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,...
The “Don’t Shoot” Buck
“It was him!” said Charlie as he strode into our Game Trails Kentucky camp kitchen. “He was at least five miles from where you saw him last November. He was with two other bucks near the end of Bell Road close to the river. No doubt it was him! Same antler style, but...
Congratulations, New Hunter—Here Is Your 194-Page Criminal-Exposure Manual
America’s wildlife agencies have spent years developing an ambitious program called R3—Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation—designed to persuade more ordinary citizens to hunt and fish. The theory is that agencies should recruit newcomers, retain current sportsmen...
Black-Horn Buck
Toward the close of a glorious day in late September, I had gone down to the river from home to roam the wilderness of a neighboring plantation. The noble house that once stood on the bluff overlooking the lower reaches of the Santee was burned more than a century...
Tiger, Tiger, in the Night
Elsewhere, man-eaters were quickly shot. In Corbett’s India, they kept killing. Deeply rutted pads and a cleft across the right forefoot distinguished the prints of the eldest cat. The toes were also exceptionally long. By February 1929, the tigers -— by their sign an...
A Purpose Fulfilled: Jack O’Connor’s Bear Rifle Goes on One Last Hunt
The dean of American gunwriters was perplexed. His brow was furrowed more than the average 60-year-old to start with, but now the wrinkles had transformed into deep crags reminiscent of the sheep country he loved so much. He rocked back from his well-used desk, and in...
The Tracks
As long as live, I’ll never forget two simple numbers and one letter, 26-B. That was the federal housing number of the home my mom, dad and I lived in during the tumultuous, worldwide war years of the 1940s. The small, country town we and several thousand other...
Roosevelt’s Last Hunt
"The man should have youth and strength who seeks adventure in the wide, waste spaces of the earth, in the marshes, and among the vast mountain masses, in the northern forests, amid the streaming jungles of the tropics, or on the deserts of sand or of snow. He must...