Three Boys and a Cannon Barrel

Three Boys and a Cannon Barrel

It was a Federal Criminal Conspiracy: three boys, a cannon barrel and scaup to drive them crazy. The saltwater scaup are mostly gone now, but back when I was a boy they would raft offshore, a thousand, ten thousand at a time. It would take a booming gale to get them...

Beard Beauty

Beard Beauty

Turkey beards are a meaningful memento of success in the field—one with the potential to provide ongoing pleasure limited only by your creativity. There is a pronounced tendency among turkey hunters to consider the length and thickness of a turkey’s beard the ultimate...

The Opening Weekend Tragedy

The Opening Weekend Tragedy

This October marks the 21st anniversary of one of the most tragic events in the history of upland bird hunting: opening weekend of the 2003 South Dakota pheasant season. Over the horrifying course of those two days, more than 100 gundogs (no one knows the exact...

Little Windy and the Wingshooting Woman

Little Windy and the Wingshooting Woman

She was a great Nordic beauty, and she came with a duck lease. She was a green-eyed freckle-faced redhead, long of hair and limb, married a couple of times before I met her but neither lasted too long. Her name, literally translated, meant "the daughter of an angel of...

Requiem for a Peregrine

Requiem for a Peregrine

Everything about the peregrine falcon is spectacular — even in death. "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." – Aldo Leopold Early one evening toward the end of April, my English setter, Tina, and I were on the...