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.
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...
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...
Planning a Custom 260 Remington
Remington Custom Shop manager Carlos Martinez and I put our heads together in an attempt to buck the trend, to create something different, functional, beautiful. Personal. The rifle you see here is the result. Notice the stock is not hand-laid carbon or even...
The Phantom Trout of Sullivan County
The First of April has for untold ages been the Day of Fools! Why? No one in particular seems to know. There are patron saints for everyone from the prelate thief, but who is the Saint of All-Fools?” Thus spoke Tom Marks, one of a merry trio of trout fishers who had...
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...
SecureIt: Revolutionary Home Gun Storage
Several years ago, I produced a TV special for Discovery’s Destination America network called Armageddon Arsenals, a gritty take on the doomsday prepper craze that continues to sweep the world—especially in the aftermath of the global pandemic. The documentary...
Sporting Firearms & Antique Advertising: A Perfect Pair
SPONSORED CONTENT Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Our admiration of the antique is not admiration of the old, but of the natural.” I arguably have one of the best jobs in the world, selling the rarest and highest condition antique advertising pieces on the planet. “How...
Fool’s Paradise
Never feel sporting about turkeys for they’ll dupe you more than you’ll dupe them.
America’s Best Trout Streams
The middle of the night is a wonderful time to go fishing. No matter how heavy the flow, we can wade to the most advantageous position. Our casts unfurl with uncanny precision, and flies drift wakelessly until the dimpled take. It is then that slashing rainbows,...
Bullets and Blessings: An Easter to Remember
The fork-horn buck was big trouble, even after he was dead, and the wild stories about the little deer rattled around town like
a rock in a milk pail.
An Afternoon on the Handles
This story is Tom Kelly at his inimitable best – evocative, filled with emotion and in some senses, downright eerie.
EP 167: Choctaw Buffalo Hunt
Click Here to Listen Now This week Luke and Larry discuss a recent buffalo at the Choctaw Hunting lodge. It was a successful hunt with the hunters shooting the classic 1874 Sharps rifles.
The Day the Lake Went Mad
The gale-force winds and driving rain were bad enough, but then the island itself began to move.
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....
Gunwerks “Ready to Werk” Special Offer
For a limited time buy any Gunwerks Ready to Werk rifle packaged with a Revic Optics riflescope and get a free Revic BR4 ballistic rangefinder or BLR10b ballistic rangefinding binocular! Supplies are limited and this offer is only valid for 30 days, expiring April...
Broken Down and Shot Out
When the Tin Liz breaks down five miles from home, the Old Man and the Boy discover a new way of bird-hunting. A classic from the September, 1956 issue of Field & Stream.
The Bell
The sound of the small brass bell was his link to three dogs and almost three decades of bird-hunting.
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 . . .
The Best Grouse Hunting Writer and More?
Some years ago, I was bird-hunting in Idaho with the brothers Wayment: Shawn, a veterinarian who blogs as the “Bird Dog Doc,” and Andy, an attorney who also happens to be the author of Idaho Ruffed Grouse Hunting. One afternoon, walking through a golden seam of...
Training Across
Those of us who spend lifetimes hunting and fishing learn in time that skills attained wild serve very efficiently in the struggles that eventuate in tamer, but trying, environs of modern living. Attributes of stoicism, self-discipline, perseverance, determination,...
River God
“The River God” by the late Roland Pertwee first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in July, 1928. An Englishman, Pertwee was an actor, playwright, screenwriter, novelist and painter. He wrote screenplays for Warner Brothers in the 1930s and ’40s. Pertwee died at age 78 in 1963.
The Cull
The common link spanning the wide chasm of wealth and status were the dogs.
There Are Strange Things Done in the Springtime Sun
Aficionados of campfire poetry in general, or fans of the so-called “Poet of the Yukon,” Robert Service, will likely recognize that the title of this piece comes from his eerie yet wonderful poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” The setting for the saga lies far from...
How Valuable is Your Old Side-By-Side ?
Just because it’s an old side-by-side doesn’t make it valuable.
Introducing the Diana Bird Shooter for Her
Introducing the new Russell Moccasin “Diana Bird Shooter”, the first woman specific model in their made-to-order Premier Build program. With a 9” height, oak-leather heel counters, leather lined quarters, Double Vamp construction, and a lightweight Vibram outsole, the...
Hunting With Vintage Lever Actions
Still making meat after more than a century.
Helle 2024 Knife of the Year
The 2024 Helle limited edition knife is designed by our chief handlemaker Audun. Starting in 1973, Audun first worked on the cutlery before taking over as chief handlemaker and foreman. For the past 50 years he has worked with and for three generation of Helles and...
EP 166: Outdoor Cooking
Click Here to Listen Now There is no doubt food cooked in camp or in the outdoors simply tastes better, regardless of the "makings". Both Luke and Larry are adept at cooking outdoors particularly over an open-fire with cast iron. Luke too has mastered cooking with...
