People Like Us Never Grow Up
This piece is being written in a bug-ridden swamp on the banks of the sluggish yellow Tana River, in northeastern Kenya, where the big elephants bugle and the baboons swear at the hunting leopards, and the lean Northern Frontier lions rumble asthmatically just outside...
When I Was a Boy
Things were different when he was a lad—back when nothing was artificial or contrived, and the days and seasons were filled with high adventure. It’s a popular pastime among adults, when the hair begins to gray and the aches of middle age grow stronger, to look back...
The First Time I Saw God
It was about 5:15 p.m., 108 miles northeast of Oran, I remember, when the starboard gunners shouted, ‘’Torpedo off the bow!” The helmsman tried to swing her so the thing would run parallel to us, but the old bucket was bottom-heavy with about 9,000 tons of high...
Mister Howard was a Real Gent
The week before Thanksgiving that year, one of the Old Man’s best buddies came down from Maryland to spend a piece with the family, and I liked him a whole lot right from the start. Probably it was because he looked like the Old Man—ragged mustache, smoked a pipe,...
Leopards are Different
Of all the African big game animals, Chui the leopard is the most beautiful and exotic – even in death.
Broken Down and Shot Out
When the Tin Liz breaks down five miles from home, the Old Man and the Boy discover a new way of bird-hunting. A classic from the September, 1956 issue of Field & Stream.
If You Can’t Lick the Weather, Join It!
“The only way to handle weather,” said the Old man, “is to know what to do with it – and use it accordingly”