Deep South Bugs and Bucks: When Itches Collide
Lowcountry of South Carolina. Two-thirds of my county is underwater at high tide. If it bites, it lives here. Deer flies, horse flies, dog flies, chiggers, sand-gnats, three flavors of ticks, assassin beetles, 56 separate species of mosquitoes, any number of...
Dad’s Browning
“A poor man can only afford the best.” This was the mantra my father lived by. Dad was a professional firefighter for nearly 40 years in a midwestern town. A survivor of the Depression who lived on a farm without running water or electricity, he enlisted at age 17 to...
Still-Hunting Secrets Revealed
Ditch the treestand and strike out on foot. Big bucks are waiting, and lots of them.
In the Valley of the Shadow
A misfiring rifle leads to a gruesome bear attack for one California prospector.
New Year’s Eve was a Dark and Doggy Night
I did not intend to be stuck deep in the woods on a moonless night, one so dark you could feel the blackness wrap around you. But two of my beagles saw to it that New Year's Eve 2018 was a memorable one, although less than celebratory. Anyone who has owned beagles...
My Greatest Shot: Slinging Steel
One of several great shots featured in Sporting Classics’ Guns & Hunting 2015 issue.
Hunt Like Lewis & Clark: Use Hunting Caches
The famed explorers didn’t drag two-plus years’ worth of gear around, and neither should you.
A Splendid Old Fellow
In this fascinating excerpt from African Game Trails, TR lives up to his ‘stand firm’ philosophy as he takes on a charging lion. On this same evening we rode campward facing a wonderful sunset. The evening was lowering and overcast. The darkening plains stretched dim...
The Old Man
I called my buddy Ken Eversull the other day about doing some work on my old Parker. If you don’t know him, he is a gunsmith, for lack of a more fitting term, and an absolute genius at his art. He lives and practices his trade in Louisiana and has forgotten more about...
Want The Ultimate NFL Experience? Take The Leap To Lambeau
There’s a joke that’s made the rounds for years in Green Bay that speaks to the nostalgia surrounding one of the NFL’s oldest teams: How many Packers fans does it take to change a lightbulb? I dunno, how many? Three—one to change the bulb and two to remember how good...
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...
A Purdey Trio and the First Ever Boss .410 Gauge Lead RIAC’s $22.6 Million December Auction
Sub-gauge shotguns remain hot items for sportsmen and collectors, and some of the finest examples of these small-bore specialists headlined Rock Island Auction Company’s December's 6 – 8 Premier Auction. The first-ever Boss & Co. .410 bore O/U awed the auction...
Christmas for Two
“Look out, Dad!” Through the network of brown November branches I could see into the little open where my father watched for the driven grouse. This was the shot he loved best in all bird shooting. He had taught me its strategy the I was twelve, taught me right here...
Snow Shoe Caribou
You can spend a joyous Christmas time in the woods. There is peace in the whisper of the pine, merriment in the whirling flakes and music in the north wind’s brawling monotone such as no tawdry human pageant can supply. And when evening falls and the sun has gone, and...
Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 2
When modern deer hunting seasons were first established in Georgia during the late 1950s and early ’60s, it was against the law to hunt on Sunday in many (if not all) Georgia counties. Sometimes these laws were enforced and sometimes they were not, depending on the...
Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 26 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 Antlers Were Extra
Records lists grew on entries from “meat hunters.” Effort and focus still lag Lady Luck!
How Sportsmen Defeated a Colorado Ballot to Ban Mountain Lion Hunting
A mountain lion peers through glass patio doors, staring intently at a young girl just a few feet away inside the house. Behind the big cat is the family’s dead house cat, freshly killed by the 120-pound mountain lion. Inside, the girl’s mother frantically yells...
Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 1
When modern deer hunting seasons were first established in Georgia during the late 1950s and early '60s, it was against the law to hunt on Sunday in many (if not all) Georgia counties. Sometimes these laws were enforced and sometimes they were not, depending on the...
Zane Grey Fishing Collectables Go On the Block
On February 21 and 22, 2025, Copley Fine Art Auctions is holding its annual Winter Sale. This auction follows the firm’s recent $2 million Sporting Sale. The Winter Sale 2025, consisting of more than 500 lots, will offer an extraordinary opportunity to acquire Zane...
Cumberland Estate’s Historic Revival And The Renaissance Man Behind It
In the 1994 classic, Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, delivers the film’s memorable manifesto to Ellis ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman), “Life comes down to a simple choice…get busy living or get busy dying.” For 80-year-old Texas native John...
The Final Chapter: A Nevada Bull Elk Hunt
After 14 years of applying, the author draws a coveted Nevada bull elk tag. The hunt would prove to be an epic ending of an epic year of hunting.
A Hippo For Christmas
“I wanna hippopotamus for Christmas…only a hippopotamus will do….” Those lyrics kept running through my mind as I stowed gear in Omujeve Safari’s Ivory Camp on the backwater banks of the Kwando River in Namibia’s Zambezi Strip. The comfortable en-suite tent would...
