In the weeks leading up to our safari, Reid Freeman insisted that on this, his first, he’d go slow on buffalo, wait until he’d gotten a feel for them, maybe stalk a few with me and see how it all worked, maybe not hunt them at all. That sensible plan worked for about...
Mark, Richard and I dangle from toes and fingers on a steep slope 2,100 feet above the surf. We’ve finally broken out of the claustrophobic alder thickets, and behind us the view is spectacular—the islands of the Kodiak archipelago rise green and brown and black from...
They stood, Helen and Webster, side by side in black water beneath a canopy of moon-bleached trees, trunks white as ghosts raising slender claws toward the streaks of shooting stars. ”I’ve never seen them like this,” Helen said softly. “So many...
Blessed with imagination and a library card, I hunted dangerous game from a tender age. My companions on those early safaris were Corbett, Ruark, Hemingway, and a dozen others, adopted uncles whose manifest pleasure in the beasts and bush of wild places shaped my...
Webster was adrift in time again. For 30 minutes, or it could have been hours, the leopard fed. The sun was setting behind the dangling bait, a shoulder from the zebra Webster had killed two days before. Forty yards away, Webster watched through a peephole in the...
Eyes night-blind from the dashboard light you plunge Into the swamp to please the dog, walk By feel between trees and tangled vines, feet Seeking the hardness of the path, following. She trots ahead and stops, tail Slapping briars as she turns, impatient. Blindness...
In the last light of the safari’s final day, Ian Batchelor and I followed blood and hoof prints into a thicket. The buffalo could not be much further: both shots had hit well, and we had already trailed him nearly half a mile. William, the tracker, crouched low just...