William Cornwallis Harris – Africa’s Audubon

William Cornwallis Harris – Africa’s Audubon

Though engaging as a literary craftsman, Harris is even more appealing as an artist. The game-rich veld of southern Africa was his studio; lions, elephants, and even a now extinct species of wild horse were his subjects. Although he would spend less than a year...
Bedtime Story

Bedtime Story

The bear pounced on him like a dog on a gopher and was soon shaking and mauling both Earl and the canvas. Some of the best hunting in North America is to be found south of the Mexican border along the Sierra Madre Mountains, from western Chihuahua and extending down...
The Lunatic Express

The Lunatic Express

The gruesome exploits of the maneaters, together with those of Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson…form one of the most fantastic tales in the annals of African adventure. In the 1890s Britain’s far-flung empire covered a quarter of the globe,...
The Time and The Wounded

The Time and The Wounded

A man of lesser conscience would have it easier. Regret and self-hate have plagued Casey every day, almost every waking hour, since the shooting. Casey Ryan’s bull elk crowds his study. Not many days had passed since the exciting hunt that he hadn’t...
The Bronze Age of Mike Barlow

The Bronze Age of Mike Barlow

Some kids are suited for learning in a classroom, for others education begins when they leave. For six-year-old Mike Barlow, paging through his father’s extensive collection of art books on African wildlife awakened a muse that would lead to his life’s work, and an...
Weary Be the Cat’s Eyes See

Weary Be the Cat’s Eyes See

Walking silently through the wet snow, I . . . reached the kill site, but another solitary hunter was already there. I have often searched the wilderness for something that is right under my nose. On this day, I had just returned from a grueling backpack hunt deep in...
Chamber of Horror

Chamber of Horror

American hunter Joseph Grew sat on the small pile of straw that settled as his bed in the comer of a dilapidated temple, listening intently to the savage tales of the 10 hunters sitting around him. From beneath a bluish-gray cloud of stagnant opium smoke and burning...
Of Ice and Men: Part II

Of Ice and Men: Part II

Part II Of Ice and Men I helped him get to his feet and got him moving toward camp. He walked like a crippled man. I quickly pulled the cord attached to my pack and it came up full of water. I turned it upside down and jammed the frame into the snow. I left the rifles...
The Last Bear

The Last Bear

Generally, he would have welcomed the chance to leave the hunter behind and go alone to finish the hunt. It would’ve been a good way to end his bear-hunting career. But this time, he couldn’t. Kernels of snow splashed from the tracks for several feet in...
Ethics and the Meat Hunter

Ethics and the Meat Hunter

Contemplations on the ethical hunt. I saw the yellow Rank and the branched antlers as he stepped through a thin place in the second-growth timber, maybe 70 yards away. He was gone before I could even slip the rifle sling off my shoulder, let alone shoot. The wind was...