Great Misses
“I have never missed a deer!” proudly proclaimed a relatively new hunter sitting across from me at a late November campfire. I glanced at Luke Clayton, my longtime friend and hunting partner, who was sitting next to him. He smiled and wagged his head in a negative...
Don’t Fence Me In
Pronghorns numbers are benefiting thanks to funding by Pittman-Robertson. A state highway that reels off into the distance looks like a sun-scorched, gray-black ribbon laid over tawny grassy hills. Lonely locust trees here and there over much of the West favor their...
The Adults in the Room: Why I Support the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation
Washington is full of people willing to tell a sportsman what he wants to hear. Finding someone who will tell him what he needs to know takes more insight. That is one reason the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation stays near the top of my call list. I’ve served on...
Buffalo Bill: Life, Legend and the Wild West
In the echoes of our Civil War, the West drew a tide of emigrants from the rubble of battlefields once communities. Rootless, embittered men drifted across the prairies, in and out of crime. Hostile tribes imperiled settlers who’d endured the privations of wagon...
The Eyes Have It!
It was an embarrassing moment to say the least. I, an experienced wildlife biologist, lifelong hunter, had pointed toward three animals on a broad New Mexico plain north of Roswell and proclaimed them to be pronghorn antelope. “I don’t think so,” said my wife. “I...
Rogue Male: Ewart Grogan
There is a certain kind of man who can get away with damn near anything. They generally come from a line of charming rebels and often combine good looks with a devil-may-care attitude and a distaste for authority. Standing alone is their superpower, vanity their...
Monarch of the Zselics
The stag understood who he was. He stood next to a tree line in Hungary’s Zselic Mountains where his hinds could admire him and the smaller stags hidden in the forest would know they were trespassing. The stag’s head was crowned with heavy antlers that stretched out...
Chasing the Caribou
A witless beast could hardly inflict the trials, even perils, visited on caribou hunters. Could it? Had the rain paused more often, I might have looked longer. But the ceiling had a deliberate set, as if the low, lugubrious clouds were screwed in place. Dawn’s veil of...
Bones Among the Blazes
How A Wildfire Almost Sent My Ram Tag Up In Flames 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...
Conservation’s Greatest Weakness Is Not Science. It Is Silence.
Conservation has a communication problem, and pretending otherwise may be one of the greatest threats to its future. We have extraordinary scientists, experienced land managers, passionate philanthropists, dedicated hunters and anglers, conservation organizations,...