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. It’s...
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...
by Mike Gaddis | May 12, 2022
“And the boy…was he there, Bill?” I hauled off and went squirrel hunting the other day. Not so remarkable, I suppose. Except that the whitetail rut was in full blaze, and bird season was in and it’s been a hell of a long time since I’ve forsaken a prime-time deer...
by Mike Gaddis | Apr 27, 2022
She had made it all possible. She was the melody of his song. And ever she watched and waited for him, in a warm, yellow kitchen. It is dark below. Raindrops clamor helplessly at the small window by his shoulder, driven in itinerant streaks across the glass by the...
by Mike Gaddis | Apr 7, 2022
If tomorrow you were suddenly, despicably rich, what would be the first thing you would buy? “You can’t buy happiness” must be the oldest prank in the aphorism boneyard, but we all know Gene Hill dispelled that myth when he remembered, “they forgot little puppies.”...
by Mike Gaddis | Mar 24, 2022
I know it’s March, the greening season and time for renewal. It’ll be a while coming yet in the north and west, but winter’s gruff countenance is, day-by-day, begrudgingly giving way to the smile and fair grace of spring. Down South, deep in Dixie, the dogwoods are...
by Mike Gaddis | Feb 28, 2022
It was boots and chaps. Gents and hats. Shotguns and spats. It was dog-folks gentle and gay. It was dignified old live oaks, bearded grizzled and gray. It was a lazy old mule wagon, creak rattle and sway. “The Lord’s own symphony,” my Grandma Betts would say, “in the...
by Mike Gaddis | Feb 23, 2022
Fine and decorative sporting art can gather up your soul, bringing happiness to you or whoever else might come to own and cherish it. Life is life, and even in the theater of our greatest passion the difference between a laugh and a tear is as capricious as the...
by Mike Gaddis | Feb 9, 2022
I could go on and on; the bill of laden is interminable . . . all the things that can displace or render to anguish a joyful day of hunting or fishing. But it’s quibbling over pocket money. Folks who’ve lived past yesterday will tell you life is unpredictable. But I...
by Mike Gaddis | Jan 20, 2022
Man ponders by coincidence. Nature knows better. The difference can sometimes be unfathomable. Late December . . . The Maryland Shores. . . Snowfall. . . Mystic, mesmeric, beckoning. Almost eight decades along for this wayfaring, wildfowling warrior — and still, when...
