America’s Greatest Gun Writers and Their Books

America’s Greatest Gun Writers and Their Books

Gun writers are not a uniquely American phenomenon, but there’s little argument that collectively those who have been citizens of this country rank in a class by themselves. Sure, there have been some fine European scribes, especially British ones, who have written on...

Swimming with the Lizard

Swimming with the Lizard

Swimming with the Lizard is one of 30 chapters in Larry Chesney’s Palmetto Creek: A tale of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Order your copy today! Never the expert butcher, it took Harry nearly an hour to gut and skin the buck, it was already 3:00, and the other boys...

Hunter’s Guide: Classic American Hammer Shotguns

Hunter’s Guide: Classic American Hammer Shotguns

Some of the finest shotguns ever made in America were hammer shotguns produced in the last decades of the 19th century. However, by the end of World War I, most had been retired to gun cabinets to be only admired, not fired. Their barrels had not been designed for the...

Special Auction: Rare A. B. Frost Original Paintings

Special Auction: Rare A. B. Frost Original Paintings

This remarkable collection of six original paintings, believed to be the work of renowned American artist A.B. Frost, once adorned the walls of a grand mansion in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The mansion was owned by Frank M. Vandling, a prominent Postmaster General of the...

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 19 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 19 Trailer

Chris Dorsey and Steve Hicks return to Tanzania in pursuit of massive Cape buffalo, and are joined by an experienced big game hunter who is baptized into the world of dangerous game. Check out Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey on Outdoor Channel every Monday at...

Sending One Bullet Elegantly

Sending One Bullet Elegantly

It is not necessary to kill with one shot. Neither must you find your mouth with a soft taco on the first try.

Teller of Tranquil Tales: Colonel Harold P. Sheldon

Teller of Tranquil Tales: Colonel Harold P. Sheldon

We rejoice through Sheldon’s reminders in knowledge that so long as sportsmen can dream of field and stream there will be tales to enchant and endure.  As this column is being written, we find ourselves in a situation where ample doses of serenity, common sense and...

The Haunting

The Haunting

The haunting of late fall didn’t come from ghoulish goblins, horror houses or a second-rate slasher flick. This haunting wasn’t even a part of Halloween, but was instead a few weeks after, in mid-November.  The day’s awakening brought the ghastly remains of Lake...

Pheasants in the Mist

Pheasants in the Mist

The October sky darkens and melts into the horizon, hovering briefly between shades of cobalt blue and gray. Barren fields, pocked and ridged like a nuclear wasteland, stretch out on either side of the truck as we speed through the twilight, tires singing on the...

Premier Firearms & Antique Sporting Advertising

Premier Firearms & Antique Sporting Advertising

SPONSORED CONTENT My wife constantly asks, “Has anything cool shown up at the gallery lately?” and the answer is always “Yes!” She oversees a hospital lab so it’s not like factory .410 Winchester Model 21’s (pictured above) or complete Winchester Cartridge Boards...

A Legacy of Decoys: Cameron McIntyre

A Legacy of Decoys: Cameron McIntyre

One of the first duck hunters I met when I moved to the coast of Georgia in 1968 was a game warden named Dick McIntyre. He lived just a hop and a jump across the Savannah River in Beaufort, South Carolina. And no, I didn’t meet him because I was guilty of some game...

Hunters Lost

Hunters Lost

They knew what they were about. Hubris may have taken some. Others died innocent.

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 18 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 18 Trailer

This week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features three hunters in pursuit of black bear as Dorsey invites Sporting Classics Magazine CEO Duncan Grant and COO Wayne Nanney to join him for an unforgettable adventure in Saskatchewan. Check out Sporting...

The Rising of the Sun and the Running of the Deer

The Rising of the Sun and the Running of the Deer

The dogs struck in the old ricefield bottom, grown up now in a great snarl of water-trees, the bell-trunked tupelo, sweet gum and soft maple, the ground beneath a foot deep with the soggy litter from the last hurricane surge, driftwood snags and ricks of dead spartina...

Skyfall: Parallax, Parsecs & Gravity

Skyfall: Parallax, Parsecs & Gravity

I’m 10 years old and lying on the grass in the backyard of my grandfather’s rambling South Carolina farmhouse some 65 years ago. I’m staring straight up. The sun has just set, and the late fall sky is an imagination-inspiring, vibrant palette: bright yellow-orange in...

Silence is Golden

Silence is Golden

Whether from the muzzle of a 416 Rigby, the tailpipe of a Harley Davidson, or the mouth of a politician, the abrupt release of a lot of hot air generates a bang. Usually a painfully loud bang.  In a historically odd turn of events, politicians have helped quiet...

Chris Dorsey and Kim Monson: Proposition 127

Chris Dorsey and Kim Monson: Proposition 127

https://www.sportingclassicstv.com/medias/Kim_Monson_interview.wav   Denver, Colorado-- Chris Dorsey appeared as a guest on the popular Kim Monson Show podcast and radio program to discuss Colorado’s shortsighted Proposition 127, and the overall problems with...

