Arthur Savage and His Inimitable 99
Unlikely seed of cattle, coffee and a torpedo, his rifle failed. Its revival blessed hunters for a century. Gashes in the old snow pulled me into a riot of swamp-grass. Yards into it, a speck of red winked from the tangle. Confirmation, not a promise. I’d called a...
Winchester’s Haunted House
Said to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed with Winchester rifles, the home is an interesting site even without the superstitions.
Most Embarrassing Mistake In Gunmaking
For gunmaker Al Biesen, misspelling Jack O’Connor’s name was a tiny mistake, but something he would never be able to live down. Spokane was as far from her family as my rightfully cautious bride would move, at least in the direction of Montana’s elk country, so we set...
In The Court Of The Ruffed Grouse King
In the pine barren, the pasture’s edge, the orchard, this is his court . . . and we are honored to be there. In an orchard, long abandoned, we make our way toward a solitary tree, one of few bearing apples this fall. That it has fruit at all strikes me as promising...
The Great Buffalo Con Job
“The Cape buffalo has a well-earned reputation for being able to absorb a magazine full of thumb-sized bullets and still have enough meanness left to grind his adversary into the ground.”
Whiskey and Palaver at the Dying of the Sun
Moses threw another load of sticks upon the coals. The fire crackled, sparks flew and smoke rolled. Zambia, in the valley of the Great Zambezi. Out on the sandbars, hippos were grunting up dates, a-hunka-hunka-hunka. A leopard coughed in the gathering dark and the...
Mamba Mayhem
Deep in the wilds of Africa, dealing with a deadly snake in your camp latrine can be a messy proposition. One of the most terrifying encounters I have ever had with a dangerous snake took place on an early October morning in Zambia, on the Munyamadzi River. It had...
Theodore Roosevelt’s First Buffalo Hunt
One September morning in the late 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt had a sudden desire to hunt buffalo on the western prairie. He had been honing his ranch-craft by staying at a cow camp a few miles up the Little Missouri River from his ranch in the Badlands of South Dakota....
Hunt for the Mystery Deer
The legendary hunter sets out to find the little ghost deer of the high Mexican desert. All of my life I had heard of a delicate little fairy deer even smaller than the regular Arizona whitetail. He’s a tiny little fellow and the smallest deer that scientists...
Remembering Guy Bignell
Guy Bignell, widely hailed as the heart of Griffin and Howe, passed away on October 6. Bignell opened Griffin and Howe in 1999 at Greenwich, Connecticut. He assumed the role as president and CEO from 2007 to 2015, then became the company’s fine arms specialist and low...
Old Three Toes
"Three Toes," said an old rancher, with a kind of reverence, "is the fastest, longest-winded wolf that ever lived." A smile swept across the craggy, weather-beaten face of Clyde F. Briggs as he read a telegram from the U. S, Biological Survey: "Advise when you can...
A Day with Egyptian Quail
In the shadows of the pyramids, the author and his odd group enjoy excellent hunting for a migratory species of quail.
Bo Whoop: The Enduring Mystique
It was born of genius, destined for fame, and fated for mystery. Together, to make it the single-most fascinating and enduring legend in the multi-colored history of the American sporting scene. Its name was “Bo Whoop.” A custom-built, ten-pound, twelve gauge,...
Lo, the Long Brown Ridges
To the deer hunter, sometimes black is white and up is down. It all depends on your point of view. Even now, I can feel the lucid silence of a cedar swamp – tomblike, tangled, ancient as the Book. And above the swamp the brown ridge rests in perpetual peace. This is...
Thank You, Oregon’s Animal-Rights Activists
Somebody ought to send Oregon’s animal-rights activists a thank-you note. In trying to outlaw hunting, fishing, and farming, they have made an excellent case for organizing the people they’d like to shut down. Their Initiative Petition 28 would have removed...
My Purdey: Much More than a Gun
Endowed with seven decades of shooting tradition and the souls of two men, Purdey No. 21390 came as a gift and will be passed on as such. But for now, it is a living extension of its owner’s nerves and brain. If a man lives in the gun he loves and shoots, then my...
