Adventures in Minnesota’s Black Bear Country

Adventures in Minnesota’s Black Bear Country

They look cute from a distance but up close, they are like a 400-pound racoon. A momma coon may have six or eight coonlets in a year, a bear might have twins, rarely triplets and then only every two years. Cubs are born bald and blind at about a half pound during...
Ernest Hemingway: Angler, Fighter, Lover

Ernest Hemingway: Angler, Fighter, Lover

Ernest Hemingway fought in two wars, battled huge marlin and tuna in Bimini and Cuba and then survived two plane crashes and deadly encounters with lions and elephants in Africa – all while creating some of the greatest sporting literature ever written.

Big Empty Encounter

Big Empty Encounter

A long stretch of dark, empty woods stood between them and the truck, and the big bear kept edging nearer, so close now they could hear his nasally whine and the soft rumbling in his throat.

The Steakhouse Stickup

The Steakhouse Stickup

Hugo, Minnesota, straight up U.S. 61, the murderous old two-lane between St. Paul and Duluth. Up and down some timbered red-iron hills, around others, potholed, icy sometimes, frosty others, slick always, so deadly Bob Dylan wrote it into a song: “God said to Abraham,...
Greatest North American Hunting Trip Ever

Greatest North American Hunting Trip Ever

It was the greatest North American hunting trip ever, though the men’s survival was always in doubt. Fall of 1804, Meriwether Lewis was halfway up the Missouri, St. Louis to Great Falls, though he could not name the Great Falls until he had seen them, yet many months...
Joshua Slocum: Lost At Sea

Joshua Slocum: Lost At Sea

His interests were narrow but deep—deep as the deep blue sea. Joshua Slocum was born to a sea-faring life in 1844, “on a cold spot on coldest North Mountain on a cold February 20,” back when ships were wood and men were iron. His granddaddy was an American Quaker, a...
Confessions of a  Lead-Slinging Luddite

Confessions of a Lead-Slinging Luddite

What if I told you more white-tailed deer have been taken with an 1894 30-30 Winchester than all the other sundry deer hunting cartridges combined? What if I told you that you could hunt worldwide with a battery of only three rifles, a 22 Long Rifle from 1887, a 7...