled and savored the...
Fishing for Muskie in Lake Chautauqua
They say it's the fish of ten-thousand casts. Maybe so. I truly believed that for many years and still won't argue with those odds. Twice before I had traveled all the way from Georgia to Canada to do battle with the great muskellunge only to fish for days with nary a...
Roping Elk In the Rockies
One of the redeeming features of existence in a small Canadian town is that at all seasons of the year some form of woodland sport lies within an hour’s walk or drive or paddle of your door. For the monarch moose and the shy, capricious caribou, one must go far afoot....
Pig Medicine
Turning a .300 H&H Magnum on Texas’s feral hogs.
Diary of a Market Hunter
A real-life account of a market hunter’s day-to-day, warts and all.
The Youngest Hunter
I took a few steps forward, holding my rifle cocked and ready. The animal dropped to all fours and gave a hoarse whoof! Then I knew what it was – a grizzly. It had found Johnny’s moose, and was breakfasting on the carcass.
Ames Plantation: Birds Gone Wild
In 45 American states, January is the coldest month of the year. Frigid temperatures are challenging enough, but ladder in precipitation and you have a recipe for disaster. Wet, gnarly conditions knock down trees and limbs causing power outages and, if you’re in...
The Thak Man-Eater
Never in history has one man so devoutly pursued and killed as many man-eaters as did Jim Corbett, saving untold numbers of human lives in the process. What follows is Corbett’s exciting conclusion to his tale of “The Thak Man-Eater,” which originally appeared in his...
$5.9 Million: Copley’s Record-Setting Winter Sale
Copley Fine Art Auctions, LLC (copleyart.com), the nation’s premier decoy and sporting art auction house known for its accurate descriptions and verified results, realized $5.9 million in their recent Winter Sale. It marked the highest total for any auction in the...
Memories…
All of us have special memories from our days of hunting and fishing, which we have no doubt shared around campfires or inside sporting lodges. Now, in our new Memories feature, we would like to share your fondest hunting and fishing experiences with all of our...
The Jewett Gap Grizzly
Using a .30-30 Winchester, the one-armed hunter would finally slay the Jewett Gap Grizzly, ending its ten-year reign of terror among cattle ranchers in the Old West. In the 1890s an unusually large and savage grizzly had been marauding the livestock of ranchers in the...
Ernest Hemingway: Angler, Fighter, Lover
Ernest Hemingway fought in two wars, battled huge marlin and tuna in Bimini and Cuba and then survived two plane crashes and deadly encounters with lions and elephants in Africa – all while creating some of the greatest sporting literature ever written.
The Cremation of Sam McGee
An unlikely life. He was an English banker who ran off to America at an early age. He nearly starved in Mexico, bunked in a California bordello. He passed himself as a cowboy, farmer, lumberjack, Yukon dog-musher and gold miner. He drove an ambulance in the First War...
Maybe Once
"I'll send for you,” Mike said to Jackie as he kissed her goodbye. He didn’t see her roll her eyes through a big smile as she threw her arms around his neck. She’d heard the same thing every year for the 12 years he’d taken this trip. Only in the last few had she...
Once in The Stilly Night
It plum tickled his perversity to jist think ’bout chasin’ rarecoons. A classic from the November, 1935, issue of Field & Stream. Dud Dean held the empty frying pan over the glowing coals of our little fire. The fat caught, flared and burned out. After that burst...
Road-Tripping with your Shotguns
To say I travel quite a bit for bird hunting and sporting clay tournaments is a bit of an understatement. It’s a little comical if I stop and think about it, and truthfully, I only recognize that because of the strange looks I get from family and friends when I try to...
Bear Hunting the Traditional Way
Your chances will be fewer, but traditional spot-and-stalk bear hunting on horseback enables you to see more of the countryside and its wildlife. There’s nothing quite like the romance and tradition of hunting from horseback. Rather than concentrating on where you...
Jim Muir The Quiet Men
Beware of over-concern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.— Rudyard Kipling There was once a land with no people and no animals, just forested mountains and cold, clear...
Back to Bucks and Bears
Deer hunters don’t need exotic, expensive ammo, just accurate, reliably lethal loads. Herewith an update! Hitting far-off targets, informally or in competition, has shooters spending wildly on rifles, ammo and optics. Per backyard mechanics burying speedometer needles...
