The Winchester Model 97
The first time I saw the 97, I knew where it came from: that era, that time around the turn of the century when men just hunted and really did not ask the question, “Why?” That is simply what they did; you can see it in the eyes of the men in an old photograph from...
Little Guns Big Birds
I’ve always had a healthy respect for the .410 as long as it was restricted to small birds at short range.
Great Writers and Their Guns
If the thought that literary liberals once hungered for London doubles doesn’t fill you with doubt, then read on. Russian author Ivan Turgenev, whose efforts to free the serfs produced the Sportsman’s Sketches, bought a Joseph Lang gun. Ernest Hemingway acquired a...
Sporting Classics Shooting Event April 18, 2026
Time: April 18, 2026 (9:00 am until 5:00 pm) Location: River Bend Sportsman’s Resort, 1000 Wilkie Bridge Road, Inman, SC 29349 Click Here to Register Today! Join Sporting Classics for a day of shooting and fine guns at River Bend Sportsman's Resort. Set on nearly 500...
A Collector’s Guide to Parker Shotguns
I guess I should tell you up front that I have some misgivings about this column. Not because it’s bad stuff, but because I have a lot of friends who may not be too happy about it. You see, I make an annual pilgrimage to the Southern Side-by-Side Championship in...
The New Essential Riflescope
Having grown up hunting November hardwoods, where riflescopes were scarce as clean socks in deer camps, A. B. Learned could be forgiven a provincial view: “I always use open sights,” he declared, “preferring their speed to the somewhat slower peep sight. I have...
Browning A5 20-Gauge
To me, the Browning A5 seems as old as time itself. My father had one when I was a teenager, and that was a long time ago. The A5 wasn’t new even then. In fact, the old man’s was an old, “used hard and put away wet” specimen that we found and revived from near dead...
Taking Stock: Confessions of a Custom Stock Convert
I had always been a little dismissive of the idea of a custom stock. I say this at the risk of confirming my ignorance, but hear me out: I already had an adjustable stock on my Krieghoff K-80, and I preferred it without any adjustments. Therefore, that contraption was...
Pig Medicine
Turning a .300 H&H Magnum on Texas’s feral hogs.
Road-Tripping with your Shotguns
To say I travel quite a bit for bird hunting and sporting clay tournaments is a bit of an understatement. It’s a little comical if I stop and think about it, and truthfully, I only recognize that because of the strange looks I get from family and friends when I try to...