Trout Unlimited Can Find a Lawyer—but Not a Spine on Amendment 83
Somebody ought to manufacture fishing waders specifically for sitting on the fence. Reinforced seat. Extra padding. Absolutely no traction. Send the first pair to Trout Unlimited, which seems to need considerably more preparation to defend the right to fish than most...
Two Sports
Men of remarkable talent and courage, Er Shelley and Paul Rainey brought a unique form of hunting to Africa. As the 20th century dawned, the gamelands near Memphis beckoned two very different young men. One was a pointing dog trainer from rural Michigan, uncannily...
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...
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...
Pa’tridge Fever
The proper hunting man experiences a special reverence for grouse country.
Sporting Classics TV Season 8 Episode 7 Trailer
Make sure to catch this week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey, featuring an adventure over land, air and sea as Luke and Nate Dorsey pursue elk, pheasant and trout at Colorado's stunning Elk Creek Ranch. The series airs on Outdoor Channel on Monday at...
Why I Stand with Ducks Unlimited
A mallard dropping through flooded timber is a pretty good argument for getting out of bed at four in the morning. So is a Labrador trembling beside you, convinced that you are the only thing standing between her and the greatest day of her life. In those moments, I’m...
New York Was Far Away
The valley was long and narrow, filled with the green of rich grass and the pale gold of frost-touched arctic willow. Along the edges of the valley was a thick border of spruce, but not far up the mountainsides, the woods played out in a scattering of scrubby trees....
South African Rangers Dehorn Rhinos to Save Their Lives
At the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve bordering Kruger National Park in South Africa, a single engine aircraft circles overhead, looking for endangered African white rhinoceros hidden in the bush. Down below a ruby red Raven II helicopter patiently waits with a...
The Guides Who Give Us Their World
I didn’t know Cabot Pitts. But when I read the message from Keith Atcheson and Jack Atcheson Jr. announcing his death, I found myself thinking about an awful lot of people I do know—and how much of my life I owe them. Some of the best friends I’ve made have been...
Call to Glory
They mended our imagination. The most astounding canine players ever to grace the century-and-a-quarter theater of American pointing dog trials. Can we help but suppose which was best? Sioux, La Besita, Palamonium. Luminary, Red Water Rex, Native Tango. Toe the...
The 270 Winchester: A Very Fast Ball
The Model T, Coolidge, then Depression defined the 1920s. Winchester added the 270. It alone endures. Night’s chill lies late in Spoon Creek. I slipped into cold wool and left the tent before dawn was a pale smudge. Breath white, I climbed through the timber to a bald...
The Old Maid
Good covey dogs are, as Lincoln said of Civil War generals, “as plenty as blackberries.” Hardy, spirited rangers that will put up whatever there is to be put up and give you your money’s worth day in and day out. That is, in good bird country. But if you are ever...
A Man-Killing Bear
Shocked and angered by his friend’s horrible death, the old trapper was determined to get revenge. Almost every trapper past middle age who has spent his life in the wilderness has stories to tell about exceptionally savage bears. One of these stories was told in my...
Autumn’s Greatest Hits: My Favorite Upland Bird Hunts
Choosing a favorite upland bird hunt is like choosing a favorite dog. You may have an answer, but it is probably best not to say it too loudly within earshot of the others. Besides, upland hunting was never meant to be ranked. Its pleasures are too varied, its birds...
The Last Of the Outlaw Gunners
Or they were going to be, until a gator got in the way.
‘Ol Settler of Deep Hole
No fish had ever exerted a greater influence on the thoughts, the imagination, the manners or the moral character of his pursuers. Uncle Eb was a born lover of fun. But he had a solemn way of fishing that was no credit to a cheerful man. It was the same when he played...
Roosevelt the Rifleman
With horse and rifle he explored frontiers, indulging a lust that would transcend politics. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. defined the bully pulpit, spared the teddy bear and led the strenuous life. “I do not believe,” he declared in a late retrospective, “that any...
