Fine Guns, Fine Dogs
My introduction to quail hunting came nearly two decades ago on an old family plantation in the piney woods of South Georgia. Since that unforgettable moment in that picturesque woodland, I’ve been hooked on quail hunting.
Finding Socrates
The story of how a boy found a stray puppy that went on to be a great pheasant dog for him and his dad. A dog surprised us the spring of my 10th birthday when Aunt Helen banged the screen door behind her. As she shuffled in the dark of dawn toward the Sunday paper, a...
New Year’s Eve was a Dark and Doggy Night
I did not intend to be stuck deep in the woods on a moonless night, one so dark you could feel the blackness wrap around you. But two of my beagles saw to it that New Year’s Eve 2018 was a memorable one, although less than celebratory. Anyone who has owned...
The Wonderful Fool
Harrison walked out of the room, smiling and easy on the razor-thinness that was the surface of himself, closing the door quietly on the still woman in the bed and the nurse with the calm professional air. Doctor Joe was there, an old friend with whom he’d killed a...
Cumberland Estate’s Historic Revival And The Renaissance Man Behind It
In the 1994 classic, Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, delivers the film’s memorable manifesto to Ellis ‘Red’ Redding (Morgan Freeman), “Life comes down to a simple choice…get busy living or get busy dying.” For 80-year-old Texas native John...
The Irish Setter: A Victim of Its Own Beauty
Askew’s Carolina Lady was, and is, the foundation female—the Eve, if you will—of the field-type Irish setter as we know it today. One day a friend of Ned LeGrande’s stopped by to visit him at his Willow Winds Farm, near Douglassville in southeastern Pennsylvania. At...
How Pomp Saved Our Christmas
The no ’count yellow hound which strays into camp turns out to have a nose after all and takes his place among the immortals.
Wolf Secrets
“Incoherent,” she paused. “The sick man was incoherent.” “Incoherent.” My left arm curled around the top of the page hiding a small scrap of paper. On the paper several words were written in tiny print. She continued with “incomprehensible,” “divisible” and 17 other...