Australian Giant Trevally and Barramundi
Hoping to complete his bucket list, the author journeys to far-off Australia to pursue the world’s most spectacular gamefish.
Too Perfect to be Random
It’s so perfect, in fact, that most serious quail hunters would rather go afield without a shotgun than without a dog. Some veteran bird hunters pay exorbitant lease prices to exercise their dogs. Oh, they may shoot a bird now and then, but they shoot mostly...
Kentuck Turkey Tango
Some 480 million years ago, plate tectonics waltzed the lapetus oceanic plate into what is today’s United States to form part of the supercontinent, Pangaea. For a hundred million years afterward, the Central Pangean Mountains lifted skyward, as high as the Alps....
Fishermen Are Not (Necessarily) Liars
It is evening. The day’s fishing is over, and the faithful of Portage Bay have wreaked havoc on the wonderful dinner Aileen and her hand-maidens have set before them – a dinner, to use the words of Izaak Walton, “too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.” Now,...
Notes on Dangerous Game
The Third Tanganyika Letter This article originally appeared in the July 1934 issue of Esquire magazine. In the ethics of shooting dangerous game is the premise that the trouble you shoot yourself into you must be prepared to shoot yourself out of. Since a man making...
A Cole Creek Diary
It tumbles off the east face of Big Back Mountain, leaping and flowing down its stony, laurel-lined course as it has for eons. Dad and I had fished its lower reaches when we’d first moved to Tennessee back in the early sixties, and many times we had talked about...
An Adventurous Lady
Gertrude Legendre lived a life of adventure, hunting virtually around the world, hobnobbing with kings and celebrities, and then while serving her country, somehow surviving capture by the German Gestapo. The guests at Medway Plantation had finished dinner and moved...
Gambling for Gambel’s
Perhaps it’s simply luck. Perhaps it’s some sort of obscure instinct which guides a hunter. Or possibly it is as the Indians believe—if you live right and observe the proper rituals, the spirits of the woods and prairies will take you by the hand and lead you to good...
The Greatest Game Animal On Earth
Blessed with imagination and a library card, I hunted dangerous game from a tender age. My companions on those early safaris were Corbett, Ruark, Hemingway, and a dozen others, adopted uncles whose manifest pleasure in the beasts and bush of wild places shaped my...