Hunting is Like Work
I may need to charge overtime. Treats and a half, Mike! I wrote recently that fishing is like work, and I’m here to tell you that hunting is like real work. I have to climb mountains, trek down valleys, wade or swim across rivers and struggle and muscle my way through...
ETHOS Performance Shop Upland Shotgun
Benelli’s ETHOS Performance Shop Upland 20-gauge semi-auto shotgun with its Inertia-Driven System meets all the requirements. SPONSORED CONTENT Every quality upland shotgun should meet these requirements: be easy to shoulder, swing and point; easy to operate by feel...
The Phantom Setter
Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, this story is one of the finest ever written about gundogs and grouse hunting. It is certainly the most chilling.
Cole Johnson in Black and White
"You don't decide on a style...you do the work and a style evolves." Over the years, I have had the luck to interview some very talented wildlife artists. A number actually hunted, others did not. In the work of those that did, I discovered another quality, a...
The Old Man’s Leopard and the Omen
It had to be an evil omen. The first glow of the sun eased out the night and pinked the peaks of the majestic Water Berg Range. Towering mountains, like a series of huge waves about to crash onto the land below and a crumbling old stone house guarded by flat-topped...
Report from the Field
Hunting season is here! Time to find birds! These are the days all hunting dogs live for. Hunting season is underway and once that calendar rolled over and spotted September on the exposed page, I dashed to the truck and dove in. My days now are spent sniffing about...
Into the Mountains
Montana’s landscape is so spellbinding it will make you forget everything that led you there. Even the fishing.
First Season Expectations
SPONSORED CONTENT: You’ve built up to your pup’s first hunting season — but what should you expect from your young dog? The experts weigh in. Every sporting dog owner has high expectations for their dog. Social media is flooded with beautiful images of dogs on point...
Joshua Spies the Wide World
For Joshua Spies, it's about payback. Across the lonesome, windblown prairie of northern mid-America, locals know him simply as "the kid." On this morning, the prodigal artistic son of Watertown, South Dakota, stands in his studio surrounded by six easel paintings,...
Night Sweats
It is important for a man to do a thing well, even if it is killing. The honor of a feat is the measure of how you do it...And what was the truth of me? To hell with Bob Ruark. To blazes with Hemingway, Capstick, Percival, Boddington, the whole and bunch of them. It's...
The Trespasser
"That's a very sad story,” said Austin. "It gets worse," said Ray. Passing through the ranch gate and driving down the tree-lined gravel lane toward the log house seemed like going back in time. The little English setter, asleep in the passenger seat for the past...
The Price Per Pound
The other day I was eating a pheasant breast Mike had grilled when he said, “Cameron, slow down gobbling on that thing, it is very expensive per pound.” Well, how dare him tell me how to eat. I descended from wolves and know about eating meat of all types. Now I was...
At the Edge of Alaska
A sheep-turned-grizzly hunt along the Canadian border.
The Blood Horse
Though Chinese ceramics of 3500 BC depict horses both harnessed and ridden, the archaeological agreement is that the horse was first domesticated in Asiatic Russia around 3,000 BC. The wild horse of Mongolia, or Przewalski's horse, as it was named in 1881 by the...
The Traveling Knight
Sir Henry Seton-Karr dreamed of hunting America, later using a .500 double to take many of its game animals.
A Hunting Song
“Give me a dog that is keen of scent, and a gun that is tried and true . . .”
Island Getaway
Bunny gunning on Nantucket amid the homes of the rich and famous.
Fall at Brays Island
Fall at Brays Island brings with it the much anticipated scene of crisp mornings, rock steady pointers and eager cockers culminating in a burst of bobwhites in every direction. With 3,500 acres of quail courses and woodlands, Brays is every upland bird hunter's dream...
A Bear for the Ages
“George is here with us in spirit, and I have a feeling that everything is going to work out. In truth, I think it’s going to be magical.”
Randall McKissick – Lasting Impressions
To elicit thoughtful reflection ... to trigger an emotional response, these are the things McKissick seeks in his art. Of course you can't always tell a book by its cover — nor a painter by his paintings. Take Randall McKissick, for example. With just a casual glance,...
The Branding Iron
When their production lines weren’t manufacturing firearms, many gun companies turned to making a wide range of household items.
A Man-Killing Bear and 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 ranch house one evening by an old mountain hunter, clad in fur cap, buckskin hunting shirt, and...
Dog Names
Well, there are now lists for everything — including popular dog names. I was surfing the web and looking for more stuff to order when a list popped up — the Most Popular Dog Names. I had to look — and could not find Cameron anywhere. Who made this list? On the list I...
Slamming Cuba
A belief in Avalon helped the author overcome years of fear and heartache.
Michael Sieve – Hunter’s Eyes Artist’s Hands
"I decided awhile back that I wouldn't paint any animal unless I'd seen it first.” It's a dangerous trap to fall into, but I'd formed quite a few impressions about Michael Sieve through his paintings long before I ever met him. You hear public figures complaining...