Fishing For Dinosaurs
Hook into a 250-pound fish whose ancestors date back 100 million years, and you begin to wonder if you’re reeling a dinosaur through a wormhole—as if you’re about to reveal a beast that doesn’t belong in our epoch. Such are first impressions when sturgeon fishing on...
Blacktails Don’t Come Easy
I sat in the pre-dawn darkness in the soft glow of the instrument panel of Roy’s 1947 Plymouth coupe, heading out on my very first buck hunt. A 12-year-old boy yearning to be a buck hunter never forgets moments like that. As the old Plymouth began its first climb up...
The Day the Lake Went Mad
The gale-force winds and driving rain were bad enough, but then the island itself began to move.
Big Empty Encounter
A long stretch of dark, empty woods stood between them and the truck, and the big bear kept edging nearer, so close now they could hear his nasally whine and the soft rumbling in his throat.
The Dead Man on Wendigo Brook
What trout fisherman, plunged into despair by hyper-selective fish that refuse all his imitations, hasn’t wished for a “magic” fly? In this cautionary tale from the anthology Seasons of the Angler (1988), the author reminds us to be careful what we wish for . . .
Hunting Oryx in the Journey of Death
A descent into a cauldron of scorched earth in pursuit of oryx.
Black Bear Danger
A man-eating bear stood between the hunter and his rifle.
The Giant Serpent of Cebu
On a tiny Pacific Island, American naturalist Dr. John N. Hamlet responds to the pleas of a luckless farmer and decides to track down a pig-eating python. But what begins as a casual search for a marauding snake soon becomes a harrowing adventure deep within the...
The First Leopard
The famed tiger hunter goes after a cat of a different stripe. A simple bird hunt turned into an unforgettable encounter with dangerous game for Jim Corbett.
Wintersong
You will always be my children; I will always be your pa.
Dark Legends
The hut smelled of must and dampness. Slivers of light pierced through thin gaps in the grass walls. The old shaman sat with his legs crossed. His dull, green eyes seemed void of life, staring through rather than at them. His skin hung on a bony frame and his voice...
New Editor-in-Chief at Sporting Classics Magazine
Renowned hunting and fishing writer and editor Skip Knowles has been named Editor-in-Chief at Sporting Classics Magazine. “I tried to hire Skip a few years back,” says publisher Duncan Grant. “He seemed perfect for this position at Sporting Classics. He’d been at the...
Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years (1939-1948)
Ernest Hemingway is inextricably linked to both Sun Valley and the nearby town of Ketchum, Idaho. He had a special affinity for the countryside with its backdrop of the Sawtooth Mountains, which reminded him of Spain, for the excellent bird hunting he found there and...
The Great Missouri Lion Hunt
Never mind the cost and the public outcry, the wealthy businessman was determined to bring African dangerous game hunting to his home state.
Preserving Antique Shotguns
As someone who spends a lot of time working to preserve late 19th century and early 20th century double guns, I have thought a lot about why some high quality and once very expensive shotguns have been well preserved and others have not. The formula for the...
Planning a Custom 260 Remington
Remington Custom Shop manager Carlos Martinez and I put our heads together in an attempt to buck the trend, to create something different, functional, beautiful. Personal. The rifle you see here is the result. Notice the stock is not hand-laid carbon or even...
The Rise of Remington Arms
This brief retrospective of Remington’s 200-year history barely touches upon the many innovations of this venerable and venerated gunmaker.
Weep No More, My Lady
A most unlikely bird dog lifts a boy to the cusp of manhood.
Samuel “Baker of the Nile”
In autumn 1858, on a beautiful day in the Scottish Highlands, a remarkable sporting feat that would be recounted innumerable times until passing into legend, occurred. During dinner the previous evening at the Duke of Atholl’s estate, Sam Baker, recently returned to...
Watchers of the Campfire
He was not going to let himself become the hunted instead of the hunter.
Copley Spotlight: Shorebirds from the Estate of Henry Bishop
Henry Bishop was a good friend of legendary decoy collector Dr. Peter J. Muller Jr., and there is substantial overlap between their collections. Both from Atlanta, the Muller and Bishop Collections are known for their near-mint birds by top makers, including Elmer...
