Roosevelt’s Smoldering Savannah
A raging wildfire threatens to bring President Roosevelt's safari to a quick and untimely end. It was a terrifying sight that greeted Theodore Roosevelt as he stepped from his tent that morning in 1910, and it was something that could have brought a costly and...
On The Nose
Once merely a bullet’s front end, the tip has become an engineering project. Here’s why.
A Thanksgiving Day’s Bear Hunt
Thanksgiving Eve at length came around and I was off for Norfolk with the lightest of hearts and the gayest smile I had worn for many days. My friend and companion in arms, Mr. Parkins, met me there, and away we went together, as jolly a pair as could be found in a...
These Old Shoes
Decades became years, years became days, days became hours, and it seemed I had been born only yesterday. Peering north , the creek appeared to narrow to little more than a trickle before vanishing altogether up where the lush green grass glinted backlit in that...
Your Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide
From the Producers of Sporting Classics TV If there is a hunter or angler on your holiday shopping list, we’ve got you covered with this season’s Holiday Gift Guide for the Outdoors. This season, give the gift of adventure – after all, the real present is not what’s...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 22 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey returns to the Iberian peninsula for an unforgettable wingshooting and big game combo as Chris Dorsey and friends enjoy driven partridge and Ibex hunting . The episode is a celebration of the fantastic hunting culture...
The Perfect Thanksgiving
Perfection is in the eyes of the beholder. Southeastern Wisconsin is far from a waterfowl hunting destination. It lacks the open spaces and accessibility of the Canadian prairies, the expansive agricultural fields of the Dakotas, the multitude of privately managed...
A Thanksgiving Blessing
For more than 50 years I’ve been going up there. If it happens to be during hunting season – that is, deer season in the fall or turkey season in the spring – I usually have a rifle or shotgun in hand. For at least 30 of those years, my aging mother-in-law always...
A “Thanksgiving” Shooting Trip
On Thanksgiving, a shoot at Hooper’s Island in Chesapeake Bay furnished some experiences that will not soon be forgotten. Our party consisted of three—my hosts, Bert and his brother Al, and myself. With me went my two dogs, Don, an English setter, and Nick, a pointer,...
The First Time I Saw God
It was about 5:15 p.m., 108 miles northeast of Oran, I remember, when the starboard gunners shouted, ‘’Torpedo off the bow!” The helmsman tried to swing her so the thing would run parallel to us, but the old bucket was bottom-heavy with about 9,000 tons of high...
Mixed Bag in the Yukon
We were out of the wind up there on that Yukon ridge. In the polished blue of the sky, fluffy white clouds were sailing along like jet planes, but where we sat, it was quiet and pleasantly warm. It was late August, the tail end of the Yukon summer, and the rolling...
Arthur Savage and His Inimitable 99
Unlikely seed of cattle, coffee and a torpedo, his rifle failed. Its revival blessed hunters for a century. Gashes in the old snow pulled me into a riot of swamp-grass. Yards into it, a speck of red winked from the tangle. Confirmation, not a promise. I’d called a...
Faster Horses
I guess I’m just a born country boy. I’ve always felt most at home in the woods and fields with a dog and a shotgun for company. Early on, I “took to” the home-spun philosophy in country music, too, and Tom T. Hall was one of my favorite inspirations. I was still a...
The Cull
The common link spanning the wide chasm of wealth and status were the dogs.
Poulin’s Firearms And Militaria Sale Realizes Nearly $9,000,000!
This four day event saw breathtaking results, including setting two new world record auction prices for antiques in the uniform and dragoon categories! Poulin Antiques & Auctions is pleased to announce the results of their four day, 2,500+ lot sale held October...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 21 Trailer
This week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey features a tour of the pheasant belt as Chris Dorsey and Domenico Orzi take a road trip through South Dakota to hunt at three spectacular venues. The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm ET, with...
Watch: Steel vs. Alloy Upland Hunt Showdown
For upland hunts, should you grab a light alloy shotgun or a heavier steel shotgun? Steve Gould and Travis Mears hit the field at Greystone Castle for an upland hunt to find out if shotgun weight really matters. We’re putting an alloy receiver and a steel receiver...
Eleventh Hour 11-Pointer
I sat content in the pre-dawn silence. The sun began wrapping its gentle embrace, and the world seemed to hold its breath, listening to the soft whispers of the past carried on the morning breeze as darkness turned to monochrome and finally to the warm golden color of...
Got An Attitude?
Next time you head to the deer woods, keeping a “proper” attitude can pay huge dividends! Deer movement had been slow. By now, the three of us in the South Texas Brush Country camp should have had a couple of bucks hanging or at least be talking about the bucks we...
Hemingway In Michigan
The Making of a Literary Sportsman Whether you admire him for his prose or the adventurous lifestyle he led, vilify him for his philandering or even pity him for his untimely and ignoble ending, Ernest Hemingway nonetheless remains one of the most influential literary...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 20 Trailer
This week, Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey celebrates the best of land, sea and air on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains as elk, mule deer, pheasant and trout are all in play at Elk Creek Ranch. The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm ET, with...
A Man In Full: Roosevelt’s Early Years
Young Theodore Roosevelt wasn't exactly the strong, confident leader of American history that we know today. Like many of us, Little Teedy started small. Young Theodore Roosevelt, or "Little Teedy," was a sickly child and the doctors didn’t offer much hope. He had a...
The Grand Passage of Beetle Island
A once-in-a-lifetime view of the waterfowl migration.
Dove Song
Dove openers initiate the beginning of the fall hunting seasons—special occasions that create wonderful memories. Doves embody the best features of upland game birds rolled into a gray bullet that challenges the best of shooters. The stars must have aligned early for...
Prairie Wings
We had just turned the horses into the wind when I noticed Beck, one of Jeff’s A-Team setters, getting birdy. Was it another bunch of meadowlarks or something better? Then, 50 yards in front of us, Beck locked down tight and Bandit, his canine partner from the A-Team,...
Mountain Lion Against All Odds
As with any type of hunting, circumstances can change abruptly when hunting mountain lion with hounds. There is either a track to run, or there is not, and this changes instantaneously. We had put ten miles behind us in a hike in Idaho’s snow-covered backcountry...
A Short Gun for Long Horns
“Got you set up to hunt with Don Richardson,” said Greg Simons with Wildlife Systems when we visited about my upcoming pronghorn hunt in western Texas. “Don knows the ranch you’ll be hunting and will have scouted it before you get there. When I did the annual game...
Sporting Classics TV Season 7 Episode 19 Trailer
Make sure to catch this week's episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey for a pursuit of Scotland's ultimate sporting quest - the MacNab - where one must take a stag, a brace of grouse, and a salmon in one day. The series airs on prime-time on Thursday at 10pm...
Seeing with a Hunter’s Heart
Hunting is paradoxical: Immersing one’s self in a hunt that could end in death is life-affirming.
Luck Is Cheap Up There
Like the old song says, two out of three ain’t bad, especially on a bowhunt for elk.
The Buck of Cordwood Hill
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....
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...