Belly of the Beast
Hunting elephants in cover so thick they can only be located by the rumbling of their stomachs.
Gear for Birdhunters
Happy opening day of dove season, America. Across the country, millions of bird hunters celebrate this unofficial holiday of sorts by heading to sunflower patches, milo fields and watering holes to test their wingshooting skills on one of the hunting world’s toughest...
Wilhelm Kuhnert – Rediscovering an Artist
The artistic legacy of Wilhelm Kuhnert, abridged by the first Great War and almost devastated by the second, is known to but a few wildlife art enthusiasts. On April 30, 1906, Wilhelm Kuhnert and his expedition of 80 porters were encamped along a wide river, less than...
Fishing is Like Work!
On the offseason I get to fish — a lot. But fishing (not necessarily catching) with Mike sure feels like work! Well, it has been a long hot summer of tagging along as Mike fishes. Now, I did not say he was catching — just fishing, har har! On the downside of these...
Preseason Training Tips from the Pros
Eukanuba Pro Trainers share key preseason training tips to help get your dogs prepped and ready for Opening Day and the autumn trial season. SPONSORED CONTENT Opening Day is coming in low and hot, and so is the autumn trial season. Pro trainers “plan their work and...
To Bite the Bullet
Terror in the tall grass.
We Weims Can Run
Weimaraners can run at speeds up to 35 MPH. I was again surfing the web the other day — hey, I’m down to only 20 boxes of dog treats, time to reorder — and saw a dog speed report. According to the report, Weimaraners can run at speeds up to 35 MPH. We Weims can run!...
You Can Go Back
A father returns to Alaska to share the experience with his son.
Raymond Harris-Ching Thrilled By the Sight
Harris-Ching is one of the handful of artists who advanced the position of wildlife painting into a serious artistic genre. The ground is tinder dry, the air is suffocating — infuriatingly unlike air — more like the fug under a woolen blanket. Under the midday sun,...
Sunrise Fourteen Thousand Eighty Nine
A trout biologist muses on the path from his first whitetail hunt as a boy in Wisconsin to a pronghorn one on the New Mexico prairie.
Newsom’s New Anti-Gun Law
With the recent passage of California’s AB 2571, a law prohibiting the marketing of certain firearms to minors, Governor Newsom rode roughshod over constitutional protections. AB2571 is simply to advance the legislation that many feel will be nothing more than an...
Dealing with a Killer Elephant
The legend of a man-killing—and man-eating!—elephant that’s hard to pronounce and even harder to forget.
Naming Names
So I wondered do other governors go hunting? Yes, I found a list and now I’m naming names. I like hanging out with other celebrities — like me — and important folks. Governors are on my short list, so I was again surfing the web to the other day in search of treats...
Back the Brave
Join Trinity Oak on October 21, 2022, at River Ranch Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas for its “Back the Brave” fundraiser. River Ranch Stockyards is hosting the Trinity Oaks Star Kids (TOSK) program this October. TOSK is a special program for the children of our...
The Ghost Bear
Was it a bear, a man, or a devil that killed the hunter’s companion?
The Spotted Devil of Gummalapur
Kenneth Douglas Stuart Anderson (1910-1974) was an Anglo-Indian who spent most of his life in Bangalore, India. An avid hunter, he was fascinated by the subcontinent's big cats, and most of his tales dealt with the drama and dangers of man-killing tigers and panthers....
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...
Francis Golden – That Golden Touch
Truly this is Golden's touch, to give us the moment tinged with feeling...[by] putting his own enthusiasm on paper with sensitivity and style. I am not a fly fisherman, but the experience of standing in a rushing stream casting to trout lurking in deep pools is...
Earning My Keep
Cameron the Weim — Hat Retriever Extraordinaire! I have written many times that I like hunting, pointing and retrieving birds. It’s the life of a top sporting dog — me. Now comes this new duty — hat retrieving. The other day Mike and I were at a high country lake —...
Sporting Classics TV with Chris Dorsey
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey proves that birds of a feather do indeed flock together as Chris is joined by friends and neighbors from Brays Island, South Carolina on a group trip to South Africa to enjoy some of the finest wingshooting anywhere on...
Life After Death
Poetic justice, I thought — that on the same mountain where I'd shot that bull in the heart before, I got hit in the heart. About mid-morning on a Montana mountainside the guide heard “Cody, just a minute.” He turned to see the hunter lean forward, then fall straight...
On Top of the World
Bowhunting polar bears where even angels fear to tread.
Benelli’s Over/Under 828U Sport
SPONSORED CONTENT Benelli's over/under 828U Sport shotgun features both classic and innovative modern design features. The design of over/under (O/U) shotguns has not changed dramatically for several years, and although improvements have been made, they have mostly...
Wild Impressions
"I want to leave something to the imagination...some mystery in the painting. I want to leave room for a viewer to participate." Jim Morgan reached over and picked up an old canvas goose decoy, one of several near his paint-spattered easel. His latest...
Go West Young Dog – On the Prairie
The prairie is a land of hopes and dreams for those who train field-trial pointing dogs.