Strange Happenings At Chickamauga Creek

Strange Happenings At Chickamauga Creek

The hunter had been following a sparse blood trail for over two hours and it looked as though his greatest fear might be realized. The scant blood sign was beginning to peter out even more. John Forrest feared it might disappear altogether. Although he was sure he had...

Hunting Beaver Dam Lake

Hunting Beaver Dam Lake

The Mississippi Delta is a land of hard-working people and enduring legends. Many in this agricultural region farm thousands of acres in cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and any productive crop that will grow in topsoil built up from centuries of rotting vegetation over...

Mars the Pointer

Mars the Pointer

He was all alone now, but the birds were still there. He was called Mars because new names can become scarce around a big kennel and someone had come up with Jupiter and with Mercury (shortened to "Mere" and "Jupe" for other pups). Later, he was registered as Morton's...

A Wyoming Rattle Trap

A Wyoming Rattle Trap

First light came to the riverbottom like a developing Polaroid, shades of gray giving way to bright greens and golds with every blink. The barely noticeable form of a distant buck crosses the valley below us in the nose-down manner of a spaniel working the scent trail...

The First Time I Saw God

The First Time I Saw God

It was about 5:15 p.m., 108 miles northeast of Oran, I remember, when the starboard gunners shouted, ‘’Torpedo off the bow!” The helmsman tried to swing her so the thing would run parallel to us, but the old bucket was bottom-heavy with about 9,000 tons of high...

The Rain

The Rain

Someone once wrote that “rain is the oldest sound to reach the porches of man’s ear.” I like the sentence and I like the sentiment. And I like rain. I like to hunt in it, fish in it and just walk around in it. I like the sound of rain, the feel of it and the soft...

Keeping Things Wild

Keeping Things Wild

There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot . . . This is a story for those who cannot. In 1927 Crazy Ernie, Kid Al and my dad won a hunting shack in a poker game and lost their hearts to a swamp. In a remote northwoods clearing stood a...

Where the Clouds Are Birds

Where the Clouds Are Birds

I think I know what Otis Redding had on his mind when he crooned “Sittin’ on the dock of a bay.” Only there’s no dock here. There’s no bay either, but I’m sitting on a high bluff overlooking the Parana River in Argentina, takin’ the rest of the day off.  Mi amigos...