Why Dogs Drool – Part 2
I have plans when I drool. If you wonder if I drool, just look at Mike’s shirts, coats, truck interior and the windows at the backdoor or the floor around the kitchen table. Those many noticeable round spots are drool. Drooling is my way of saying, “Hey, I’m...
Bobwhite Quail – Comin’ Up With Bob
It was boots and chaps. Gents and hats. Shotguns and spats. It was dog-folks gentle and gay. It was dignified old live oaks, bearded grizzled and gray. It was a lazy old mule wagon, creak rattle and sway. “The Lord’s own symphony,” my Grandma Betts would say, “in the...
Siberian Ibex – Heart of the Tian Shan
And here, among these crumbling cliffs and dizzying heights, I had come to hunt the Siberian Mid-Asian ibex in the dark heart and sharp teeth of dead winter. Eons ago, in a great battle of continents, the Indian and Eurasian plates collided with planetary force,...
Tiger Attack in Vietnam
In the dark night, the men sat listening. Originally no more than five feet from the last team member, Sgt. Phleger had disappeared. As a Marine deployed to Southeast Asia 25 years ago, I had heard of tiger sightings in the bush and an incident where a Marine had been...
Art For The Ages, Through The Gifted
Fine and decorative sporting art can gather up your soul, bringing happiness to you or whoever else might come to own and cherish it. Life is life, and even in the theater of our greatest passion the difference between a laugh and a tear is as capricious as the...
Advice On Selecting Gun Pups
It’s that time of year when many dog breeders have pups for sale. I can give my advice, if you are seeking a dog — they are all good. I understand dogs. I speak with authority, I am a dog. First rule of thumb is look at the pup’s parents and guess how much that adult...
Daniel Smith – Nothing Less Than Magic
In a market increasingly dominated by loose, painterly works that imply rather than show, Daniel Smith is an unreconstructed realist. “Let me show you some real cool sheep,” Daniel Smith says. He rifles through a stack of slides, pushes one of them across the light...
New Zealand – A Sporting Country is Born
There was once a land with no people, no mammals, just forested mountains and clear rushing rivers since the rocks were laid down. No deer or antelope, no wolf or bear had ever left a footprint there. That place lay brooding for millions of years, a thing unto itself....
Why I Bark – Cameron the Weim
Candid Cameron Just the other day I was riding down the road – Mike drives and chauffeurs me about, as it should be – and then I saw it. Another dog on a leash being led along the highway by a hooman. I instantly let out a few loud barks — never mind Mike’s ear was...
Iceland Brown Trout – A Place Out Of Time
The situation in Iceleand reminded me of an existentialist stage play, like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Being lost in the fog, with its sensory and sound-deadening effects...was akin to having wandered into the off-stage of life. Iceland it...