by Mike Gaddis | Jun 8, 2023
In the 89th year of his being, Ben Willow had died where most completely he had lived, upon the hills of home, with a dog and a gun. A little less than midway through this book, iron-willed old Missouri-West Virginian Ben Willow throws himself mercilessly once more...
by Mike Gaddis | May 10, 2023
Words and values were their greatest legacy — the outdoors their greatest gift. Tell me. Do kids somewhere still grow up with Cochise, Robin Hood and William Tell, rather than the Terminator and Robo-Cop? Do they still forge blood-brother pacts with the Ogalala Sioux?...
by Mike Gaddis | Apr 5, 2023
Hunting sculpts intrigue into incomparable adventure, places us center stage, and folds us into the metamorphosis. At the New York office of Blount, Reynolds, and Poirer, the torch of jurisprudence will pass to eager young associates for a spell. The senior partners...
by Mike Gaddis | Mar 27, 2023
Folks talk about it still. The nights were the blackest anyone could remember. But there was not a star in the sky. Mountain hollows rang with banjo music. Yet, no one could be found. Each evening at midnight the bell at Humphrey’s Chapel tolled … the rope...
by Mike Gaddis | Mar 23, 2023
An insensible threat was at fore, a primordial evil. The calico dog stopped dead-still, using the dusky shadows of the bush to secret himself from the revealing glimmer of the building moon. He had the fragile night breeze in his nose. On it had been borne the...
by Mike Gaddis | Mar 2, 2023
We would hunt one last time in the morning, one last time before he went away. I would gift that to myself. How swiftly and irreversibly, Danny’s season had arrived. From the day almost 10 years before, when first I had invested a portion of my heart in a...
by Mike Gaddis | Nov 23, 2022
The wisdom of the father, the wonder of the son, Wander together, ’til this life is done- And comes time to remember, all that was one. As I lie dying, if I’ve yet the mind to know, Where I’ve been, and how I came, and why I’ll hate to go, Then...
by Mike Gaddis | Oct 26, 2022
It is at the edge of dark, that pandemonium erupts. One day, I want to shoot a buffalo. With paces between us, facing his dare. I want to know for once before I die, even if on the day I die, the tremble of doubt and the taste of fear. It is only just, before all I...
by Mike Gaddis | Sep 29, 2022
It is important for a man to do a thing well, even if it is killing. The honor of a feat is the measure of how you do it…And what was the truth of me? To hell with Bob Ruark. To blazes with Hemingway, Capstick, Percival, Boddington, the whole and bunch of them....
by Mike Gaddis | Jul 1, 2022
Remarkable, really. Not the first of my hunting or fishing companions, even the zaniest, admits to regular outdoor dreams. I’d suspect subterfuge, collusion, even amnesia. Dreams do have a short shelf life. How many can you remember from last month? Or, for that...
