The Era of Belle

The Era of Belle

Perhaps there truly are angels among us. The journey to the mailbox should have been exciting. There was a flawless, expectant stillness to the air, as if the world held its breath in waiting. Dense, leaden clouds layered the bottom of an ashen sky, leaving the fields...
Take a Hike

Take a Hike

Hiking is full of adventures and sights. Just the other day I noticed Mike was filling a daypack and lacing up his Irish Setter hiking boots. Great, we were going hiking! Hope he packed a gun because the mountains around here are now full of grizzlies, wolves and...
Wildlife in Motion

Wildlife in Motion

When it comes to portraying animals in motion, many wildlife art experts agree that Schatz has few peers — if any. He is among western Europe’s most renowned wildlife artists. His paintings, some of which sell for as much as $40,000, have been displayed in...
Mr Tutt is No Gentleman

Mr Tutt is No Gentleman

“A gentleman!” repeated Quelch sarcastically. “Will you kindly inform me in what respect a person calling himself a gentleman differs from anyone else?” Mr. Ephraim Tutt had just come out of the clubhouse and was standing, rod in hand, on the...
Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th! But mind your hunting dogs — they may mistake those sky booms for downed birds! While you hoomans are celebrating the 4th of July, you kinda miss the meaning of freedom. You have jobs, payments and so many daily and life obligations. Ugh. For dogs, however,...
Roland Clark The Varied Artist

Roland Clark The Varied Artist

Roland Clark’s love of excellence extended beyond duck portraiture. More than other hunters, waterfowlers are men sustained by memory and promise. In the icy silence of the marsh, when a world of water and sky hangs suspended between darkness and daylight, a man...
Tinkhamtown

Tinkhamtown

He was going back to Tinkhamtown. It was a long way, but he knew where he was going. He would follow the road through the woods and over the crest of a hill and down the hill to the stream, and cross the sagging timbers of the bridge, and on the other side would be...
Theodore Roosevelt and A Great Adventure

Theodore Roosevelt and A Great Adventure

Roosevelt had said, “I want Uncle Sam to have a better African collection than anybody else”; he accomplished his purpose. Well-known African explorer-hunter Carl Akeley, a contemporary of Theodore Roosevelt, had a simple answer about why Roosevelt’s...
Voice of the Outdoors Curt Gowdy

Voice of the Outdoors Curt Gowdy

Curt Gowdy left a legacy that will never be equaled. Baseball broadcasts would run spring to fall; football carried from fall to winter and basketball into the spring. But Sunday afternoons from January to March, with snow packed at the foot of millions of doors, part...
A Great and Tainted Genius

A Great and Tainted Genius

There’s the greatest writer of the last century and wanderings across the continents with gun and rod, and it begins in 1951 just outside Havana Way up in the Sawtooths, the day comes creeping on the wind. The aspens rattle and the stars fade as the first light hits...