You Own What You Condone

You Own What You Condone

It’s basic obedience, not rocket science. I’d gotten together with my pal Jones for a round of sporting clays. It’s something we do every summer before the hunting season, and while its effect on our wingshooting is questionable (the theory, of course, is that it will...

Neglected Birds

Neglected Birds

Responses vary greatly when someone hears the unexpected. There may be a blank stare or emphatic sigh or even a look of mild alarm.  There may be the sudden gasp accentuated with a rhetorical, “Really?” This is not so much a question as it is spontaneous disbelief. Or...

Nooners

Nooners

Over his 70 years of pursing whitetails, the author has shot a surprising number of mature bucks while his hunting partners were back in camp eating lunch.

Death by Ivory

Death by Ivory

Powerful and tireless, quiet and quick, elephants proved smart enough to avoid hunters. Or kill them. It was another time. We’d picked him up at dawn, a slight, expressionless, middle-aged man who nodded to every query and directive. Motoring along a track toward our...

The World

The World

Even your worst memories will go away when you’re stalking a handsome muley buck with arrow and bow. There are four of us in that sweltering bunker: Sgt. Eddie Devaney, myself and two newbies just in from the world. It’s April 16, 1970. We’re playing low-stakes poker...

At Home on the Range

At Home on the Range

The scud stacked up over the northeast, a gray washboard above the sea, to the horizon and beyond. Too late for a hurricane, but the wind didn’t care. Raindrops big as dimes on roofing tin and window glass, a racket like the devil beating some hellish rhythm on a...