Quail of the Kalmias
These birds of the hills develop both a speed of flight and a finesse of dodging that are superior to anything the field birds can show.
Lost, Alone and Fighting to Survive
Troy Galow hadn’t planned to hunt that January day a few years back. But a friend of a friend was looking to shoot a “cull buck”—a nice but non-trophy animal, basically—and Galow, who makes his home in Liberty Hill, Texas, and has a deer lease on a ranch in the South...
Tooth & Hound
You can’t teach people the way of the woods in a thirty-second soundbite. You have to live it.
Hunting With a Mission on Kodiak Island
Mark, Richard and I dangle from toes and fingers on a steep slope 2,100 feet above the surf. We’ve finally broken out of the claustrophobic alder thickets, and behind us the view is spectacular—the islands of the Kodiak archipelago rise green and brown and black from...
2024 March/April Issue
Spring is almost here and with it the promise of bears leaving their dens, gobblers strutting and fish biting. In the Match/April issue of Sporting Classics, join Duncan Grant and Brad Fenson on an epic bear hunt in Alberta that reflects on bear hunting since the...
Australian Giant Trevally and Barramundi
Hoping to complete his bucket list, the author journeys to far-off Australia to pursue the world’s most spectacular gamefish.
Too Perfect to be Random
It's so perfect, in fact, that most serious quail hunters would rather go afield without a shotgun than without a dog. Some veteran bird hunters pay exorbitant lease prices to exercise their dogs. Oh, they may shoot a bird now and then, but they shoot mostly because...
How Trout See and Perceive Colors
The following is an excerpt from Fly Fishing the Blue Ridge Parkway By Sam R. Johnson. For the first time, fly fishing savant Sam Johnson has captured in one guide an incredible “bucket list” of over 210 of the most serene and productive places to chase trout along...
EP 165: Bear Talk
Click Here to Listen Now With Spring just around the corner Larry and Luke talk about some of the things they're looking forward to, from fishing for white bass to especially spring bear hunting. Larry has spent many years hunting spring bear and talks a bit about...
At Greystone Castle, It’s Great Being the King
The Greystone Castle Sporting Club did not, like a phoenix, arise from a bed of ashes. This superb Texas hunting and shooting facility did, however, end up being built, in good measure, on a pile of bricks. The story begins in the late 1800s when a large vein of coal...
The Old Man and the Fly-Fisherman
He had admired them from afar during the past years of his life. These young, reckless, 20-something-year-olds who had a zeal and zest for fly-fishing that seemed to consume their lives and take precedence over all responsible pursuits. These youngsters had no worries...
Kentuck Turkey Tango
Some 480 million years ago, plate tectonics waltzed the lapetus oceanic plate into what is today’s United States to form part of the supercontinent, Pangaea. For a hundred million years afterward, the Central Pangean Mountains lifted skyward, as high as the Alps....
The Shape of the Future
Another flight around the sun and here we are, 138 years after the invention of the first centerfire, bottlenecked, smokeless powder cartridge, the 8x50mm Lebel, watching cartridges evolve. For better or worse. The “better” part of this equation are the bullets. In...
General Custer’s Trout
Did trout fishing seal Custer’s fate at the Little Bighorn?
One Dog Night
In the early years, African leopards commonly preyed on cattle and other livestock, and even humans. But their favorite prey of all was the dog.
The Captivating Art of Suzie Seerey-Lester
A quest to express her creativity in reverence for the joys of the natural world impelled Suzie Seerey-Lester to turn a pastime into her life’s work.
A Fishing Story – Hard Rain, White Noise
Hitch knew the boy didn’t know anything about fishing. “Would you like to learn what fishing is all about?” He needed to get the boy headed in the right direction without frightening him. No one realized it, but Hitch Barlow had a very special need to find the lost boy.
EP: 164 The Never Give Up Buck
Click Here to Listen Now Thanks to Texas’ Managed Land Deer Permit, properties under the program can hunt whitetails until the last day of February. In this episode Larry and Luke talk about a buck, Larry initially passed in November, and then the long subsequent hunt...
RMC Sporting Clays Invitational
For 125 years Russell Moccasin have crafted footwear for the greatest sportsmen of every generation. This March, they are starting a new tradition that will bring their customers, friends, and partners of all ages together for a day of good company & competition....
The Morris Museum of Art: Joseph H. Sulkowski
View the extraordinary exhibition, Apokalupsis: An Uncovering at the Morris Museum of Art. Featuring more than thirty remarkable paintings and drawings by celebrated animalier Joseph H. Sulkowski, it is an interpretive vision inspired by the natural world and the...
If You Can’t Lick the Weather, Join It!
“The only way to handle weather,” said the Old man, “is to know what to do with it – and use it accordingly”