Mallard Tornado
Mind-boggling numbers of mallards, mallards like blackbirds, tornadoes of mallards, more mallards than sky. Way down in October, in The Moon of Falling Leaves, me and Joe Merganser on the back loading dock of the farmer’s co-op elevator. Joe Merganser was full-blood...
Pappy’s Pistols
Black magic, junk pistols and lessons learned thereby. Pappy was county coroner 36 years; an elected position. It didn’t pay much, but he got to keep all the murder and suicide guns, and he was the only man who could arrest the sheriff, which he did when the new...
Voodoo Sheriff’s Colt
We had a voodoo sheriff when I was coming up. He and Pappy were best friends. Ed McTeer turned to the black arts to extract confessions and make himself bullet-proof. It served him well one night when a desperado cut loose in some dim-lit island juke joint, five shots...
Pappy’s Krag
Some damn fine mathematics, brothers and sisters, when you can put two rifles together, factor in family and years, subtract both guns and come up with a fine old straight-shooting .22 to boot. But the equation is not for the faint of heart, the weak of mind or the...
Make Mine A Mauser
I threw in with the Swedes about 1972, broke down on my way to Alaska. Ten Mile hill outside St. Paul but my old truck only made nine of them. I called a buddy with a log chain. “Come get me!” He found me a garage on an alley behind a mansion on Summit Avenue, just...
A Man In Full: A Hunt To Remember
In August of 1886, Roosevelt set out with two companions for the Wyoming Big Horn Mountains, some 300-odd miles southwest of his Elkhorn Ranch. There was a prairie schooner wagon, a string of horses—saddle, pack, and draft. Barrels of water, flour, and lard, bacon,...
Rattlesnakes Among Friends
“You boys got to keep your eyes peeled for those diamondbacks,” Pierre said. He was butchering fish by the light of a Coleman, flounder fresh from the creek. “This time of year, they lookin’ for anything warm. Crawl right in your sleeping bag.” Pierre was fixing to...
The Trophy Cost More Than The Fish
A fisherman can spend a lot of time and money on his trophy, even a plastic one.
The Hold of Home, The Pull of the Season
Every hunter knows the conflict, but once in a lifetime there’s an easy fix.