The Phantom Setter

The Phantom Setter

Originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1961, this story is one of the finest ever written about gundogs and grouse hunting. It is certainly the most chilling.

Ghost Light on the Land’s End Road

Ghost Light on the Land’s End Road

I was suddenly awash in pale blue phosphorescence and I briefly reckoned poor ventilated Private Quigley had his chilly arms around me!  Right turn at Frogmore, south down a dozen miles of two-lane island blacktop, through woods and swamps and fields, to old Fort...

Grizzly Encounter

Grizzly Encounter

Rick bent to one knee checking blood splatters on three-day-old snow crunching under his weight. It appeared pinkish—possibly lung blood. Staring up the hill, his gaze followed the mule deer’s tracks running straight to the top before disappearing into exposed rocks....

A Door in the Woods

A Door in the Woods

“Good boy, Rex, easy now. Whoa on the bird!” The gathering gloaming of the approaching evening made it rather difficult to see what I was doing as I fought my way through the wicked tangle of greenbrier vines draped across the dense trees in front of me. I struggled...

The Back-up Plan

The Back-up Plan

Magnum raindrops pelted the north wall of the lodge. Early pre-dawn temperatures continued to drop. I loved it! For the past several days, the afternoon highs had been in the mid-80s, not what most would consider “ideal deer hunting weather.” The falling temperature...

The Bird Wrangler

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...

A Battle for Survival

A Battle for Survival

Precariously perched in the small tree, the hunter peered into the night, his eyes slowly adjusting to the eerie light cast by the moon. The year was 1903; the place: Sabi Sands, South Africa.  Harry Wolhuter was shaking from a combination of cold and fear. What was...

The Killer of the Wynaad

The Killer of the Wynaad

To the south-west of the city of Mysore lies the heavily forested area of the Kakankote jungles, for centuries the home of many herds of wild elephants that are partial to the kind of jungle that grows in this district. The rainfall is heavy and the vegetation is...