The Foundation Formerly Known as NRA
NRA Foundation and the Art of the Steal: A Heist So Clever Donors Must Forget Why They Donated America has produced some remarkable business models over the years. Apple convinced millions of people to stand in line overnight to buy phones that were only marginally...
Benelli’s ETHOS: One Formidable Beauty
Benelli’s ETHOS line proves they are nearing perfection in a semi-auto. “Back in the day,” when we were just beginning to discover the incredible number of gamebirds in South America, gunmakers worldwide were competing to see who could develop shotguns that could...
Full Circle
The fact that I am sitting here writing this makes me smile a little bit in serendipitous gratitude, for it is abject proof that you can, in fact, will something into existence. My journey to Sporting Classics actually started 11 years ago. I was hosting a gun...
Wolving (With Complications)
It began with a lucky shot. a cave and a rattlesnake furnished the complications.
Do Constitutional “Right to Hunt and Fish” Amendments Really Matter?
By the time Florida voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to hunt and fish in 2024, the movement had already spread quietly across much of America. More than two dozen states now have some version of a constitutional Right to...
Uganda: The Pearl
While rummaging through some of my father’s old books, I stumbled across African Game Trails by Theodore Roosevelt. It’s an interesting read regarding the exploits and African journeys of an American hunter and conservationist. One chapter, “Uganda, and the Great...
The Journeyman
I turned 16 in July of 1966. Kent Wellerby, Mr. Reed’s farm manager for as long as I could remember, took a string of Red Oak dogs every summer up to the prairies of North Dakota in Divide County. The August and September weather was much cooler there than in...
A Rogue Elephant
This article originally appeared in the December 1892 issue of Outing. Some 10 ten years ago, toward the close of the hot season, I was traveling through the somewhat sparsely inhabited district of Bintenna, in the Eastern province of Ceylon. The country was wild in...
The Ones That Didn’t Get Away
I’m A.D.D. in the extreme. Have been all my life. If you’ve ever been associated with someone who has attention deficit, it can be a real “trip.” One idea births another idea and that one sprouts two more. Pretty soon, ideas seem to be coming rapid-fire and life...
Just Another Love Story
She was married when I met her but I took her fishing anyway. She was a fender-bender, a well-put-together willowy blonde with beer sign blue neon eyes. But she was wired for 110 and plugged into 220. When she shucked her jeans, the inseam read, “Lucky You.” Great...
Oh, Lucky Man! Sigbot “Bodo” Winterhelt
Na, ja, my father hated all hunting and hunters. He didn’t understand. He thought, first of all, that all they did was destroy, and my father lived only to preserve things. And hunters in Germany wear a uniform, green loden cloth, you know, and my father hated...
The Politics of Camouflage
For years, many of America’s largest sportsmen’s organizations and media brands have carefully cultivated the image that they stand above politics. They present themselves as guardians of conservation, wildlife habitat, public lands, and the future of hunting and...
The Great Goach Gag
Stink, stank, stunk...uh, need a word here...the nth-square-to-the-10th-power expression of extreme stinkiness. A word for the gasp, cough, spit, shake-yer-head, blink-yer-eyes, spin, gag, retch, vomit kind of stinkiness. ’Cause that’s what it was. Don’t know what it...
Classic Alaska Charters: Now Booking for 2026 and 2027!
Now Booking for 2026 and 2027! 2026 marks Classic Alaska Charters' 37th season navigating the protected wilderness waterways of Misty Fjords National Monument/Wilderness Area! They offer outstanding adventure cruises for 5 days and 4 nights, including saltwater...
Shallow-Water Ducks
When the ducks come—splayed feet anticipating a frigid plunge into shallows; wings cupped, rocking in a jerky side-to-side; keen eyes scanning—there is no finer experience in the hunting world. Oh, there is the enhanced palpitation of heart when distant leaf crunch...
Never Invisible
“For extended trips, where time is no object and cross country work is intended, the ox-wagon is the best means of conveyance, especially if a bulk of heads and skins is to be collected, and carried about. The hire of a wagon, with a full span of oxen native driver,...
Georgia on Your Mind? Don’t Miss These Sporting Gems!
