The Bronze Goose
It had been 35 years since his father had killed the strangely colored goose, a feat that had set him apart from ordinary men. And now, hanging almost stationary overhead, its big wings fighting the howling winter wind, was his own legend. Carl Oberg saw the bronze...
October in Spain
A family holiday of driven partridges and Spanish hospitality. When each of our four daughters became engaged, I gave her prospective husband a shotgun. There was a condition attached: He had to learn to use it. One already knew his way around a clay ground; the...
The Biggest Little Trophy
A boy’s first hunt in rural Georgia, and a memory that still looms large sixty years later. Now that I’m in my sixties, I’ve been on many hunts, but no trophy looms larger in my memory than a little rabbit and riding with the great beagle “Buck” in the middle seat of...
Eight is Enough
On January 23, 1990 Kevin Thacher, my wife Marge, and I made our way a mile over rolling sand dunes from the English village of Wells-next-the-Sea. There was a very strong wind, alternating with ice, rain and heavy snow. We were there for the goose flight....
My Blue Zone Has a Bird Season
A blue zone is a place where people are known for living unusually long lives. Much has been made of what they eat, how they exercise, and who they keep company with. I wish them well, though reaching 100 on a steady diet of beans sounds like something you should...
Playhouse
A Tennessean born in 1880, Nash Buckingham holds a unique place in American literature. A graduate of Harvard and a four-letter man at the University of Tennessee Law School where he received a law degree, he excelled equally on a sports field, hunting field or in the...
If You Build It, They Will Come: Conserving Virginia Quail
The tense second before a whopping covey explodes is the most nerve-wracking silence in history — Havilah Babcock, I Don’t Want to Shoot an Elephant (1958) Virginia’s wild northern bobwhite quail population isn’t what it once was, but for Mr. Bob fans, there’s good...
Ernest Hemingway: Angler, Fighter, Lover
Ernest Hemingway fought in two wars, battled huge marlin and tuna in Bimini and Cuba and then survived two plane crashes and deadly encounters with lions and elephants in Africa – all while creating some of the greatest sporting literature ever written.
November Was Always the Best
“I like November best,” the Old Man used to say, “because it reminds me of me.” A heartwarming remembrance from Ruark’s classic, The Old Man and the Boy. A lot of people figure November to be a middling sad kind of month, with the trees showing naked against the...
Down On the Border: Mearns’ Quail
I’d been following my Brittany, Tess, through the steep, rocky canyons of southeastern Arizona’s Coronado National Forest for the better part of an hour when her bell fell silent. I found her upslope—bug-eyed, trembling and stretched out on point—at the base of a live...