A Growling In the Rain

Sensing something wasn’t right, the lion popped his head out from behind the tree. Instantly, his big eyes blazed like coals and he issued a deep, rumbling growl. It was a hot and dry September day in Tanzania, just south of the little village of Loiborserrit....

The Good Life

Crisp, clear air and cold water are the sources of life. It is a life implemented with guns and flyrods, populated by beautiful birds and dogs and fish stippled with rose-moles bright as neon. It is a life of vast grassy space where dogs can run to their heart’s...

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

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...

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

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

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...

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

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,...