The Coyote – Nature’s Versatile Vagabond

The Coyote – Nature’s Versatile Vagabond

Richie Nash had never seen a coyote on his family’s farm south of Monroe, North Carolina . . . but all that changed on a cool December morning as Nash sat in his comfortable box stand overlooking a freshly cut cornfield. Half an hour after sunrise, Nash noticed...
Tangles With El Tigre

Tangles With El Tigre

Each day’s end brought fear and a sense of unease to the small ranching community of Center City, Texas in the fall of 1903. Whispered throughout, the terrible term “El Tigre.” Warner Glenn knelt on the shallow tracks of the desert floor, carefully...
The Goat And The Miner

The Goat And The Miner

This was the billy I had been looking for all summer and fall — my whole life, really. . .I’d found the animal I wanted, and would push myself to any limit to get him. The Rocky Mountains are a vast stretch of peaks that are young by geologic measure and by any...
Three Bears!

Three Bears!

The bear launched and hit the ground, eyes locked on me. Then, I heard my friend yell, “There’s two!” — A second later, “There’s three bears!” On May 18, 1983, I was three days into a seven-day assignment with Alaska State Parks,...
Lost In An Alaskan Blizzard

Lost In An Alaskan Blizzard

I realized then I was on my own — alone in a vast wilderness of ice and snow. Looking above camp toward where we’d be hunting brown bears, all we could see was snow and mountains, not a tree in sight. The only thing that wasn’t white was an occasional rock sticking...
Siberian Ibex – Heart of the Tian Shan

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

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...
Daniel Smith – Nothing Less Than Magic

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...
Leo Tolstoy and The Bear Hunt

Leo Tolstoy and The Bear Hunt

I felt something warm above my head and realized the bear was drawing my whole face into its mouth; my nose, already in it and feeling the heat of it… Have you had summer in Moscow and St. Petersburg this year? “the bundled-up June tourist asked at the...
Grizzly Hunt – Fear in Fairyland

Grizzly Hunt – Fear in Fairyland

Soon I found a path which led me over a deep gouge in a log. I realized, this was a bear path! I’d followed deer trails, but never had I walked a path used only by bears. Roland Burrows turned his boat out to sea and said, “I’ll be back tonight at...