Rite of Passage
In a single defining moment, a young boy comes to understand both privilege and purpose. I suppose there is truly a time for all things, and that only in their own time will they spark with the unique consecration of all that is original, as in a scarlet dawn, a...
Great Misses
“I have never missed a deer!” proudly proclaimed a relatively new hunter sitting across from me at a late November campfire. I glanced at Luke Clayton, my longtime friend and hunting partner, who was sitting next to him. He smiled and wagged his head in a negative...
Death of the Red-Winged Mallard
A classic Story from 1900 by H.S. Canfield. It took Robert Lee Briggs five years, working off and on, to slay the red-winged mallard. The pursuit got to be so much of a passion with him that it hurt his business, for he was a market-hunter on the southwestern coast of...
A Pair of Jacks
When I looked out the kitchen window one September morning and saw the first tinges of yellow on the big maple’s leaves, I knew it was time. Hurriedly, I scarfed down a light breakfast and put Katherine’s kettle on the woodstove, knowing full-well that she would...
Aim of the Hunterman
Pitted with rust and powder-scalds, the old musket would explode with a roar that sounded like the crack of doom. And now, in the dusky hands of the Hunterman, it was all that stood between life and a terrible death. The negroes in the golden-wide ricefield, as they...
My Dog’s Better Than Your Dog
America’s most popular hunting breeds—and the people who wouldn’t dream of owning anything else. Tell a hunter his truck is junk and he might agree. Suggest he bought the wrong dog and you’d better arrange another ride home. Breed loyalists run unpaid publicity...
Don’t Fence Me In
Pronghorns numbers are benefiting thanks to funding by Pittman-Robertson. A state highway that reels off into the distance looks like a sun-scorched, gray-black ribbon laid over tawny grassy hills. Lonely locust trees here and there over much of the West favor their...
Why I Taught My Boys to be Hunters
I have said that my hunting has often been solitary; but that was chiefly in the early days. During the last 25 years, I have rarely taken to the woods and fields in the shooting season without having one or more of my own sons with me. Few human relationships are...
Uncle Dan’s Last Hurrah
Not many American guns are more thoughtfully designed nor better built than Uncle Dan's New Lefever. Dan Lefever had a knack, if you want to call it that, for getting crossways with business partners. In a career that spanned fifty years, he invented some of the...
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...
Zane Grey – High Seas Prophet
So what can we say of Zane Grey, this dentist turned novelist turned outdoor writer? He was a dentist and photographer and a storyteller. He was one hell of a baseball player. He was husband and father and perpetual wanderer and a hunter and fisherman who once held...
Nothing To Do for Three Weeks
He was a pine knot millionaire—hunting partridge on the tote roads and ducks on the lake, catching big crappies and trout in the rivers, gathering blueberries for food and pine knots for the fire, all work fit for a king. I left long before daylight, alone but not...
The Adults in the Room: Why I Support the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation
Washington is full of people willing to tell a sportsman what he wants to hear. Finding someone who will tell him what he needs to know takes more insight. That is one reason the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation stays near the top of my call list. I’ve served on...
Down in the Bend With Riley
The eloquent writings of Nash Buckingham (1880-1971) were relatively unknown until Derrydale Press published several of his books in the 1930s. But “Mr. Buck,” as he came to be known to his legions of devoted readers, had been writing magazine articles for years. This...
The Sport of Kings on the Yorkshire Moors
The incomparable electricity of driven grouse. Some sporting destinations allow success to be manufactured to some degree. Pheasants and red-legged partridges can be reared and released. Fish can be stocked. Habitat can be improved, predators controlled, and...
Bones In the Heat
At first light, Core Hart climbed the outside spiral stair onto his flat roof. He sat down at the rooftop picnic table and, using a spotting scope, scanned the turtle grass flat that was his front yard. A half mile out, at the edge of the flat, he marked a pod of...