Mr. Theodore Castwell
An enchantingly beautiful chalk stream, perfect cast after perfect cast, big trout rising to the fly each time it alights on the water... For Theodore Castwell, it seemed that St. Peter had indeed given him very special consideration. Mr. Theodore Castwell, having...
The New Essential Riflescope
Having grown up hunting November hardwoods, where riflescopes were scarce as clean socks in deer camps, A. B. Learned could be forgiven a provincial view: “I always use open sights,” he declared, “preferring their speed to the somewhat slower peep sight. I have...
Browning A5 20-Gauge
To me, the Browning A5 seems as old as time itself. My father had one when I was a teenager, and that was a long time ago. The A5 wasn’t new even then. In fact, the old man’s was an old, “used hard and put away wet” specimen that we found and revived from near dead...
To Bite the Bullet
An overturned jeep, no water, and a charging elephant in the night. What else could go wrong?
This Hunting Life
We were learning the world. It is that learning I speak of as hunting. In the house I rent hangs a photo of me taken as a teenager. I'm lying next to my dog in some tall reeds by a river. For a long time I wondered what made me frame that picture and hang it. Tika and...
Ruark On Safari: Politics
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. Up until the last year or so of Bob's life, there was always a great urgency in his writing, an impatience in his attitude toward his work, and the desire to get on...
The Turkey Drought Breaks
An amusing story to be retold on those long, hot days in the blind between birds.
Parker Whedon: The Last Of The Old-Time Turkey Hunters
When Parker Whedon died on March 16, 2012 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and the myriad complications associated with the illness, the world of turkey hunting lost perhaps its final direct link to the sport’s great names of yesteryear. From the time...
Fangs!
“Now that one’s interesting! Looks like a saber-tooth cat crossed with a teddy bear!” said a DSC Convention attendee as she passed by the photo of a Chinese water deer on display in the Scandinavian Prohunters booth. In the booth, John Langraf and I were visiting with...
A Camouflage Calamity
I’m gonna have to have a little talk with that Toxey Haas fellow. You know, he’s the one who makes Mossy Oak camo. Way back in the ’80s when he started making camo, one of the first patterns he invented was Bottomland. Since I’m an old Southern turkey hunter who likes...
Hard Rain, White Noise
Hitch Barlow was a tall, bone-thin young man who worked with nails in his teeth and carpenter tools in his hands, when he was not sighting along the barrel of a big-bore rifle at a buck deer or floating line, leader, tippet and a fly across pebbles at the head of a...
The Room
There is a room in my house that is mine, and mine alone. It is where the camouflage resides, along with various styles of hunting boots and waders. A place where all of the duck, goose and elk calls hang from nails on the wall. Tents and sleeping bags are piled along...
Watch: The King
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ix42HwHapA In the spring woods, everything revolves around one bird. The Eastern Wild Turkey. Not just because he gobbles. Because he decides the game. Where he roosts. Where he walks. When he talks. When he disappears. Every move we...
The Price of a Dog: Part 3 of 3
Part Three: The Devil’s Money Click Here to Read Part Two When I arrived home, I was excited to tell Mother about the double and, of course, the twelve-hundred dollars. I removed the rubber band and began counting the money onto the kitchen table. “…eight-hundred,...
1919 Savage Model 99 – Law Enforcement Raffle
The National Office of Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) recently received the extraordinary gift of a 1919 Savage Model 99 takedown rifle from Dave VanBoxtaele that he had been restoring since February 2020. Click Here to Enter VanBoxtaele said his intent was...
Taking Stock: Confessions of a Custom Stock Convert
I had always been a little dismissive of the idea of a custom stock. I say this at the risk of confirming my ignorance, but hear me out: I already had an adjustable stock on my Krieghoff K-80, and I preferred it without any adjustments. Therefore, that contraption was...
Elgin Gates: A Legendary Big Game Hunter
Mention the word “legendary” in connection with big game hunters and hunting literature, and thoughts of most serious readers likely turn in one of two distinct directions. Most will look back to the wealth of books produced by the pioneers who sampled and savored the...
Fishing for Muskie in Lake Chautauqua
They say it's the fish of ten-thousand casts. Maybe so. I truly believed that for many years and still won't argue with those odds. Twice before I had traveled all the way from Georgia to Canada to do battle with the great muskellunge only to fish for days with nary a...
Roping Elk In the Rockies
One of the redeeming features of existence in a small Canadian town is that at all seasons of the year some form of woodland sport lies within an hour’s walk or drive or paddle of your door. For the monarch moose and the shy, capricious caribou, one must go far afoot....
Pig Medicine
Turning a .300 H&H Magnum on Texas’s feral hogs.
Diary of a Market Hunter
A real-life account of a market hunter’s day-to-day, warts and all.
The Youngest Hunter
I took a few steps forward, holding my rifle cocked and ready. The animal dropped to all fours and gave a hoarse whoof! Then I knew what it was – a grizzly. It had found Johnny’s moose, and was breakfasting on the carcass.
Ames Plantation: Birds Gone Wild
In 45 American states, January is the coldest month of the year. Frigid temperatures are challenging enough, but ladder in precipitation and you have a recipe for disaster. Wet, gnarly conditions knock down trees and limbs causing power outages and, if you’re in...
The Thak Man-Eater
Never in history has one man so devoutly pursued and killed as many man-eaters as did Jim Corbett, saving untold numbers of human lives in the process. What follows is Corbett’s exciting conclusion to his tale of “The Thak Man-Eater,” which originally appeared in his...