I walk toward an orange and white English setter that is as motionless as a leopard before the pounce, the dog puffing quail scent like a man drawing the flicker of life into a cigar. I am only a two-hour drive from Atlanta but feel more like a half century removed...
Texoma Stripers!
“We’re almost over the top of them . . . start dropping ‘em. When they hit bottom, crank up three rounds.” Chris Carey instructed Luke Clayton, Jeff Rice and me. Turning toward me specifically, Chris said with a chuckle, “Larry start stripping!” Smiling wryly, I said:...
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.
The Fog
The battered F-150 pulled onto the beach at 3:00 a.m. The air, heavy with fog, smelled of rotting kelp, salt air and wet sand. It was a scent that he seldom thought of, but today it made him briefly reflective. I took this crap for granted, he thought. If a smell...
Negley Farson Forgotten Giant of the Angling World
Over the years I’ve read what I personally consider one of the great books of angling literature, Negley Farson’s Going Fishing, three or four times. It’s a book, similar to Robert Ruark’s The Old Man and the Boy or Nash Buckingham’s De Shootinest Gent’man, that...
A Master of Stellar Heights
On a summer afternoon long ago in Bozeman, Montana, a grouping of paintings stopped me in my tracks. These were not major works by painter Ralph Oberg, but depictions of high elevation lakes in Glacier National Park of Montana. Their water, set in bowls carved out by...
Arrow for a Battlewagon
It may sound strange to talk on the subject of hunting an African rhinoceros with a bow and arrow. In fact some folks thought the idea insane, and to attempt the feat sheer suicide. Despite such a negative attitude, I believed a seasoned bowhunter could do it. But I’d...
Ghost Light on the Land’s End Road
I was suddenly awash in pale blue phosphorescence and I briefly reckoned poor ventilated Private Quigley had his chilly arms around me! Right turn at Frogmore, south down a dozen miles of two-lane island blacktop, through woods and swamps and fields, to old Fort...
Russell Moccasin 2026 Patina Thunderdome Boot
The Stitchdown Patina Thunderdome is an annual institution in the boot world. Its a chance for enthusiasts to show off their boots and how they age. This year we are building a dedicated boot specifically for folks who want to enter a pair in the competition. These...
Grizzly Encounter
Rick bent to one knee checking blood splatters on three-day-old snow crunching under his weight. It appeared pinkish—possibly lung blood. Staring up the hill, his gaze followed the mule deer’s tracks running straight to the top before disappearing into exposed rocks....
A Door in the Woods
“Good boy, Rex, easy now. Whoa on the bird!” The gathering gloaming of the approaching evening made it rather difficult to see what I was doing as I fought my way through the wicked tangle of greenbrier vines draped across the dense trees in front of me. I struggled...
The Back-up Plan
Magnum raindrops pelted the north wall of the lodge. Early pre-dawn temperatures continued to drop. I loved it! For the past several days, the afternoon highs had been in the mid-80s, not what most would consider “ideal deer hunting weather.” The falling temperature...
How to Become A Great Fly Fisherman
I had an interesting phone conversation with angling legend Tom Rosenbauer. Tom, who has been the face of Orvis fly fishing for as far back as I can remember, called and wanted to talk trout fishing. Specifically, he asked me what folks need to do to become truly...
The Bird Wrangler
For South African Trevor Comins, perfection is a safari on the fly. The beast is dead, but that’s when it becomes dangerous. Forty yards in the sky, the 22-pound spur-winged goose plummets toward my blind like a feathered meteorite. When calculating the lead on the...
A Battle for Survival
Precariously perched in the small tree, the hunter peered into the night, his eyes slowly adjusting to the eerie light cast by the moon. The year was 1903; the place: Sabi Sands, South Africa. Harry Wolhuter was shaking from a combination of cold and fear. What was...
The Killer of the Wynaad
To the south-west of the city of Mysore lies the heavily forested area of the Kakankote jungles, for centuries the home of many herds of wild elephants that are partial to the kind of jungle that grows in this district. The rainfall is heavy and the vegetation is...
Boundary Waters Vote Provides Fuel to Raise Money, But the Reality is Far From the Posturing
You’d think, listening to the loudest voices in the outdoor community lately, that the Boundary Waters had just been handed over to a mining company with a bow on top. Fundraising emails, social posts, and urgent alerts have painted a picture of imminent, irreversible...
