Henry Edwards Davis: Old School Sporting Scribe
Most turkey hunters who are serious students of the sport and its rich literary heritage will be familiar with the name Henry Edwards Davis. His landmark book, The American Wild Turkey, is widely acclaimed as the definitive treatment of hunting America’s grand bird....
To Bite the Bullet
Terror in the tall grass.
You Own What You Condone
It’s basic obedience, not rocket science. I’d gotten together with my pal Jones for a round of sporting clays. It’s something we do every summer before the hunting season, and while its effect on our wingshooting is questionable (the theory, of course, is that it will...
Blackout Black Death by Q
More than a hunt, Blackout Black Death is a thesis on the 8.6 BLK caliber, a deliberate test of ballistics and design: can a 12″ suppressed rifle that weighs just ~6 lbs truly take down a Cape Buffalo? The film answers that question in blood and dust, pairing...
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...
Unmasking The Polar Bear Climate Change Narrative
Ryan St. John peers through his binoculars on the shore of Hudson Bay near his home community of Arviat, Nunavut, an Inuit village of 3,000 residents in north central Canada. “There’s another polar bear that’s caught a seal,” he says. The bear is standing 800...
Nooners
Over his 70 years of pursing whitetails, the author has shot a surprising number of mature bucks while his hunting partners were back in camp eating lunch.
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 18 Trailer
It is a pursuit for a beast from another era as Chris Dorsey and Steve Lamboy look to hook giant white sturgeon on Idaho's Snake River in this week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey. The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm ET, with additional...
Mystery of the Man-Killer
He grabbed his gun, the bear charged with tremendous speed.
Uncle Earl’s Shotgun
“Uncle Earl left the shotgun to me, and I planned to honor him that day by hunting with it one more time.”
Death by Ivory
Powerful and tireless, quiet and quick, elephants proved smart enough to avoid hunters. Or kill them. It was another time. We’d picked him up at dawn, a slight, expressionless, middle-aged man who nodded to every query and directive. Motoring along a track toward our...
The World
Even your worst memories will go away when you’re stalking a handsome muley buck with arrow and bow. There are four of us in that sweltering bunker: Sgt. Eddie Devaney, myself and two newbies just in from the world. It’s April 16, 1970. We’re playing low-stakes poker...
At Home on the Range
The scud stacked up over the northeast, a gray washboard above the sea, to the horizon and beyond. Too late for a hurricane, but the wind didn’t care. Raindrops big as dimes on roofing tin and window glass, a racket like the devil beating some hellish rhythm on a...
Mister Howard was a Real Gent
The week before Thanksgiving that year, one of the Old Man’s best buddies came down from Maryland to spend a piece with the family, and I liked him a whole lot right from the start. Probably it was because he looked like the Old Man—ragged mustache, smoked a pipe,...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 17 Trailer
From time-honored driven shooting to cutting-edge night vision technology, its a global pursuit of tusks and tradition as we journey across the country and around the world for high-energy hog hunting in this week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey. The...
The Gun Collection
"It was over there, in old furniture stores, junk yards and other out of the way places—where they knew nothing about old guns, and cared less, just so they could sell them at most any price—that some of the real prizes turned up, such as the Sharps coffee mill...
A Man-Killing Bear and Revenge
Shocked and angered by his friend’s horrible death, the old trapper was determined to get 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...
Holland & Holland: Old Values In New Times
In 1985 Holland & Holland bought W&C Scott of Birmingham, a purchase that brought together two of the oldest and most influential gunmakers in England — two firms that helped create the modern gun and thus helped shape tradition. And then Holland & Holland...
Collecting Guns
A simple but effective technique has proven workable to many gun collectors. And it’s almost as classic. One of the finer points of gun collecting, if not the finest, is the ability of concealing from your wife: (1) the fact that you have actually purchased a new gun...
Winchester’s Haunted House
Said to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed with Winchester rifles, the home is an interesting site even without the superstitions.
Hemingway’s Cuban Hideout
In part two of “In Pursuit of Papa,” the author heads outside the U.S. for clues about the famed sporting scribe.
A Hunter’s Guide to Classic Imported Doubles (Part 2 of 2)
Click Here to Read Part 1 This is the second half of a two-part article on classic European doubles imported into the U.S. between the end of our Civil War and the start of the First World War. Part I, which was published in Sporting Classics July/August 2025...
Attacked By a Grizzly
A veteran prospector, Hatheway was heading out from camp to stir something up for the pot. It had somehow become his task to put food on the table at the small mining camp. He was the oldest and felt somewhat responsible to use his shooting skills to keep the stewpot...
Going Up Under The Mountain
When it came to pheasants, Kelly had his own bag of tricks—mothods you’d never find in a dog-training manual.
Keeping Things Wild
There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot . . . This is a story for those who cannot. In 1927 Crazy Ernie, Kid Al and my dad won a hunting shack in a poker game and lost their hearts to a swamp. In a remote northwoods clearing stood a...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 16 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features upland hunting at the spectacular Cumberland Estate - a Virginia property which has been meticulously restored. If there is heaven on Earth for quail hunters, this could be it. The series airs on prime-time on...
The Price of a Dog Part 1 of 3
Part One: Leaves Papa died in the spring of ’62 when I was 12 years old. Although there had been little interaction between us, he was still a needed figure in my life—a father. Mother wouldn’t, but I made allowances and excuses for his long absences. I would tell my...
Smith Setters Revisited
It was quiet when I drove down the long, sandy, Smith Setters Plantation road. On both sides were fields full of warm weather grasses that were rimmed by a mix of pines and oaks. Two quaint guest houses were on my left, and a big kennel and an expansive horse corral...
