The Men Behind the Scenes
Theodore Roosevelt’s historic safari through British East Africa was more than a year in the planning and took nearly a year to complete. It became the most significant expedition ever taken on the Dark Continent. TR’s safari collected more specimens and identified...
Jack O’Connor Guns, Art and Books now at Auction
Almost every hunter of Social Security age as well as those of a more recent vintage has been influenced by the writings of Jack O’Connor. For that matter, many readers have likely pondered what it would be like to be Bradford O’Connor sharing their father’s...
The Illustrated Gun
From exquisitely decorated pistols to firearms adorned with precious materials, the world of fine firearms has provided ample opportunity for artistic expression throughout the centuries. In the past, every royal palace in Europe featured a cabinet d’arms displaying...
The Heart of a Sheep Hunter
Wind seems to be an almost constant on mountain peaks in sheep country. Exposed on a ridgeline in Idaho’s highest mountain range, the wind whipped hard and relentlessly as our party of three picked apart the terrain with spotting scopes mounted on tripods. It had...
We Shot the Tamales
The O’Connor family enjoys fabulous hunting south of the border.
Auction Exclusive: Beretta SO Sparviere Marco Polo
Seven hundred years after the explorer's passing, a tribute one-off shotgun will be up for auction live and online January 24th during the Wild Sheep Foundation’s Sheep Show® Convention in Reno. Click Here to Register, Watch Live & Bid Seven centuries ago, a man...
The Promised Land
It was one of those golden autumn days you read about and, as they worked their way through the stand of bluestem grass and past the little plum thicket at the bottom, Dean couldn’t help but smile at Maggie, the pup, bouncing along with all the exuberance of a...
An Afternoon on the Handles
This story is Tom Kelly at his inimitable best – evocative, filled with emotion and in some senses, downright eerie.
The Surrender
The old man sat on the cold ground leaning against a cherry tree, taking in the fields before him. Harvest time was past, and a cornfield lay fallow under the slate gray sky of a cold fall day. The stalks lay broken and twisted from the event; their bounty taken. The...
An Unreal Buck
“Y’all be inside our preserve, where we hunt whitetails before the opening of Oklahoma’s regular deer seasons,” said Dusty Vickrey, manager of the Choctaw Hunting Lodge. “The enclosure is big with a lot of hardwoods and pines, deep cuts, tall grass and extremely dense...
The Wonderful Fool
Harrison walked out of the room, smiling and easy on the razor-thinness that was the surface of himself, closing the door quietly on the still woman in the bed and the nurse with the calm professional air. Doctor Joe was there, an old friend with whom he’d killed a...
The Ghost of Christmas Present
I parked in the cul-de-sac where the suburban world ended. Unhitching my rod from the roof of my pickup, I crossed the bridge over the thundering creek and walked past the pump housing that the cougar liked to lie upon in the midwinter sun. Once again, I had passed...
Old Ephraim Part 2 of 2
Click Here to Read Part 1 Early next morning we were over at the elk carcass, and as we expected, found that the bear had eaten his fill during the night. His tracks showed him to be an immense fellow and were so fresh that we doubted if he had left long before we...
A Good Thing
SNOW AND RAIN tracked nearly horizontal, and tiny shards of ice bit into our faces when we turned into the wind as we stood overlooking the falls, a hundred feet below us on this cold Christmas Eve. “This is a good thing,” my brother declared. And so it was. Christmas...
A Christmas in Moose Land
This article originally appeared in the January 1899 issue of Outing. The world was white. Day after day the cold had held, the only changes being from fair to snow and from snow to fair. Such days as the fair ones had been! The sun blazing from flawless blue, the...
Old Ephraim Part 1 of 2
Wounded or cornered, the grizzly will attack with a headlong, reckless fury that renders him one of the most dangerous of wild beasts. As the restless frontiersmen pressed out over the Western plains, they encountered in the grizzly a beast of far greater bulk and...
A Week Before Christmas
One morning, a December long-ago, a week before Christmas, Bob walked into a local store in Millerton, New York. The owner, Phil, a friend, was behind the counter taking care of a customer as Bob came in from the cold. “Late night, Bob,” he said. That wasn’t a...
The Price of a Dog: Part 2 of 3
Part Two: The Wager Click Here to Read Part One Mike did his part. I turned him out of the box, which was sitting at the rear of the wagon and facing the rear. He set out headed straight away behind us, which is what Mr. Reed wanted. He liked to show that his dogs...
22-Caliber Christmas
Could there be anything more American than a boy receiving his first 22-caliber rifle on Christmas morning? Ah, the excitement, the early awakening before the rest of the household. The faint rustling of paper downstairs—was it the dog rummaging through the wrappings...
Blue Ridge Bear Hunt
Bear hunting sure has changed here in the southern Appalachians.
Stalked by the Predator
It was November in rural Virginia, solidly into whitetail season. Well south of Richmond, with a respectful nod to musician Oliver Anthony. I was on a huge farm, owned by a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who had become a key mentor to me. I had no idea going in that...
P.O. Ackley: Man of Sharp Shoulders
“That’s gone. It sold right away. Sorry.” I had phoned on an ad for a rebarreled Mauser. He did sound genuinely sorry. My reply—“Oh,”—must have had an authentic ring, too. I truly was crushed. “You wouldn’t want a Springfield, would you?” As if he owed me something....
Dad Wasn’t a Hunter
But he was nuts about baseball.
Remembering Mr. Buck
Perhaps the greatest Nash Buckingham story was the one he lived.
