Beneath the watchful eyes of the spirits, he would follow his dream of hunting a single species of African game. Sometimes in the deep of night, when I’m alone with my thoughts, I reflect on the moment. And it’s always the eyes that I remember. Probably...
Seeking out a covey of truly bobwhite quail can be a challenging and exciting adventure It was late on the last day of our hunt, and overcast with a cold northwest wind and the feel of snow in the air. My shooting partner, Brian Mudd, was the winner of Sporting...
It was remote, dark and distant, and about as wild and woolly as a place could be. It was a pilgrimage of sorts, this journey of ours. It had been a long time since we had been to “Goosepond.” It had been called that since colonial times, and legend held...
Night and day they would pursue the huge beast that was threatening the very existence of several villages. Hope is twenty-three and Faith is two, and they live together, mother and child, in a tiny mud and grass-thatched rondavel a couple of miles from a place called...
Tahr abound among the towering peaks of the other “Down Under,” New Zealand. The challenge is getting close enough to make the shot. There is another “land down under.” Not the one you’re thinking of. It is, by any measure, far, far away from anywhere that you might...
Blending old and new, the author takes Guerini’s Elipse Evo along with his old, recently modified LeFevre on a western bird hunt. Do you remember? The girl? Yes, that girl! The one who caught your eye from across the room all those years ago. She had long,...
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...
Autumn is coming hard now. For those of us who follow the gun and dog, it won’t be long before the gnats and mosquitos are replaced by quail and doves and ducks and geese and we’ll be ready for some good shooting. This time of year I typically get a lot of questions...
Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more “palm swells” on guns intended for field use. Whatever their merits or demerits on a target gun, they are mostly a hindrance to quick, reactive use on game, which seldom waits for you to call “pull” and seldom takes a certain,...
I generally regard screw-in choke tubes to be one of the greatest inventions since sliced bread. They lend a degree of versatility to shotguns that we could only dream of “back in the day.” I usually shun them on classic side-bys, but that’s probably just for...
