Shallow-Water Ducks
When the ducks come—splayed feet anticipating a frigid plunge into shallows; wings cupped, rocking in a jerky side-to-side; keen eyes scanning—there is no finer experience in the hunting world. Oh, there is the enhanced palpitation of heart when distant leaf crunch...
Georgia on Your Mind? Don’t Miss These Sporting Gems!
I walk toward an orange and white English setter that is as motionless as a leopard before the pounce, the dog puffing quail scent like a man drawing the flicker of life into a cigar. I am only a two-hour drive from Atlanta but feel more like a half century removed...
The Bird Wrangler
For South African Trevor Comins, perfection is a safari on the fly. The beast is dead, but that’s when it becomes dangerous. Forty yards in the sky, the 22-pound spur-winged goose plummets toward my blind like a feathered meteorite. When calculating the lead on the...
Some Grouse You Never Forget
He was a young man, barely past his 25th birthday, slim and fit in the way of young men who follow dogs in the high mountains. His companion, Big Sam, was a huge, muscular, raw-boned pointer with a head like a mule—in size as well as temperament. Sam was a “big-going,...
The King of Birds and the God of Thunder
It is said that in the early days of the world, the ocellated turkey (Meleagris ocellata; in Maya, Yuum kuutz) was a bird of pedestrian plumage with a melodious voice while the nightjar (Antrostomus badius; in Maya, Pu'ujuy) was clothed in resplendent finery. So, Kuutz...
The Waterhole
At the muddy little pond, a 12-year-old boy would find his place in the world.
New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns
Storied is not exclusive to price tag or class. Occasionally the twain rub shoulders and have a bountiful supply of tales to tell, but there are no guarantees. This Purdey, however, had it all. Scratches and dings and rubbed-smooth spots. Cost? Likely something...
The Best Grouse Hunting Writer and More?
Some years ago, I was bird-hunting in Idaho with the brothers Wayment: Shawn, a veterinarian who blogs as the “Bird Dog Doc,” and Andy, an attorney who also happens to be the author of Idaho Ruffed Grouse Hunting. One afternoon, walking through a golden seam of...
Training Across
Those of us who spend lifetimes hunting and fishing learn in time that skills attained wild serve very efficiently in the struggles that eventuate in tamer, but trying, environs of modern living. Attributes of stoicism, self-discipline, perseverance, determination,...
Cheju Do Pheasant Hunt
Back in 1968 I was doing penance for some perceived past sins at Kwang Ju, a remote air base in Korea. I had arrived there on a hot, sweltering night in mid-August to serve a 13-month tour as an Air Force munitions officer. As I staggered out the rear cargo door of a...