Monarch of the Zselics

Monarch of the Zselics

The stag understood who he was. He stood next to a tree line in Hungary’s Zselic Mountains where his hinds could admire him and the smaller stags hidden in the forest would know they were trespassing. The stag’s head was crowned with heavy antlers that stretched out...
Chasing the Caribou

Chasing the Caribou

A witless beast could hardly inflict the trials, even perils, visited on caribou hunters. Could it? Had the rain paused more often, I might have looked longer. But the ceiling had a deliberate set, as if the low, lugubrious clouds were screwed in place. Dawn’s veil of...
Bones Among the Blazes

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...
The “Don’t Shoot” Buck

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...
Black-Horn Buck 

Black-Horn Buck 

Toward the close of a glorious day in late September, I had gone down to the river from home to roam the wilderness of a neighboring plantation. The noble house that once stood on the bluff overlooking the lower reaches of the Santee was burned more than a century...
Tiger, Tiger, in the Night

Tiger, Tiger, in the Night

Elsewhere, man-eaters were quickly shot. In Corbett’s India, they kept killing. Deeply rutted pads and a cleft across the right forefoot distinguished the prints of the eldest cat. The toes were also exceptionally long. By February 1929, the tigers -— by their sign an...
The Tracks

The Tracks

As long as live, I’ll never forget two simple numbers and one letter, 26-B. That was the federal housing number of the home my mom, dad and I lived in during the tumultuous, worldwide war years of the 1940s. The small, country town we and several thousand other...