The Ghost of Camelot Ridge
Every so often, it occurs to me that I am, without question, one of the luckiest guys in the world. It’s a brash statement, no doubt, and I hope that it doesn’t come off as bragging, because that’s not how I mean it. To me, it just means that I understand, and that...
Do You Write, Mr. Faulkner?
The hunt and the wilderness were more than just an escape for William Faulkner. They also taught him patience and self, discipline and were the inspiration for some of his greatest literary works. Early on the morning of November 10, 1950, William Faulkner received a...
Hunting Africa with a Falling Block Rifle: The Dakota M10 Single Shot
The romance of the falling block single-shot rifle has never been lost on me. The courage to trust my hunts to one sometimes has been. If you’ve ever seen that photo of Selous sitting in his camp chair beside two Kori bustards with his falling block rifle leaning...
Leo Tolstoy and The Bear Hunt
I felt something warm above my head and realized the bear was drawing my whole face into its mouth; my nose, already in it and feeling the heat of it... Have you had summer in Moscow and St. Petersburg this year? "the bundled-up June tourist asked at the train depot...
The Declination of a Bowhunter
For any hunter, fancies flip and flop and morph. Change seems a common entity. As a bowhunter, my lifelong hunting journey was no exception. A green vine, thumb-sized and flexible, served well for the bow – in those tender years of boyhood. A three-day life maximum...
The Specter of Tiger Creek
After passing the winter on the plantation, we moved, in the spring, down to a house on the coast, where we spent the summer, safe from malaria and other swamp-fevers . . . It was there that we did our salt-water fishing, and there that we had this adventure with a...
Birthday on the Manitou
As I watched, my resentment began to leave and I knew that, whatever the reason for his coming in, it must have been very important. While casting the long riffle below the pool, I became aware that I was not alone, that someone was there on the river with me. It...
A Goose on the Loose
I was sentenced to Chester Elementary School for six long years along with about 180 other unfortunate inmates. I wasn’t exactly sure what terrible offense I had committed against my parents to warrant such a harsh punishment, but I tried to serve my time with quiet...
Own an Original John Seerey-Lester Painting
Immerse yourself in the awe-inspiring world of wildlife through the extraordinary art of Sir John Seerey-Lester. Knighted in 2015 for his remarkable contributions to the preservation and portrayal of nature, Sir John is renowned for his unparalleled ability to capture...
The Dilemma
The rifle was all they talked about. A slick new Winchester Model 94 resting in the glass showcase at Harden’s Hardware. Jack coveted it. All the boys did. An inveterate hunter all of his long life, Mr. Harden smiled at the boys’ enthusiasm. Recalling his excitement...
A Hunter’s Coat
Whenever he wears the old canvas coat, he feels the heart, a hunter’s heart, of the man who wore it.
Reticles That Help You Hit
When I fired my first shot with a centerfire rifle, only about half of all hunters used scopes. Offhand, squinting down the Krag’s long barrel and struggling to hold it up, I tugged the trigger. The report savaged my ears, the steel butt my clavicle. The oil can on...
Royal Hunter
On a trip to Nepal several years ago, I was making my way apprehensively along a maze of trails to a remote tent camp in the Chitwan area. Adding to my anxiety, I had passed several fresh pugmarks of tigers, and as the light began to fade I imagined a big cat watching...
A Thousand Distant Gobbles
The following is an excerpt from Duncan Dobie’s newest book A Thousand Distant Gobbles: Turkey Tales from the Heart. This 236-page collection, featuring eight short stories and eight turkey vignettes, will warm your heart and take you on an unforgettable adventure...
Woodie Wheaton: Maine’s Grandest Guide
To his ‘sports’ and to his fellow guides, Woodie Wheaton was revered for his outdoor skills.
Drunk on Life
Be drunk,” the poet said. It might have been Ben Jonson; I don’t remember. Whomever, though, he was right. I suspect I’ve been drunk on just about everything that can be brewed, fermented or distilled. The aftermath hasn’t always been pretty, but getting there was fun...
