Bones Among the Blazes

Bones Among the Blazes

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 to cut through my layers and give me a chill. The...

Buffalo Soldiers

Buffalo Soldiers

I got my first good look at the mountain just before dawn on the second day of the trip. The morning was clear, and as the sky began to lighten, the mountain appeared and quickly dominated the skyline of the flat Masai steppes in northern Tanzania. I knew it was...

High Peril on Polychrome Mountain

High Peril on Polychrome Mountain

For two bone-chilling days, he pursued the rams unrelentingly, from dawn to dark, scaling precipitous cliffs, inching across narrow ledges and sliding down icy slopes. March 9. While climbing the mountains the past few days, I had been uncomfortable because of warmer...

Roosevelt the Rifleman

Roosevelt the Rifleman

With horse and rifle he explored frontiers, indulging a lust that would transcend politics.  Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. defined the bully pulpit, spared the teddy bear and led the strenuous life. “I do not believe,” he declared in a late retrospective, “that any...

Theodore Roosevelt’s First Buffalo Hunt

Theodore Roosevelt’s First Buffalo Hunt

One September morning in the late 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt had a sudden desire to hunt buffalo on the western prairie. He had been honing his ranch-craft by staying at a cow camp a few miles up the Little Missouri River from his ranch in the Badlands of South Dakota....

Ghosts in the Ravine

Ghosts in the Ravine

I'm not a superstitious man. I’m not afraid of ghosts. It’s just a skull I tell myself, but contemplate my pale, frail host. Author's Note: While it appeared in the fall 2020 Guns & Hunting issue of Sporting Classics magazine, I wrote this little poem/story for...