Abel Chapman: Forgotten Hunting Writer and Conservationist

Abel Chapman: Forgotten Hunting Writer and Conservationist

Many of the literary figures from the Victorian and Edwardian eras who hunted extensively in Africa and wrote about their experiences are virtual household names among today’s armchair adventurers. Foremost among them is Theodore Roosevelt, although obviously the...

The Beauty of the Single-Shot

The Beauty of the Single-Shot

My very first shotgun was a single-shot break-open Springfield 20-gauge. I have no recollection whatsoever about its choke or even its barrel length. For a long time, it was the only gun that I had, and I shot everything available with it. I honestly don’t remember...

The Final Charge: Roosevelt’s Bull Moose

The Final Charge: Roosevelt’s Bull Moose

A loner by nature, the eastern bull moose is a completely different animal during the rut, when it wages savage fights for dominance with other males. In the fall of 1915, 57-year-old Theodore Roosevelt went big game hunting for the last time. It would prove to be one...

Coyotes

Coyotes

It was the last day of deer season. Dalton had not hunted all year and he questioned the point of going when the alarm sounded. Yet his wife rousted him from bed.  “Go. It’s what your dad would have wanted,” she said. Dalton’s father had died the week before. A man...

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 17 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 17 Trailer

This week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features a dream fulfilled for the lucky winner of SCI's Adventure of a Lifetime Sweepstakes with a hunt for big game in New Zealand and an impressive haul of prizes. Check out Sporting Classics with Chris...

The Russell Travelling Sportsman Classic Build

The Russell Travelling Sportsman Classic Build

Introducing the Travelling Sportsman Classic Build A Russell classic, the original Traveling Sportsman Chukka was developed for Sporting Classics magazine, who had limited space to pack for their remote international adventures. The goal was to be able to hunt, hike,...

Rigby for Rifles

Rigby for Rifles

From its Dublin origins, London base and forays to California, plus a traditional client base in Africa, John Rigby & Co. represent an important component of the ever-deepening connectivity that defines the modern world.

Dump the Slump

Dump the Slump

Ralph Waldo Emerson once pronounced, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It was, and is, true in the context that he meant it. It’s important to not allow yourself to be confined to “the box.” In this day and time, you’ve got to be able to look...

September’s Lessons

September’s Lessons

It was the kind of heat that has weight—like an enormous hand pressing down. Every so often a puffy cloud would pass, obscuring the sun and providing a few moments of blessed relief. But then the sky would clear, the sun’s unblinking gaze would hammer down once again,...

New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns

New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns

Storied is not exclusive to price tag or class. Occasionally the twain rub shoulders and have a bountiful supply of tales to tell, but there are no guarantees. This Purdey, however, had it all. Scratches and dings and rubbed-smooth spots. Cost? Likely something...

Home Coming Whitetails

Home Coming Whitetails

The rustle of fallen white oak leaves littering the ground 30 feet below demanded my immediate attention. There, patches of brown moved. A deer! Heartbeat racing! Breathing? I am not certain I even took a breath.  A solid hour before first light and under the cover of...

Down On the Border: Mearns’ Quail

Down On the Border: Mearns’ Quail

I’d been following my Brittany, Tess, through the steep, rocky canyons of southeastern Arizona’s Coronado National Forest for the better part of an hour when her bell fell silent. I found her upslope—bug-eyed, trembling and stretched out on point—at the base of a live...

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 16 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 16 Trailer

This week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey is an adventure in the Gulf Stream as Chris Dorsey and friends are after tight lines on saltwater. The fly fishing adventure starts in Cape Cod in pursuit of striped bass, then heads south to Puerto Rico to...

Rifle Cartridges: All in the Family

Rifle Cartridges: All in the Family

The old, plodding 30-’06 Springfield, for instance, is not just yesterday’s news; it’s moldy, too, and so is anyone who hunts with one, according to millennials or whatever they call the most recent come-of-age generation. In contrast, the 6.5 RPM from Weatherby is a...

Fair Winds, My Brother: Daufuskie Family

Fair Winds, My Brother: Daufuskie Family

Forget about deer stands,” he said. “Just boost your woman high up in a live oak late in the afternoon. That way you’ll know she’ll still be there when you come to fetch her home after sunset.”  We were on his front porch, out of the wind on a chilly afternoon, easing...

Long-Range Shooting at Game

Long-Range Shooting at Game

There is probably no subject connected with shooting about which so much nonsense has been written and spoken as the distance at which game can be killed with the rifle. This was bad enough in the days of muzzleloaders. It has become doubly bad in these days of...