Don’t Sell Pronghorns Short!
Pronghorns offer one of North America’s finest sporting opportunities. Spotting and stalking these high-plains drifters is just plain fun! Confession, at least in open form, is said to be good for the soul. With my particular soul being in dire need of the slightest...
The Hard Life of an Elephant Hunter
From: African Hunting and Adventure Ramshua—29th. I found five bull elephants, gave chase, and singled and drove out the largest, and gave him a couple of pills to make him quiet; he shortly turned and stood at bay, about forty yards off, and then came on with a...
Single-shot Ground Hippo
“I’ve been talking with Randall Pence at Ruger,” said my friend Lee Newton. “I’ve got a Ruger No. 1, chambered in .450-400 NE 3-inch, that we think you need to take to Africa and shoot something big! You interested? It’s a sweet-shooting rifle. You likely know a...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 23 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features a unique hunt for giant red stag and elk in Oklahoma for two experienced hunters. It's a New Zealand hunt without the jet lag! The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm ET, with additional airings every...
Chasing the Silver Ghost
There are many places to chase tarpon—Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Ascension Bay, the Caribbean, Belize and various jungle rivers up and down Central America, the lower Gulf and Atlantic coasts, even some rivers in Africa. All encounters with these silver-plated...
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...
To the Top
To the top!” I said, grinning, when Jake asked where we were going while pointing nearly straight up to a spot where two giant peaks collide. For few such as us, this is where dreams of trophy bighorn sheep, elk, and mule deer begin. Five hours later Jake Worthington...
Karamojo Crossing
The rains were gone but the rivers were still swollen. He looked on in amazement as the men calmly walked into the river, each man carrying a big elephant tusk across his shoulder. As they neared the middle of the river, they continued to walk until one by one they...
A Southern Christmas Hunt
South Carolina’s first poet laureate recounts a holiday hunt on the family plantation.
Blindsided
It had been a chain of thrills. First, the answer of one bull from the top of the darkening ridge, screaming, rolling into a chorus of chuckles, earnest and deep. Then a second, 200 yards right, angry and urgent. And yet another, in the canyon below, maybe a half-mile...
The Christmas Rifle
This story by an unknown author reminds us the best gift of all is sharing with those in need.
Gunkholing for Ducks
In September, the summer folks trade their beach lives to head home. The public boat ramp near my home, the one that once was clogged with all sorts of recreational craft, is deserted. It’s a busy process to haul and winterize boats tied up in slips just as it is to...
Roosevelt’s Smoldering Savannah
A raging wildfire threatens to bring President Roosevelt's safari to a quick and untimely end. It was a terrifying sight that greeted Theodore Roosevelt as he stepped from his tent that morning in 1910, and it was something that could have brought a costly and...
On The Nose
Once merely a bullet’s front end, the tip has become an engineering project. Here’s why.
A Thanksgiving Day’s Bear Hunt
Thanksgiving Eve at length came around and I was off for Norfolk with the lightest of hearts and the gayest smile I had worn for many days. My friend and companion in arms, Mr. Parkins, met me there, and away we went together, as jolly a pair as could be found in a...
These Old Shoes
Decades became years, years became days, days became hours, and it seemed I had been born only yesterday. Peering north , the creek appeared to narrow to little more than a trickle before vanishing altogether up where the lush green grass glinted backlit in that...
Your Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide
From the Producers of Sporting Classics TV If there is a hunter or angler on your holiday shopping list, we’ve got you covered with this season’s Holiday Gift Guide for the Outdoors. This season, give the gift of adventure – after all, the real present is not what’s...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 22 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey returns to the Iberian peninsula for an unforgettable wingshooting and big game combo as Chris Dorsey and friends enjoy driven partridge and Ibex hunting . The episode is a celebration of the fantastic hunting culture...
The Perfect Thanksgiving
Perfection is in the eyes of the beholder. Southeastern Wisconsin is far from a waterfowl hunting destination. It lacks the open spaces and accessibility of the Canadian prairies, the expansive agricultural fields of the Dakotas, the multitude of privately managed...
A Thanksgiving Blessing
For more than 50 years I’ve been going up there. If it happens to be during hunting season – that is, deer season in the fall or turkey season in the spring – I usually have a rifle or shotgun in hand. For at least 30 of those years, my aging mother-in-law always...
A “Thanksgiving” Shooting Trip
On Thanksgiving, a shoot at Hooper’s Island in Chesapeake Bay furnished some experiences that will not soon be forgotten. Our party consisted of three—my hosts, Bert and his brother Al, and myself. With me went my two dogs, Don, an English setter, and Nick, a pointer,...
The First Time I Saw God
It was about 5:15 p.m., 108 miles northeast of Oran, I remember, when the starboard gunners shouted, ‘’Torpedo off the bow!” The helmsman tried to swing her so the thing would run parallel to us, but the old bucket was bottom-heavy with about 9,000 tons of high...
Mixed Bag in the Yukon
We were out of the wind up there on that Yukon ridge. In the polished blue of the sky, fluffy white clouds were sailing along like jet planes, but where we sat, it was quiet and pleasantly warm. It was late August, the tail end of the Yukon summer, and the rolling...
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...
Faster Horses
I guess I’m just a born country boy. I’ve always felt most at home in the woods and fields with a dog and a shotgun for company. Early on, I “took to” the home-spun philosophy in country music, too, and Tom T. Hall was one of my favorite inspirations. I was still a...
The Cull
The common link spanning the wide chasm of wealth and status were the dogs.