Ice Bound: Stranded in Antarctica
He sat in the makeshift camp on the polar ice as a cold wind heralded the approaching long dark winter. Soon the sun would not be seen for three months. He and his men had been trapped on the ice for nearly a year. As the winter darkness descended, he could hear the...
The Magic of Hunting Memories
The following is an excerpt from Duncan Dobie’s book Dawn of American Deer Hunting Volume III. Featuring over 375 images, you'll enjoy seeing classic rifles, snowy campsites, straining meat poles, trophy antlers and more. Click here to order your copy today! Every...
J.A. Hunter’s Africa
He saw Africa raw, tapped its treasures and chafed at what his generation had wrought.
The Ghost of Arthur Woody
Duncan Dobie tells of Arthur Woody, a visionary character for forest and wildlife restoration extraordinaire in the early 20th century mountain ranges of Northern GA. The sudden spring thunderstorm stopped almost as quickly as it had started. It blew...
Hall of Fame Trainer Billy Wunderlich
As good with people as he was with dogs.
Choke Tube Mysteries Explained
Need help deciding on the best choke tube for your shotgun? Here is your guide to different choke types and choosing which is right for you. Searching for the best choke tube? Which is it? Traditional, wad-retarding, ported, un-ported, the one your buddy uses? The...
Our All-American Bear
Assigned to cover a draw high on Old Smokies’ spine, Kephart kindled a thin fire between roots of a mountain oak that wasn’t warm enough to thaw his fingers and toes. Rifle across his lap, he listened for the dogs to bay, announcing they’d caught a black bear’s trail....
The Erie Jinx
Even on the best damned walleye lake in America, sometimes you have to lower your standards a bit and catch what you can. The guy I’ll call X-Factor kept calling and leaving messages on my phone. Somebody told him that I planned to fish Lake Erie in September, and he...
Sea of Cortez: Cinnamon Teals and Pintails
Mexico offers spectacular waterfowling for those bold enough to travel there.
The Once and Future 7mm Kings
Herr Mauser may not have known he was designing the King, but by 1910 his 7x57mm cartridge had scaled the heights of big game cartridges. From roe deer to elephants, it had settled everything. See Bell, Karamojo, W.D.M. By 1970, the 7mm Remington Magnum had added...
A Presidential Pursuit: Hunters Who Led the Nation
Roosevelt and Cleveland weren’t the only presidents who spent time afield.
Travelers of the Edge
They stood, Helen and Webster, side by side in black water beneath a canopy of moon-bleached trees, trunks white as ghosts raising slender claws toward the streaks of shooting stars. ''I've never seen them like this," Helen said softly. "So many at once." "Like...
Ruark On Safari: The Grand Old Elephant
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. Then finally the day came, and as it so happened with the aid of a ten-year-old Samburu-Rendille maiden, that Bob got on the trail of what promised to be very big...
The Death of the Second Man-Eater
The end of a reign of terror unlike anything the outdoor world has ever seen.
Ernest Hemingway: The Final Years (1950-1961)
Despite the promise of great upland and waterfowl hunting, dear friends and a place where Ernest could escape fame and work without interruption, Mary and Papa Hemingway did not return to Idaho until the fall of 1958. During the intervening decade, Ernest spent...
A Day on the Dolphin: An Unexpected Adventure
There was urgency in his voice. My grandfather and Ed Brower went below deck. The Dolphin’s bilge pump had stopped working. Water was coming in. It’s a bright Saturday afternoon in Fairfield, Connecticut, just after 5:00; mid-April 1960. Daffodils bloom along the...
A Night Among Wolves
The hunter becomes the hunted on a dark night deep in a Russian forest.
Q Fix
There’s a rifle maker named Q, Inc. This raises a question: What does the Q reference mean? Quality? Quirky rifles? Both? Quirky is defined (in part) as unorthodox, unusual, unconventional and out of the ordinary. Q’s Fix rifle is all that plus high-quality materials,...



























































































































































