Back to Bucks and Bears
Deer hunters don’t need exotic, expensive ammo, just accurate, reliably lethal loads. Herewith an update! Hitting far-off targets, informally or in competition, has shooters spending wildly on rifles, ammo and optics. Per backyard mechanics burying speedometer needles...
Fishing For Dinosaurs
Hook into a 250-pound fish whose ancestors date back 100 million years, and you begin to wonder if you’re reeling a dinosaur through a wormhole—as if you’re about to reveal a beast that doesn’t belong in our epoch. Such are first impressions when sturgeon fishing on...
Blacktails Don’t Come Easy
I sat in the pre-dawn darkness in the soft glow of the instrument panel of Roy’s 1947 Plymouth coupe, heading out on my very first buck hunt. A 12-year-old boy yearning to be a buck hunter never forgets moments like that. As the old Plymouth began its first climb up...
Highly Desirable Turkey Books From The Library of an Icon
Soon after the National Wild Turkey Federation was founded in 1973, the organization began publishing its house magazine, Turkey Call. The publication’s first editor, Gene Smith, was a veteran in the field who had cut his editing teeth working for Florida’s state...
The Day the Lake Went Mad
The gale-force winds and driving rain were bad enough, but then the island itself began to move.
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 Dead Man on Wendigo Brook
What trout fisherman, plunged into despair by hyper-selective fish that refuse all his imitations, hasn’t wished for a “magic” fly? In this cautionary tale from the anthology Seasons of the Angler (1988), the author reminds us to be careful what we wish for . . .
Hunting Oryx in the Journey of Death
A descent into a cauldron of scorched earth in pursuit of oryx.
Black Bear Danger
A man-eating bear stood between the hunter and his rifle.
The Giant Serpent of Cebu
On a tiny Pacific Island, American naturalist Dr. John N. Hamlet responds to the pleas of a luckless farmer and decides to track down a pig-eating python. But what begins as a casual search for a marauding snake soon becomes a harrowing adventure deep within the...
The First Leopard
The famed tiger hunter goes after a cat of a different stripe. A simple bird hunt turned into an unforgettable encounter with dangerous game for Jim Corbett.
Wintersong
You will always be my children; I will always be your pa.
Dark Legends
The hut smelled of must and dampness. Slivers of light pierced through thin gaps in the grass walls. The old shaman sat with his legs crossed. His dull, green eyes seemed void of life, staring through rather than at them. His skin hung on a bony frame and his voice...
New Editor-in-Chief at Sporting Classics Magazine
Renowned hunting and fishing writer and editor Skip Knowles has been named Editor-in-Chief at Sporting Classics Magazine. “I tried to hire Skip a few years back,” says publisher Duncan Grant. “He seemed perfect for this position at Sporting Classics. He’d been at the...
Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years (1939-1948)
Ernest Hemingway is inextricably linked to both Sun Valley and the nearby town of Ketchum, Idaho. He had a special affinity for the countryside with its backdrop of the Sawtooth Mountains, which reminded him of Spain, for the excellent bird hunting he found there and...
The Great Missouri Lion Hunt
Never mind the cost and the public outcry, the wealthy businessman was determined to bring African dangerous game hunting to his home state.
Preserving Antique Shotguns
As someone who spends a lot of time working to preserve late 19th century and early 20th century double guns, I have thought a lot about why some high quality and once very expensive shotguns have been well preserved and others have not. The formula for the...
Planning a Custom 260 Remington
Remington Custom Shop manager Carlos Martinez and I put our heads together in an attempt to buck the trend, to create something different, functional, beautiful. Personal. The rifle you see here is the result. Notice the stock is not hand-laid carbon or even...
The Rise of Remington Arms
This brief retrospective of Remington’s 200-year history barely touches upon the many innovations of this venerable and venerated gunmaker.
Weep No More, My Lady
A most unlikely bird dog lifts a boy to the cusp of manhood.
Samuel “Baker of the Nile”
In autumn 1858, on a beautiful day in the Scottish Highlands, a remarkable sporting feat that would be recounted innumerable times until passing into legend, occurred. During dinner the previous evening at the Duke of Atholl’s estate, Sam Baker, recently returned to...
Watchers of the Campfire
He was not going to let himself become the hunted instead of the hunter.
Copley Spotlight: Shorebirds from the Estate of Henry Bishop
Henry Bishop was a good friend of legendary decoy collector Dr. Peter J. Muller Jr., and there is substantial overlap between their collections. Both from Atlanta, the Muller and Bishop Collections are known for their near-mint birds by top makers, including Elmer...
Ice Bound: Stranded in Antarctica
He sat in the makeshift camp on the polar ice as a cold wind heralded the approaching long dark winter. Soon the sun would not be seen for three months. He and his men had been trapped on the ice for nearly a year. As the winter darkness descended, he could hear the...
The Magic of Hunting Memories
The following is an excerpt from Duncan Dobie’s book Dawn of American Deer Hunting Volume III. Featuring over 375 images, you'll enjoy seeing classic rifles, snowy campsites, straining meat poles, trophy antlers and more. Click here to order your copy today! Every...
J.A. Hunter’s Africa
He saw Africa raw, tapped its treasures and chafed at what his generation had wrought.
