High Plains Lover

High Plains Lover

So there I am. In the rapidly fading sunset roughly 85 miles southeast of a city in New Mexico that I’ve never been able to spell, straddling a six-foot sheep fence on wobbly legs and a cramping left foot with three strands of needle-sharp “bobbed” wire mere inches...

The Reluctant Guide for Roosevelt

The Reluctant Guide for Roosevelt

The fresh-faced young man from New York was eager to hunt mountain goats and was doing his best to persuade the rugged man from Missouri to act as his guide. The Missourian was Jack Willis and the tenderfoot was 28-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, who was with a...

The Rifle That Took The Smithsonian’s Giant Of Kumaon

The Rifle That Took The Smithsonian’s Giant Of Kumaon

The yellowed newspaper clippings and fading photographs tell a remarkable story. It was in November, 1967, that David Hasinger, Dr. Karl Jonas and their wives traveled to India to hunt tigers. Beyond the slightest doubt, they were mindful of Jim Corbett’s famous...

A Tribute to Wildlife Artist Jim Killen

A Tribute to Wildlife Artist Jim Killen

“Life is like a painting. It starts with a dream and a blank canvas and it’s anybody’s guess how it will turn out. Then brushstroke by brushstroke with time and care, something beautiful starts to take shape and you have then created a masterpiece.” Jim Killen The...

Howa Super Lite 6.5 Creedmoor

Howa Super Lite 6.5 Creedmoor

Conventional wisdom suggests this rifle shouldn’t exist let alone function smoothly and shoot precisely. Yet here it is: Howa’s Super Lite.  If there is a lighter weight mass-produced bolt-action hunting rifle than the 4-pound, 7-ounce Super Lite, I’ve yet to hear of...

The Short, Dangerous Life of Paul Rainey

The Short, Dangerous Life of Paul Rainey

He had it all – money, education and looks – along with an obsession for danger that would get another man killed.  He was a millionaire, Arctic explorer, big game hunter and movie producer – a man who was larger than life in everything that he did. Born September 18,...

The Men Behind the Scenes

The Men Behind the Scenes

Theodore Roosevelt’s historic safari through British East Africa was more than a year in the planning and took nearly a year to complete. It became the most significant expedition ever taken on the Dark Continent. TR’s safari collected more specimens and identified...

The Most Expensive Sporting Arms

The Most Expensive Sporting Arms

Have you ever noticed how any time there’s a gathering of outdoorsmen, an argument always breaks out? The B.S. level rises with each successive opinion, and pretty soon, things get heated. It happens all the time at Sporting Classics. The problem is, we’ve got so many...

One Versatile Beagle

One Versatile Beagle

Want a dog that can track rabbits, squirrels, pheasants, and wounded big game? Consider the beagle.

Great Morning

Great Morning

Originally published as a piece in his “Tailfeathers” column for Sports Afield, this tale is a splendid example of the author’s genius in pulling on the heartstrings of his readers. It subsequently appeared in one of the many collections of Hill’s tight, bright little...

Hunting the Crown Jewels of the UK

Hunting the Crown Jewels of the UK

On a cloudy, cold, dank, boot-wearing morning, I began my hunt for the unique saber-tusked Chinese water deer. I was paralleling a hedgerow separating forest from cropland planted in rape ­– grown for its valuable oil-bearing seed, but extremely attractive to these...

Two Brothers. Two ‘Real’ Fish. One Great Memory

Two Brothers. Two ‘Real’ Fish. One Great Memory

My parents made a serious error raising me. I was their firstborn, so I suppose I can cut them a little slack. They were still trying to figure out the whole parenting thing. One of their most critical mistakes, notwithstanding the one they made nine months before I...

Time to Hunt Memories

Time to Hunt Memories

The middle of January is tough on New Hampshire bird hunters. The waterfowl and upland seasons are over, there is a foot or more of snow on the ground, and the temperature is cold. Very cold. It is hard to look forward to spring white geese and turkey hunts when they...

Illinois Odyssey

Illinois Odyssey

When the subject of pheasant hunting comes up, most people think of South Dakota. For bobwhite quail hunts, they envision a Southern plantation. Who thinks of upland hunting in Illinois? As a lifelong resident of this state, I can understand the lack of enthusiasm for...

An excerpt from The Kings of Curlew Island

An excerpt from The Kings of Curlew Island

It was Richard who showed me the huge antler—a dropped horn from a whitetail buck. Massive to a degree rarely seen, not less than five inches it measured around the handsome beading. Moreover, there were nine clear points, none mere craggy excrescences; they were...

A True Tale of Faithfulness

A True Tale of Faithfulness

We were hunting the legendary Lodge and Ranch at Chama in far northern New Mexico on that cool autumn evening, and when we hit Cañones Creek, we bore north. We reached the base of Cerro Venado Macho, or “Big Buck Hill,” and commenced climbing its steeply ascending...

Martin Frank “Bubba” Wood 1940 – 2024

Martin Frank “Bubba” Wood 1940 – 2024

We hunted quail with heavy hearts as we learned of the passing of Bubba Wood. Bubba was a beloved sportsman whose knowledge and passion for the outdoors was matched by his generosity in support of wildlife and habitat conservation. He created the Texas Duck Stamp...

2024 January/February Issue

2024 January/February Issue

Shake off winter and warm up to the promise of an exciting African safari with the January/February 2024 issue of Sporting Classics. In this issue we go after leopard in Namibia and sit with Jim Corbett in what was likely his most important night vigil. Meet Jim...

Reunion Hunt

Reunion Hunt

The author and his old TV sidekick Gerald McRaney get back together to hunt big whitetails, and in some unusual ways.