Colonel Colt and His Pistols
For nearly two centuries, Samuel Colt's firearms have been changing the course of history. And the legacy lives on. By all indications, he never should have succeeded in life, and if he had listened to what others told him, the name of Samuel Colt would probably be...
The Legacy of James Purdey & Sons
In the long and storied history of gunmaking, there is no name more renowned than that of James Purdey. His rise to fame began 200 years ago, give or take, when he opened a small shop at 4 Princes St., Leicester Square, London, for the purpose of making and selling...
“Caring Karen” Messer Goes Bream Fishing
As those who have read previous episodes of the ongoing misadventures of Mollygrubs Messer will recall, his nosy, busybody, and termagant-in-training mother, who in rather grandiose fashion styled herself “Caring Karen,” was, to use a description common in the...
Last Moment Grizzly
We were hunting just west of the line that divides Alaska’s coastal brown bears from inland grizzlies on a broad river where both grizzlies and black bear lived along with a few red and dog salmon as well as delicious Dolly Varden trout. With me was my guide, Blake...
Some Grouse You Never Forget
He was a young man, barely past his 25th birthday, slim and fit in the way of young men who follow dogs in the high mountains. His companion, Big Sam, was a huge, muscular, raw-boned pointer with a head like a mule—in size as well as temperament. Sam was a “big-going,...
The King of Birds and the God of Thunder
It is said that in the early days of the world, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata; in Maya, Yuum kuutz) was a bird of pedestrian plumage with a melodious voice while the nightjar (Antrostomus badius; in Maya, Pu'ujuy) was clothed in resplendent finery. So, Kuutz...
Lone Eagle
He drove 70 miles of rugged road carved through bush country in the Outaouais region of western Quebec. The final leg of a long haul. Three weeks into May along the Canadian Shield meant rutting bears. Jack had bow sights set on a big boar. He followed camp owner...
The Problem With Non-Resident Fee Increases
There is an old understanding in the American West—one that predates wildlife agencies, tag lotteries, and glossy brochures—that the land belongs to all of us. Not in the romantic, abstract sense, but in a very literal one. Millions upon millions of acres across...
The Photograph
It hangs on the wall in my study, framed and matted, and like all photographs, freezing one fleeting moment in time. I call it One Old Double in a Field of Autos, but actually, the title isn’t totally accurate. The “field” really consists of four autoloaders and four...
Fishing for Night Crawlers: A Mollygrubs Messer Angling Adventure
In some senses you have to feel sorry for the seemingly endless mélange of misery which Mollygrubs Messer somehow managed to become involved. A prime example involved an out-of-state trout fishing trip with a buddy and a couple of adult companion. The plan was for the...
The Lasting Legacy of Nash Buckingham
Regrets are scratches on the furniture of our lives that can never be polished away. The scars of fate that shoved aside dreams, the wounds of choices ill-chosen, the lesions of opportunities lost or dreams abandoned. Some are shallow; some are deep. Some settle...
The Waterhole
At the muddy little pond, a 12-year-old boy would find his place in the world.
A Record-Book Bruin
Two hunters head out after moose and wind up in the record books instead.
Grand Canyon Bucks
The legendary hunter and gunwriter pursues big mule deer in the shadow of the Grand Canyon in this 1938 classic.
Trout Magic in Words: The Anatomy of a Fly Fisherman
More years ago than it is completely comfortable for me to ponder, I wrote a series of profiles on celebrated angling writers for a little publication, Fly-Fishing News. The bimonthly offering, featuring noted sporting scribes such as John Gierach, Lefty Kreh and Paul...
NRA Reloaded: Returning to the Fold
I’ll admit it plainly: I was among the early and unflinching critics when the National Rifle Association’s internal failures came into public view. I wrote about it, spoke about it, and—like many longtime members—wondered how an institution with such a storied history...
New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns
Storied is not exclusive to price tag or class. Occasionally the twain rub shoulders and have a bountiful supply of tales to tell, but there are no guarantees. This Purdey, however, had it all. Scratches and dings and rubbed-smooth spots. Cost? Likely something...