New Polls Show Blue State Colorado In Play For Republicans
A recent Denver Post report on the state of affairs in Colorado affirmed what Democrats have seen nationally—that their brand is struggling. Another recent Quinnipiac University poll affirmed the same; the Democrat Party is deeply unpopular nationwide, and...
Copley Launches New Exhibitions with the Waterfowl Festival 2025
Copley is pleased to announce a landmark collaboration with the Waterfowl Festival and the Academy Art Museum. On November 13-16, Copley Fine Art Auctions, the nation’s premier decoy and Sporting Art auction house, will present “Copley at the Academy” during the...
Bob Ruark and the Boy
Bob Ruark left every lover of nature, every hunter and fisherman a bountiful legacy. To virtually all contemporary lovers of fine sporting literature, not to mention the millions who came to know him through his biting newspaper columns or best-selling novels, the...
A Country Store
What a store was doing out in the middle of nowhere I didn't know, but there it was. I should never have had that second green chili burrito. The gas in my stomach told me I had made a big mistake and it was getting worse by the minute. I had finished my sales calls...
Confessions of a Deer Processor
Some of this may sting a little, but these tips could help improve the way you handle your harvests, the venison you put on the table and may even help improve relations with your favorite deer processor. Like most struggling writers, I have often been forced to seek...
Woodward/Purdey
The change from side-by-sides to over-and-unders is unquestionably the biggest shift in game guns during our current era. The undeniable success of the superimposed shotgun at all manner of competition has led most of us who pursue wild birds to believe we’ll bag more...
Most Embarrassing Mistake In Gunmaking
For gunmaker Al Biesen, misspelling Jack O’Connor’s name was a tiny mistake, but something he would never be able to live down. Spokane was as far from her family as my rightfully cautious bride would move, at least in the direction of Montana’s elk country, so we set...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 15 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features a unique hunt for giant red stag and elk in Oklahoma for two experienced hunters. It's a New Zealand hunt without the jet lag! The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm ET, with additional airings every...
A Place of Wind
The fundamental issue with Alaska Southeast is there’s so much for the sportsman to do and so little time to do it, despite the kind of dogged weather that can change your hopes and plans in a heartbeat. There are a variety of outdoor distractions in Southeast, but...
Brays Island Plantation: Your Sporting Life Awaits
Brays Island Plantation is a unique coastal community dedicated to providing residents and their guests with an array of recreational opportunities suited to their outdoor lifestyle. To this end, Brays Island meticulously maintains an expansive wingshooting program....
Bones Among the Blazes
Only 30 minutes into the first day of the season on a brisk December morning, I am at full draw on an old battle-scarred ram. A slight breeze coming up off the North Fork of the Big Thompson River is trying its best to cut through my layers and give me a chill. The...
Roaning Burkina Faso
Our tracker pointed his steel-tipped spear at the lion’s spoor. Pug marks indicated the big cat was headed toward the verdant creek bottom that starkly contrasted with the khaki and brown that surrounded us. Green trees indicated the serpentine creek flowed toward the...
Jackson Hole Art Auction Brings Highest-grossing Result In Event History
The 19th Annual Jackson Hole Art Auction (JHAA) was held live at the Center for the Arts on September 13th in Jackson, WY. A staggering 97% percent of the 432 lots were sold, realizing $13.5 million in sales. The sale set a new benchmark, realizing the highest sale...
Kings of the Hill
Only four years apart in their native Germany, Wilhelm Kuhnert and Carl Rungius would go on to become preeminent painters of the world's big game. For a short time in the late-1880s their trails crossed, the two young bulls setting out to make their ways in the world,...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 14 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey pairs two waterfowl fanatics as host Chris Dorsey and guitarist Steve Farris enjoy the world's greatest duck and goose hunting destinations, and we help celebrate a unique real estate transaction in Nebraska. The series...
No More Mr. Nice Guy
He just wasn’t going to take it anymore: the snow and cold and bass that seldom grow much bigger than your bait. No. The time had come to pull out all the stops in one last-ditch, hell-bent-for-whatever quest for a trophy bass… a gut-wrenching, arm-busting, heart-pounding wallhanger of a fish.
Whiskey and Palaver at the Dying of the Sun
Moses threw another load of sticks upon the coals. The fire crackled, sparks flew and smoke rolled. Zambia, in the valley of the Great Zambezi. Out on the sandbars, hippos were grunting up dates, a-hunka-hunka-hunka. A leopard coughed in the gathering dark and the...
Death Wore A Lion Skin
The lion came in low and very fast, seemingly out of nowhere. Pete Barrett saw Henry Poolman knocked aside, and the next thing he remembered he was looking down at the top of the great cat’s head, and it had his left forearm between its jaws and was crunching down on...
Paul Mauser: The Man Who Repurposed the Door Latch
His rifles armed world powers in titanic wars, and hunters in the greatest game fields on Earth. The spoor, braided at first, was unraveling. “Ready to bed,” John mouthed the words. Short yards ahead, a patch of dried mud came to eye—two feet off the ground....
The Dragon Hunter Roy Chapman Andrews
Beloit, Wisconsin, was a small town of just 6,000 people, but that was still too many for young Roy Andrews. The boy lived on the western edge of town, close to a mosaic of fields and woods and rushing streams, and those became his solace and his guide. By the age of...
James Hautman Wins 2025 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest
After two days of competition, James Hautman of Chaska, Minnesota, emerged as the winner of the 2025 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest with an acrylic painting of three buffleheads. The announcement was made at an in-person event and via livestream at Patuxent Research...
El fatasma del cepillo… Or The Ghost of the Brush
“What do you mean he was a ghost deer?” TC inquired. Before Roberto could answer, TC asked: “Did you shoot at him and he disappeared when you thought the bullet should have hit him?” “Noooo! You weren’t listening, were you?” said Roberto. “I said that I watched him...