Jane Mason: Hemingway’s Femme Fatale
Among the most accomplished outdoorswomen of her day, gorgeous Jane Mason inspired Hemingway’s nastiest femmes fatales.
Sporting Heritage Timeline
A timeline is a great mirror in which we can rediscover how truly marvelous our journey has been. Time is the protoplasm of destiny, the stay of our years as indefinite as the flesh of our bones, and within its meager allotment each man strives for immortality....
Dog Fight
What gives with such shabby treatment toward man’s best friend? After a week of sunshine, the field made muddy by heavy spring rains transformed the clover and alfalfa into a thick sea of green. There were lots of wildflowers, and the few I could identify—primrose,...
The Governor’s Trout
Sean and Patrick had chanced upon the secret to catching the Governor’s huge Loch Levens trout. And this very night would be the perfect time to pull off their daring exploit. Right under the Governor’s very nose.
The Art of Frogging
Frogs don’t carry swords or pistols, but they look as though they wish they could. Frogs are physically incapable of smiling, but they can look insufferably smug, as if they know something the rest of us don’t. Maybe they do. What I know is that frogs are biologically...
Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey TV Ratings Jump 20% in 2024
The popular Outdoor Channel series Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey saw a dramatic 20% increase in audience from 2023 to 2024. The series reached 2.38 million households with 2.7 million unique views over the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2024. In addition to the...
Dry-Cow Fishing As A Fine Art
The 1907 winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) achieved fame as a poet and novelist. He is best remembered for poems such as “Gunga Din” and “Fuzzy Wuzzy,” books such as Kim, Captain Courageous and The Jungle Book, and for coining the...
A Winter’s Bone
Damn cold. The stove has died during the night, down to coals. I’m completely awake, just opening my eyes to the dark of the cabin. The creaking I hear as I get out of the bed isn’t just the old bunk springs, it’s my bum elbow and that damn left knee. I heave an...
Eating A Mountain
I take off one afternoon to run up a mountain above my home to look for the false morels that sometimes grow in the burned forests there. It’s one of the mountains that feeds my family, one of the mountains on which we are fortunate enough some years to take a deer or...
The Best of Robert Ruark
Anyone with so much as a passing acquaintance with sporting literature is familiar with Robert Chester Ruark. He is probably the best-loved and most widely read outdoor writer of this century. Certainly, Ruark’s timeless and immensely popular books The Old Man and the...
Visions of the Bight
And it shall come to pass in those days that your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.
The Man Who Resurrected McKay Brown
It all started with an introduction by an English gentleman to two Scotsmen who would thankfully bring a huge sigh of relief to those of us who carried the torch for Scotland’s iconic round-action shotgun. At the time, a 42-year-old Scottish gunsmith named Grant...
A Rabbit Chase On Ice
All night it rained and froze. I could hear through the slightly opened windows the steady drip, drip, drip, and the low, clattering sound of the swaying branches, like the rattle of glass-pendants on a chandelier. Toward morning, the rain ceased and it turned very...
Nashville To Host Ultimate Hunting Show: SCI
If you walk the rows of the Safari Club International Convention—known as the Super Bowl of hunting shows—prepare for sensory overload. Every aisle is a trail leading to different adventures across the globe. Perhaps there’s a buffalo safari in Tanzania, a brown bear...
Karawalla Dreaming
Who needs sleep when 200-pound tarpon are rocking and rolling in your jungle river.
Buffalo Bill: Famous Hunting Parties of the Plains
No individual so personified the American West and spirit of the late 1800s as William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Pony Express rider, scout and legendary hunter, Buffalo Bill and his popular Wild West show toured the U.S. and Europe for more than 30 years. Cody...
Julie Bender: With Pyrography and Paint, She Confirms Her Rightful Place as a Wildlife and Western Artist
In the wonderful world of wildlife art, Julie Bender stands out for her dedicated pursuit of pyrography, a unique artform using heated tools to create sepia-toned, lifelike images. “Heat is my substance,” says Julie. “Hot metal tips are my tools, paper and wood are my...
