by Robert Matthews | Aug 22, 2025
A long time ago, when I was a younger man, anticipation seemed to be the better part of everything. Everything, it seemed, was better, sweeter, more perfect in the planning stage than in the eventual reality. The “other hand” is that with the passing of considerable...
by Robert Matthews | Aug 18, 2025
I think I know what Otis Redding had on his mind when he crooned “Sittin’ on the dock of a bay.” Only there’s no dock here. There’s no bay either, but I’m sitting on a high bluff overlooking the Parana River in Argentina, takin’ the rest of the day off. Mi amigos...
by Robert Matthews | Jul 7, 2025
Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company makes and markets a stunning array of shotguns including the A-10, Revelation, Inverness, RBL, Model 21 in an over/under version as well as the traditional side-by-side and a dedicated modular competition gun that it calls the...
by Robert Matthews | May 7, 2025
One of Ed Zern’s hilarious books is titled How I Got This Way. As you would expect, the book relates the mishaps and misadventures that caused him to develop into the mildly warped personality that wrote some of the funniest outdoor stuff ever written. I ran across...
by Robert Matthews | May 5, 2025
In the latter part of her life, Karen Blixen wrote wistfully of her one-time home in East Africa. The story became the book, Out of Africa and the movie of the same name. Africa still called to her decades after her departure. And I think I understand. Unlike her, I...
by Robert Matthews | Feb 21, 2025
Without the ordinary, there would be no extraordinary. If there were no karaoke, how would we recognize the spine-tingling excellence of Pavarotti or Bocelli? How would we recognize the genius of Einstein or Hawking if there were no ordinary thinkers? And who would...
by Robert Matthews | Feb 19, 2025
Willie Boy made his literary debut in the final chapter of The Greatest Quail Hunting Book Ever. The chapter was titled “ A Small Southern Tale,” and it chronicled the comings and goings of a single family of Georgia bobwhite quail hunters in the period following...
by Robert Matthews | Dec 27, 2024
I called my buddy Ken Eversull the other day about doing some work on my old Parker. If you don’t know him, he is a gunsmith, for lack of a more fitting term, and an absolute genius at his art. He lives and practices his trade in Louisiana and has forgotten more about...
by Robert Matthews | Oct 24, 2024
My very first shotgun was a single-shot break-open Springfield 20-gauge. I have no recollection whatsoever about its choke or even its barrel length. For a long time, it was the only gun that I had, and I shot everything available with it. I honestly don’t remember...
by Robert Matthews | Oct 10, 2024
Ralph Waldo Emerson once pronounced, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It was, and is, true in the context that he meant it. It’s important to not allow yourself to be confined to “the box.” In this day and time, you’ve got to be able to look...
