Call to Glory

Call to Glory

They mended our imagination. The most astounding canine players ever to grace the century-and-a-quarter theater of American pointing dog trials. Can we help but suppose which was best? Sioux, La Besita, Palamonium. Luminary, Red Water Rex, Native Tango. Toe the...
This One’s On Me

This One’s On Me

The following is an excerpt of Chapter 3 from Mike Gaddis’s From A Higher Hill, featuring 65 explorations of the sporting life, the whole of which transcend contemporary perspective, and ascend to rare and unexcelled poignancy. Pardon the indulgence, my good fellows,...
Building the Ultimate A.H. Fox

Building the Ultimate A.H. Fox

Dig the sun from the sunset? Retrieve the river from the sea? Beg back a life that has been wrestled to the grave? For a great part of our being, we are drawn against a metaphysical world of imponderables, an ethereal vacuum of longing, where hope is scarce and...
Old Dog

Old Dog

The light in the old dog’s eyes fell, and he dropped loosely back from the gate of the kennel run. He had reared . . . trembling . . . begging with all the equity of his years . . . hoping against hope to go. But the man he adored most in the world had offered only a...
This Old House

This Old House

When the old house was occupied, its splintering walls were stout, its diminutive shelter a fortress of good spirits, its heartwood hale and its ambiance light with ale. Way long ago now, in the antediluvian and simplistic age in which I knew boyhood, circa. 1954,...
Sporting Heritage Timeline

Sporting Heritage Timeline

A timeline is a great mirror in which we can rediscover how truly marvelous our journey has been. Time is the protoplasm of destiny, the stay of our years as indefinite as the flesh of our bones, and within its meager allotment each man strives for immortality....
Legacy Gifts

Legacy Gifts

It was nearing midnight that Thanksgiving evening many years ago. The fire had waned to pulsing orange embers, the room captive to darkness beyond its failing glow, but for the single, small table lamp by Daddy’s chair. The night was mellow as moonlight on a meadow,...
America’s Drift from Tradition

America’s Drift from Tradition

If our children work hard, love, protect and abide, maybe they can survive. . . and maybe one day before it’s all too late they can bring America back again.

Love Gloves

Love Gloves

Never underestimate the power of suggestion, especially from a crafty old codger with a bird dog.

On the Southbound Home

On the Southbound Home

Had a man once who said, “The older the boy, the younger the man.” Strikes me he was right. No matter how old you are, you got to hang on to him—the boy—never let him go. Hardly back from Chile and Patagonia, languishing in a chair before the fire—even as the...