When Wolves Come Calling
I spotted a dark figure moving in the dense north Canada forest to my left, and my mind somehow convinced me it was a black bear headed my way—no need to move or be ready. I was hunting wolves. Moments earlier I ceased calling when four wolves suddenly appeared down...
Chris Dorsey to be Keynote Speaker at Quail Forever’s 2025 Bobwhite Ball
Chris Dorsey has been named Featured Keynote Speaker at the 2025 Bobwhite Ball to open the 2025 Pheasant Fest & Quail Classic, March 7-9 in Kansas City, Missouri. The Bobwhite Ball is a fundraising event celebrating Quail Forever’s 20th Anniversary, highlighting...
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,...
Fine Guns, Fine Dogs
My introduction to quail hunting came nearly two decades ago on an old family plantation in the piney woods of South Georgia. Since that unforgettable moment in that picturesque woodland, I’ve been hooked on quail hunting.
Roger Pinckney: High Priest of Daufuskie Island
Most of us can say where we were when some big historic event happened. Well, I can also tell you where I was the very first time I ever read Roger Pinckney. Yes, that first paragraph of his was just that good. When I first discovered Roger,I had just recently...
Al Agnew – A Love Indefatigable
"Many people have the basic ability to draw what they see. All children love to draw. It's just that most lose interest in it for whatever reason. But I never did. I fell in love with art and the outdoors when I started fishing the stream by my house as a kid, and...
John Madison Culler: Tinkhamtown Bound
The old man holds my hand in a frosty grip. But his weak, raspy voice and eyes warmly thank me for being his friend for almost 50 years. Staring past his fish tank and sagging shelves of sporting books through a window and into the far distance, he silently raises his...
A Killing in Saskatchewan
It was a scene of primal, primitive savagery; it seemed like something out of a corrupted Moby Dick, with the inept, half-crazed Wolf in the role of Queequeg, the aboriginal harpooner who prided himself on his lethal professionalism. Below Elizabeth Falls, where it...
The Old Timer, Wandering Always Like The Wind
I have often sat, solitary, in twilight's slow dissolution to gray, awaiting the unmistakable sound of hooves as they rustle their way through the dusk. It is a time of relentless solitude, and in the whispered vespers of the hemlocks, there is a fleeting sadness that...
Finding Socrates
The story of how a boy found a stray puppy that went on to be a great pheasant dog for him and his dad. A dog surprised us the spring of my 10th birthday when Aunt Helen banged the screen door behind her. As she shuffled in the dark of dawn toward the Sunday paper, a...
The Day I Found Myself – A Wood Duck Hunt
The day I found myself, the wood duck came full-speed. From upriver and darting among cypress and willows — spilling air from his wings. Things had not been going particularly well, one single and specific vehicle of distress difficult to identify. Perhaps it was...
Dennis Anderson – Art With Attitude
"Dennis identifies with big, powerful animals; the bold and the dangerous," Smith says. "But he shows you some nuance of them that you've never seen. It's like he knows we have some preconceived notion of what a certain animal is, so he doesn't bother with that." The...
The Family Rifle
Remington called it “The Gamemaster.” Serial number 260,000, one of more than a million made between 1952 and 1982. We met on the beach. I was doing turtle work for the DNR, she was on vacation. I was registered with the Feds with authority to possess and transport...
Desert Dreams
It was a dream come true working with desert bighorns for research, and soon my dream of taking a bighorn ram would be realized. Less than 75 yards away the desert bighorn ram was indeed going down! As he faltered, I took off running. The ram staggered and fell. I...
Every Man Goes Out Alone
It is not a thing life prepares one for, no matter how much meat has been secured in this fashion following a successful elk or deer hunt. The name fits. Clyde. I picture a "Clyde" and see leathery features beneath a black, grease-crusted Stetson, floppy leather chaps...
Roosevelt’s Last Hunt
"The man should have youth and strength who seeks adventure in the wide, waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid the streaming jungles of the tropics, or on the deserts of sand or of snow. He must...
Robert Ruark: A Man of Startling Contrasts
Robert Ruark could be a tough and cruel rogue, but he was also considerate, fun-loving and generous to a fault.