Christmas Holiday Shenanigans: Part 1
When modern deer hunting seasons were first established in Georgia during the late 1950s and early ’60s, it was against the law to hunt on Sunday in many (if not all) Georgia counties. Sometimes these laws were enforced and sometimes they were not, depending on the...
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 Final Chapter: A Nevada Bull Elk Hunt
After 14 years of applying, the author draws a coveted Nevada bull elk tag. The hunt would prove to be an epic ending of an epic year of hunting.
A Hippo For Christmas
“I wanna hippopotamus for Christmas…only a hippopotamus will do….” Those lyrics kept running through my mind as I stowed gear in Omujeve Safari’s Ivory Camp on the backwater banks of the Kwando River in Namibia’s Zambezi Strip. The comfortable en-suite tent would...
A Christmas Eve Swan Shoot
Two old renegades pull off an illegal nighttime hunt, despite a surprise collision and dunking. Shooting swan by night may seem hardly the correct thing in the estimation of many, but we fowlers of the wild and “feathery” West occasionally obtain under cover of the...
A Week Before Christmas
One morning, a December long-ago, a week before Christmas, Bob walked into a local store in Millerton, New York. The owner, Phil, a friend, was behind the counter taking care of a customer as Bob came in from the cold. “Late night, Bob,” he said. That wasn’t a...
The Cremation of Sam McGee
An unlikely life. He was an English banker who ran off to America at an early age. He nearly starved in Mexico, bunked in a California bordello. He passed himself as a cowboy, farmer, lumberjack, Yukondog-musher and gold miner. He drove an ambulance in the First War...
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...