A Christmas Eve Swan Shoot
Two old renegades pull off an illegal nighttime hunt, despite a surprise collision and dunking. Shooting swan by night may seem hardly the correct thing in the estimation of many, but we fowlers of the wild and “feathery” West occasionally obtain under cover of the...
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...
Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 25 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...
The Cremation of Sam McGee
An unlikely life. He was an English banker who ran off to America at an early age. He nearly starved in Mexico, bunked in a California bordello. He passed himself as a cowboy, farmer, lumberjack, Yukondog-musher and gold miner. He drove an ambulance in the First War...
Bob Kuhn, Wildlife Artist Extraordinaire
A look at the collections and life of wildlife artist Bob Kuhn. It was Christmas 1969 when I first saw the 1970 Remington Arms calendar featuring “Great Game of the World.” My father and I shared a love of the outdoors and we spent many days hunting and fishing...
The Irish Setter: A Victim of Its Own Beauty
Askew’s Carolina Lady was, and is, the foundation female—the Eve, if you will—of the field-type Irish setter as we know it today. One day a friend of Ned LeGrande’s stopped by to visit him at his Willow Winds Farm, near Douglassville in southeastern Pennsylvania. At...
Bing Crosby: A Man for All Seasons
On Christmas Day in 1941, millions tuned their radios to Kraft Music Hall, NBC’s hit variety program hosted by Bing Crosby, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars and the best-selling recording artist of the 20th century. Bing was in the middle of filming Holiday Inn with...
Luther K. Hall
How could watercolor not be the perfect medium for angling art? Gazing upon the work of outdoor artist Luther K. Hall, one may feel there is something special about the way he mixes water with his paint. It is the water of the river. “When I decide to do an angling...
How Pomp Saved Our Christmas
The no ’count yellow hound which strays into camp turns out to have a nose after all and takes his place among the immortals.
Easy Street Elk
While most elk hunting stories begin with vivid words about climbing steep and tall mountains, many long hours spent sitting glassing into timbers and then moving from location to location to glass into more brush—I missed all that effort and wasted time on one elk...
On The Nose
Once merely a bullet’s front end, the tip has become an engineering project. Here’s why.
Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 24 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...
The Light At Middle Ground
Fall is fading fast. Naked branches click like dry bones in the wind, and the choppy, pewter-toned lake mirrors an apocalyptic sky. Winter’s wrath brooks no quarter when the wicked weather turns minutes into hours, and few know its fury better than the late-season...
Road To Recovery
It’s one of those things I believed would never happen to me, despite the obvious odds to the contrary. When a branch broke while climbing out of a morning treestand, resulting in a 30-foot fall onto hard-frozen ground, coming to with a stabbing pain radiating from my...
Eldridge Hardie: Painter of Dogs
The greatest equine artist of all time, and arguably the greatest animal portraitist, was the 18th century Englishman George Stubbs. The toast of the town in his day, when the cream of British aristocracy beat a path to his door to have him paint...
Holland & Holland: Masters of the Double Rifle
In the annals of “Best” firearms, Holland & Holland holds an unambiguous place: builder of the world’s finest double rifles. For more than a century, dangerous game hunters have prepared for their great unknowns by trekking to Mayfair in London’s West End. Their...
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...
New Zealand’s Stags
The Southern Alps are where a growing number of hunters head to be supersized.
Rowland Ward: Entrepreneur, Publisher, Big Game Guru and Taxidermist
Although the average big-game hunter may know little if anything about the life of an individual who was a man for all seasons in the world of Victorian and Edwardian sport, Rowland Ward, virtually everyone is aware of the long-running series of record books bearing...
Tested: Benelli’S M2 Field
SPONSORED CONTENT An out-of-the-box waterfowl wrecker that doubles as a do-all shotgun, Benelli's M2 Field hits a pleasing semi-automatic price point, promises flawless function and is a pure joy to shoulder and shoot. Benelli changed the game in 1991 when the...
Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 23 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...
Hal, a Dacotah: Hunting With the Sioux
The events in the following story are based on real experiences that were recorded by Henry Hastings Sibley, who used the name “Hal, a Dacotah” as a pseudonym for Spirit of the Times, a popular 19th century publication in New York.
Wolf Secrets
“Incoherent,” she paused. “The sick man was incoherent.” “Incoherent.” My left arm curled around the top of the page hiding a small scrap of paper. On the paper several words were written in tiny print. She continued with “incomprehensible,” “divisible” and 17 other...
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...
Nate Smith’s Dairy Farm
The right or wrong of hunting has nagged at me from the beginning, and after a decade of hunting I finally set out to think it through. I agree with the sentiment of writer Edward Abbey: “Hunting is one of the hardest things even to think about.” As is my way, I...
Wilcox Pass
Paynesville, Minnesota, 1875 It was cold. A damp kind of cold that reached into the bones and could scarcely be shaken away. The lateness of autumn had arrived and soon winter would descend on Minnesota’s once rugged back country. Before long, tens of thousands of...
A Red Oak Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving 1964, one I’ll never forget. I was 14 years old. Mother was decidedly against it. “They’re different, Lane, not like us,” she said. “I don’t mean that they’re bad. They aren’t... just different. They’ll have family and friends down from Jackson and...