Twin Tubes: Side-by-Side or Over/Under

Twin Tubes: Side-by-Side or Over/Under

The double shotgun took its form when Joseph Manton (1766 – 1835) put two shotgun barrels side by side with their independent flint locks. Manton spent lots of his time working on explosive ordinance for the British Army, but we fondly remember him for establishing...

Robert Churchill: Ballistics Expert & Bespoke Gunmaker

Robert Churchill: Ballistics Expert & Bespoke Gunmaker

Think of the name Churchill and Churchill Downs might come to mind with mint juleps, outlandish women’s hats and sleek Arabian steeds or perhaps Winston Spencer Churchill who guided Britain through some of the darkest days of World War II. His quotes are many, but...

Legacy Gifts

Legacy Gifts

It was nearing midnight that Thanksgiving evening many years ago. The fire had waned to pulsing orange embers, the room captive to darkness beyond its failing glow, but for the single, small table lamp by Daddy’s chair. The night was mellow as moonlight on a meadow,...

Parkwest Arms SD-10 Falling Block

Parkwest Arms SD-10 Falling Block

Sleek, trim, light, strong, yet elegant, this U.S.-made iteration of the old dropping breech block action captures all of the falling block’s potential.

Springfield’s Emissary: Shooting Chocolate Cake

Springfield’s Emissary: Shooting Chocolate Cake

Amazon got its start in a garage. Google was started in a dorm room and eventually upgraded to a garage. Today’s Springfield Armory beats them both— it got its start in a corn crib before eventually upgrading to building M1A rifles in a former diner. The original...

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 15 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 15 Trailer

This week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features an epic hunt for red stag and fallow deer in the stunning mountains of New Zealand. Chris Dorsey returns to the south island to pursue big game with his old friend John Scurr in an adventure that...

A Joyous Process: Joseph Sulkowski

A Joyous Process: Joseph Sulkowski

In his vivid sporting scenes and in his nostalgic still-lifes of well-worn guns and fishing tackle, classically trained artist Joseph Sulkowski continually imparts his notion that a painting “should look like a lot of fun.”

Black Dog Handlers

Black Dog Handlers

For the past 43 years, on the first Monday in March, after the close of bobwhite quail season on the fabled plantations of the Red Hills Region that that spans Tallahassee, Florida, north to Thomasville, Georgia, the invitation-only Georgia-Florida Shooting Dog...

Old Tree Stands

Old Tree Stands

If only old tree stands could talk, imagine the stories they could tell. Stories about opening days, big bucks, little bucks, deer killed, deer missed. Maybe even stories about what thoughts pass through a hunter’s mind as time goes by sitting in a deer stand.  The...

Charles Sheldon: Visionary Sportsman

Charles Sheldon: Visionary Sportsman

Born in Rutland, Vermont, on October 18, 1867, for the first three-plus decades of his life Charles Alexander Sheldon led a fairly normal upper-class existence. He came from a well-to-do family involved in marble quarrying and spent his formative years with New...

An Artist In Big Game Country: Almost Skunked!

An Artist In Big Game Country: Almost Skunked!

Often, it is my custom to make careful pencil sketches of the characteristic rocks and growth of a locality, and from time to time an adventure is the result of the quiet and waiting. On a remote lake in Maine, two deer were feeding at the water’s edge, and just...

Brays Island Plantation: Your Sporting Life Awaits

Brays Island Plantation: Your Sporting Life Awaits

SPONSORED CONTENT Brays Island Plantation is a unique coastal community dedicated to providing residents and their guests with an array of recreational opportunities suited to their outdoor lifestyle. To this end, Brays Island meticulously maintains an expansive...

Ithaca Doubles: Overlooked Classics

Ithaca Doubles: Overlooked Classics

Like many enterprises of the time, its origins were humble. It began in a rough little wooden structure perched precariously on the steep gorge of Fall Creek near Ithaca, New York. The virtue of the location was its abundant water power, and the building had already...

Ezra Bogg’s Moose Hunt

Ezra Bogg’s Moose Hunt

“Yep” sighed old Ez, as he bunched a forkful of chewing and elevated it into the gap in his features, “I’ve seen ’em.  An’ I can say that jedgin’ by what I see of  ’em they’re tough customers. I hain’t a-hankerin’ to renew my acquaintance with ’em—they’re a trifle too...

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 14 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 14 Trailer

When bobwhite quail populations in West Texas plummeted in 2010, concerned hunters took notice and banded together to fund research to find a solution to the mystery.  Now the efforts from the Rolling Plains Quail Research Foundation are bearing fruit for wildlife in...

Tarpon Fishing & Luxury Living in Boca Grande

Tarpon Fishing & Luxury Living in Boca Grande

This magnificent Boca Grande home features 6,207 feet of air- conditioned space and 150 feet of waterfront on Gasparilla Sound. Five high-ceilinged bedrooms and 5 1/2 baths offer luxurious personal space for your family and guests. A Wolf range with double oven,...