The Ghost of Arthur Woody
Duncan Dobie tells of Arthur Woody, a visionary character for forest and wildlife restoration extraordinaire in the early 20th century mountain ranges of Northern GA. The sudden spring thunderstorm stopped almost as quickly as it had started. It blew...
Hall of Fame Trainer Billy Wunderlich
As good with people as he was with dogs.
Choke Tube Mysteries Explained
Need help deciding on the best choke tube for your shotgun? Here is your guide to different choke types and choosing which is right for you. Searching for the best choke tube? Which is it? Traditional, wad-retarding, ported, un-ported, the one your buddy uses? The...
Our All-American Bear
Assigned to cover a draw high on Old Smokies’ spine, Kephart kindled a thin fire between roots of a mountain oak that wasn’t warm enough to thaw his fingers and toes. Rifle across his lap, he listened for the dogs to bay, announcing they’d caught a black bear’s trail....
The Erie Jinx
Even on the best damned walleye lake in America, sometimes you have to lower your standards a bit and catch what you can. The guy I’ll call X-Factor kept calling and leaving messages on my phone. Somebody told him that I planned to fish Lake Erie in September, and he...
Sea of Cortez: Cinnamon Teals and Pintails
Mexico offers spectacular waterfowling for those bold enough to travel there.
The Once and Future 7mm Kings
Herr Mauser may not have known he was designing the King, but by 1910 his 7x57mm cartridge had scaled the heights of big game cartridges. From roe deer to elephants, it had settled everything. See Bell, Karamojo, W.D.M. By 1970, the 7mm Remington Magnum had added...
A Presidential Pursuit: Hunters Who Led the Nation
Roosevelt and Cleveland weren’t the only presidents who spent time afield.
Travelers of the Edge
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 at once." "Like...
Ruark On Safari: The Grand Old Elephant
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. Then finally the day came, and as it so happened with the aid of a ten-year-old Samburu-Rendille maiden, that Bob got on the trail of what promised to be very big...
The Death of the Second Man-Eater
The end of a reign of terror unlike anything the outdoor world has ever seen.
Ernest Hemingway: The Final Years (1950-1961)
Despite the promise of great upland and waterfowl hunting, dear friends and a place where Ernest could escape fame and work without interruption, Mary and Papa Hemingway did not return to Idaho until the fall of 1958. During the intervening decade, Ernest spent...
A Day on the Dolphin: An Unexpected Adventure
There was urgency in his voice. My grandfather and Ed Brower went below deck. The Dolphin’s bilge pump had stopped working. Water was coming in. It’s a bright Saturday afternoon in Fairfield, Connecticut, just after 5:00; mid-April 1960. Daffodils bloom along the...
A Night Among Wolves
The hunter becomes the hunted on a dark night deep in a Russian forest.
Q Fix
There’s a rifle maker named Q, Inc. This raises a question: What does the Q reference mean? Quality? Quirky rifles? Both? Quirky is defined (in part) as unorthodox, unusual, unconventional and out of the ordinary. Q’s Fix rifle is all that plus high-quality materials,...
Culmination
Ancient walls of huge, dry-stacked, weather-worn boulders hint at a distant past and parallel us as we travel through crisp morning air along a sandy, sun-dappled road toward our shooting pegs. They look European. Beyond the stone walls, giant hardwoods rise over the...
Putah Creek
The secluded waterway became the perfect setting for a lifetime of treasured memories.
A Shotgunners Primer
Sometimes I forget how long I’ve been prowling this earth. And sometimes I forget that only a few people, like me, have been shooting shotguns for more than 70 years. As a result, I tend to get preoccupied with the fine points. The esoterica. I’ve said many times that...
Reluctant Rhino
The rivers that bounded Juja Farm, not only the Athi, but the Nairobi and Rewero, contained hippopotami and crocodiles in the deep pools. I was particularly anxious to get one of the former, and early one morning Judd and I rode off across the plains, through the...
On the Red
During the past millennium, I was fortunate to spend time in northern Texas as a wildlife biologist and hunting in south-central Oklahoma a few miles north of the Red River, the border between our two states. Drawing from my experience as a biologist and as well as a...
Morphy’s Dec. 16-18 Firearms & Militaria Auction Tops $7M
An expertly-vetted selection of rare and historical guns, armor and military artifacts drew brisk bidding at Morphy’s final Firearms & Militaria auction of 2025, which totaled more than $7 million. The 1,343-lot sale held at Morphy’s flagship gallery in...
Copley Winter Sale 2026
Copley Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary With An All-Star Lineup at the Winter Sale 2026 As Copley Fine Art Auctions celebrates its 20th year in business in 2026, the firm will host its annual Winter Sale on February 20 and 21. Consisting of approximately 640 lots, this...
Worth Mathewson Books for Sale
Click Here to View All Geoffrey Boothroyd, Boothroyd on British Shotguns. Amity, OR: Sand Lake Press, 1993. [viii], 222,[32—reprint of 1914 Webley & Scott catalog], [xv—index] pages. Hardbound in dust jacket. Illustrated, index. Copy #2 of a printing of 1500...
The Short, Dangerous Life of Paul Rainey
He had it all – money, education and looks – along with an obsession for danger that would get another man killed. He was a millionaire, Arctic explorer, big game hunter and movie producer – a man who was larger than life in everything that he did. Born September 18,...