Bones Among the Blazes
How A Wildfire Almost Sent My Ram Tag Up In Flames Only 30 minutes into the first day of the season on a brisk December morning, I am at full draw on an old battle-scarred ram. A slight breeze coming up off the North Fork of the Big Thompson River is trying its best...
Woodcock Shooting on the Upper Mississippi
In few places has there ever been woodcock shooting that for certainty of finding the birds and ease in following them equaled the sport of the bottom lands of the upper Mississippi River 20 years ago. Scarcely any of the resident sportsmen then troubled this charming...
Conservation’s Greatest Weakness Is Not Science. It Is Silence.
Conservation has a communication problem, and pretending otherwise may be one of the greatest threats to its future. We have extraordinary scientists, experienced land managers, passionate philanthropists, dedicated hunters and anglers, conservation organizations,...
The Best Plains-Game Rifle for Africa
The gun has to be capable of dropping everything from ten-pound dik-dik to 2,000-pound eland.
The “Don’t Shoot” Buck
“It was him!” said Charlie as he strode into our Game Trails Kentucky camp kitchen. “He was at least five miles from where you saw him last November. He was with two other bucks near the end of Bell Road close to the river. No doubt it was him! Same antler style, but...
Hunting With a Mission on Kodiak Island
Mark, Richard and I dangle from toes and fingers on a steep slope 2,100 feet above the surf. We’ve finally broken out of the claustrophobic alder thickets, and behind us the view is spectacular—the islands of the Kodiak archipelago rise green and brown and black from...
Congratulations, New Hunter—Here Is Your 194-Page Criminal-Exposure Manual
America’s wildlife agencies have spent years developing an ambitious program called R3—Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation—designed to persuade more ordinary citizens to hunt and fish. The theory is that agencies should recruit newcomers, retain current sportsmen...
Chasing Chesapeake Rail
Looking for a different kind of bird hunt this fall? If so, a clapper rail hunt—an interesting hybrid of upland and waterfowl hunting—in the coastal waters of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay may be the answer. Though not as popular as it once was, chasing these shorebirds...
Ruark On Safari: Gin
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. During the next few weeks we’ve changed locations many times with a series of fIy camps, sometimes setting up without anything except mosquito nets. The whole...
Argentina Has a Brilliant New Plan to Save Its Game Birds: Make Them Worthless Again
Congratulations are apparently due to Argentina, where politicians have discovered a revolutionary new principle of wildlife conservation: If an animal has economic value, make sure it doesn’t. In 2022, Argentina’s Environment Ministry adopted Resolution 133/2022,...