$5.9 Million: Copley’s Record-Setting Winter Sale
Copley Fine Art Auctions, LLC (copleyart.com), the nation’s premier decoy and sporting art auction house known for its accurate descriptions and verified results, realized $5.9 million in their recent Winter Sale. It marked the highest total for any auction in the...
Memories…
All of us have special memories from our days of hunting and fishing, which we have no doubt shared around campfires or inside sporting lodges. Now, in our new Memories feature, we would like to share your fondest hunting and fishing experiences with all of our...
The Jewett Gap Grizzly
Using a .30-30 Winchester, the one-armed hunter would finally slay the Jewett Gap Grizzly, ending its ten-year reign of terror among cattle ranchers in the Old West. In the 1890s an unusually large and savage grizzly had been marauding the livestock of ranchers in the...
Ernest Hemingway: Angler, Fighter, Lover
Ernest Hemingway fought in two wars, battled huge marlin and tuna in Bimini and Cuba and then survived two plane crashes and deadly encounters with lions and elephants in Africa – all while creating some of the greatest sporting literature ever written.
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, Yukon dog-musher and gold miner. He drove an ambulance in the First War...
Maybe Once
"I'll send for you,” Mike said to Jackie as he kissed her goodbye. He didn’t see her roll her eyes through a big smile as she threw her arms around his neck. She’d heard the same thing every year for the 12 years he’d taken this trip. Only in the last few had she...
Once in The Stilly Night
It plum tickled his perversity to jist think ’bout chasin’ rarecoons. A classic from the November, 1935, issue of Field & Stream. Dud Dean held the empty frying pan over the glowing coals of our little fire. The fat caught, flared and burned out. After that burst...
Road-Tripping with your Shotguns
To say I travel quite a bit for bird hunting and sporting clay tournaments is a bit of an understatement. It’s a little comical if I stop and think about it, and truthfully, I only recognize that because of the strange looks I get from family and friends when I try to...
Bear Hunting the Traditional Way
Your chances will be fewer, but traditional spot-and-stalk bear hunting on horseback enables you to see more of the countryside and its wildlife. There’s nothing quite like the romance and tradition of hunting from horseback. Rather than concentrating on where you...
Jim Muir The Quiet Men
Beware of over-concern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.— Rudyard Kipling There was once a land with no people and no animals, just forested mountains and cold, clear...
Back to Bucks and Bears
Deer hunters don’t need exotic, expensive ammo, just accurate, reliably lethal loads. Herewith an update! Hitting far-off targets, informally or in competition, has shooters spending wildly on rifles, ammo and optics. Per backyard mechanics burying speedometer needles...
Fishing For Dinosaurs
Hook into a 250-pound fish whose ancestors date back 100 million years, and you begin to wonder if you’re reeling a dinosaur through a wormhole—as if you’re about to reveal a beast that doesn’t belong in our epoch. Such are first impressions when sturgeon fishing on...
Blacktails Don’t Come Easy
I sat in the pre-dawn darkness in the soft glow of the instrument panel of Roy’s 1947 Plymouth coupe, heading out on my very first buck hunt. A 12-year-old boy yearning to be a buck hunter never forgets moments like that. As the old Plymouth began its first climb up...
The Day the Lake Went Mad
The gale-force winds and driving rain were bad enough, but then the island itself began to move.
Big Empty Encounter
A long stretch of dark, empty woods stood between them and the truck, and the big bear kept edging nearer, so close now they could hear his nasally whine and the soft rumbling in his throat.
The Dead Man on Wendigo Brook
What trout fisherman, plunged into despair by hyper-selective fish that refuse all his imitations, hasn’t wished for a “magic” fly? In this cautionary tale from the anthology Seasons of the Angler (1988), the author reminds us to be careful what we wish for . . .
Hunting Oryx in the Journey of Death
A descent into a cauldron of scorched earth in pursuit of oryx.
Black Bear Danger
A man-eating bear stood between the hunter and his rifle.
The Giant Serpent of Cebu
On a tiny Pacific Island, American naturalist Dr. John N. Hamlet responds to the pleas of a luckless farmer and decides to track down a pig-eating python. But what begins as a casual search for a marauding snake soon becomes a harrowing adventure deep within the...
The First Leopard
The famed tiger hunter goes after a cat of a different stripe. A simple bird hunt turned into an unforgettable encounter with dangerous game for Jim Corbett.
Wintersong
You will always be my children; I will always be your pa.
Dark Legends
The hut smelled of must and dampness. Slivers of light pierced through thin gaps in the grass walls. The old shaman sat with his legs crossed. His dull, green eyes seemed void of life, staring through rather than at them. His skin hung on a bony frame and his voice...
New Editor-in-Chief at Sporting Classics Magazine
Renowned hunting and fishing writer and editor Skip Knowles has been named Editor-in-Chief at Sporting Classics Magazine. “I tried to hire Skip a few years back,” says publisher Duncan Grant. “He seemed perfect for this position at Sporting Classics. He’d been at the...
Ernest Hemingway: The Early Years (1939-1948)
Ernest Hemingway is inextricably linked to both Sun Valley and the nearby town of Ketchum, Idaho. He had a special affinity for the countryside with its backdrop of the Sawtooth Mountains, which reminded him of Spain, for the excellent bird hunting he found there and...
The Great Missouri Lion Hunt
Never mind the cost and the public outcry, the wealthy businessman was determined to bring African dangerous game hunting to his home state.
Preserving Antique Shotguns
As someone who spends a lot of time working to preserve late 19th century and early 20th century double guns, I have thought a lot about why some high quality and once very expensive shotguns have been well preserved and others have not. The formula for the...