The Festive Hunt, 1909

The Festive Hunt, 1909

The long line of native pagazi, each man carrying his allotted 60 pounds of supplies and equipment, moved like a giant mamba through acacia bushes and across the savannah. The American flag was held proudly aloft at the front of the long, seemingly endless line. Some...

This Humble Wildling with a Benelli Super Black Eagle 3

This Humble Wildling with a Benelli Super Black Eagle 3

SPONSORED CONTENT Benelli’s Super Black Eagle 3 is the combination of legendary shotgun performance with features recommended by Pro-Staff and hunters that make it better. The sun had just begun to cast its golden hues across the vast, open prairies of Saskatchewan....

Gambling for Gambel’s

Gambling for Gambel’s

Perhaps it’s simply luck. Perhaps it’s some sort of obscure instinct which guides a hunter. Or possibly it is as the Indians believe—if you live right and observe the proper rituals, the spirits of the woods and prairies will take you by the hand and lead you to good...

We Have Rifles

We Have Rifles

We have the rifles. We have the cartridges. We have the bullets. What we don’t have is consensus.  Which is why we have so many rifles, cartridges and bullets.  Welcome to free choice, an unusual option in most parts of the world. A challenge if not conundrum in the...

EP 157: Campfire Talk with Luke and Larry

EP 157: Campfire Talk with Luke and Larry

Click Here to Listen With Christmas festivities behind them Luke and Larry are looking forward to new hunting and outdoor adventures. But not before they had the opportunity to hunt one of their favorite hunting places, the Cotton Ranch in Northeast Texas. And as Luke...

Tiger Hunting In Africa

Tiger Hunting In Africa

It was our second morning of fishing on Tanzania’s Ruhudji River and we had just skirted a pod of agitated hippos on our hour-long boat ride to where we’d be fishing. Our guide, South African Mark Murray, told my partner Phil Satre to swing his fly across the head of...

Greatest North American Hunting Trip Ever

Greatest North American Hunting Trip Ever

It was the greatest North American hunting trip ever, though the men’s survival was always in doubt. Fall of 1804, Meriwether Lewis was halfway up the Missouri, St. Louis to Great Falls, though he could not name the Great Falls until he had seen them, yet many months...

Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey

Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey

It is the final week of the season for Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey and we are ending the year on a high note. Make sure you catch the action on Outdoor Channel this week for an epic adventure in Tanzania as Steve Hicks and I hunt massive Cape buffalo with PH...

Karamojo Crossing

Karamojo Crossing

The rains were gone but the rivers were still swollen. He looked on in amazement as the men calmly walked into the river, each man carrying a big elephant tusk across his shoulder. As they neared the middle of the river, they continued to walk until one by one they...

The Christmas Rifle

The Christmas Rifle

This story by an unknown author reminds us the best gift of all is sharing with those in need.

The Christmas Star

The Christmas Star

I thought the day would never end. The whole class had drawn on incessantly about every Christmas they had ever had, about every gift they had ever received and what they were wishing for this year. Each one was like a punch in my belly. Mrs. Priddy told of snow and...

Blindsided

Blindsided

It had been a chain of thrills. First, the answer of one bull from the top of the darkening ridge, screaming, rolling into a chorus of chuckles, earnest and deep. Then a second, 200 yards right, angry and urgent. And yet another, in the canyon below, maybe a half-mile...

Leopard On the Rooftop

Leopard On the Rooftop

Jadu Manji tried desperately to keep the tattered umbrella over the head of his wife Rongo as she attempted to shield her two-month-old infant from the incessant rain. The little family huddled under the eaves of a small rural bus stop near the village of Dharampur in...

Roosevelt Elk Are Different

Roosevelt Elk Are Different

Forget the business of slams; it was simple wanderlust, the desire to experience anything foreign and untried that placed bow-hunting Roosevelt elk at the top of my wish list for so many years. I’d long contemplated driving westward from my home in New Mexico to...

A Good Thing

A Good Thing

“The Falls Hole is the defining run in this stream that had defined our lives for so many years, and Dad had learned its every nuance in decades now long passed.” Snow and rain tracked nearly horizontal, and tiny shards of ice bit into our faces when we turned into...

Mollygrubs Messer: Trials and Tribulations with an English Pointer

Mollygrubs Messer: Trials and Tribulations with an English Pointer

Although Mollygrubs Messer grew up in a region of the South not known for abundant populations of quail, during his youth that grand game bird Havilah Babcock once described as “five ounces of feathered dynamite” was still fairly commonplace in agricultural regions...

Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 2

Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 2

When modern deer hunting seasons were first established in Georgia during the late 1950s and early ’60s, it was against the law to hunt on Sunday in many (if not all) Georgia counties. Sometimes these laws were enforced and sometimes they were not, depending on the...

EP 156: Campfire Talk with Luke and Larry

EP 156: Campfire Talk with Luke and Larry

Click Here to Listen Larry recently returned from his Alberta whitetail hunt with Ron Nemetchek's North River Outfitting, during which he experienced mild northern Alberta temperatures, along with little to no snow.  In spite of a lack of good hunting weather Larry...

Upland Hunting’s Bookmark Days

Upland Hunting’s Bookmark Days

Make sure to catch this week’s encore airing of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey as he marches through the high plains of Arizona for Mearns, scaled and Gambel's quail - then we're off to South Dakota for pheasants at Tumbleweed Lodge with Veteran, author and FOX...

Mixed Bag in the Yukon

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...

Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 1

Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 1

When modern deer hunting seasons were first established in Georgia during the late 1950s and early '60s, it was against the law to hunt on Sunday in many (if not all) Georgia counties. Sometimes these laws were enforced and sometimes they were not, depending on the...