New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns

New England Woodcock and Storied Shotguns

Storied is not exclusive to price tag or class. Occasionally the twain rub shoulders and have a bountiful supply of tales to tell, but there are no guarantees. This Purdey, however, had it all. Scratches and dings and rubbed-smooth spots. Cost? Likely something...
Home Coming Whitetails

Home Coming Whitetails

The rustle of fallen white oak leaves littering the ground 30 feet below demanded my immediate attention. There, patches of brown moved. A deer! Heartbeat racing! Breathing? I am not certain I even took a breath.  A solid hour before first light and under the cover of...
Down On the Border: Mearns’ Quail

Down On the Border: Mearns’ Quail

I’d been following my Brittany, Tess, through the steep, rocky canyons of southeastern Arizona’s Coronado National Forest for the better part of an hour when her bell fell silent. I found her upslope—bug-eyed, trembling and stretched out on point—at the base of a live...
Fair Winds, My Brother: Daufuskie Family

Fair Winds, My Brother: Daufuskie Family

Forget about deer stands,” he said. “Just boost your woman high up in a live oak late in the afternoon. That way you’ll know she’ll still be there when you come to fetch her home after sunset.”  We were on his front porch, out of the wind on a chilly afternoon, easing...
Long-Range Shooting at Game

Long-Range Shooting at Game

There is probably no subject connected with shooting about which so much nonsense has been written and spoken as the distance at which game can be killed with the rifle. This was bad enough in the days of muzzleloaders. It has become doubly bad in these days of...
Black Dog Handlers

Black Dog Handlers

For the past 43 years, on the first Monday in March, after the close of bobwhite quail season on the fabled plantations of the Red Hills Region that that spans Tallahassee, Florida, north to Thomasville, Georgia, the invitation-only Georgia-Florida Shooting Dog...
Old Tree Stands

Old Tree Stands

If only old tree stands could talk, imagine the stories they could tell. Stories about opening days, big bucks, little bucks, deer killed, deer missed. Maybe even stories about what thoughts pass through a hunter’s mind as time goes by sitting in a deer stand.  The...
Charles Sheldon: Visionary Sportsman

Charles Sheldon: Visionary Sportsman

Born in Rutland, Vermont, on October 18, 1867, for the first three-plus decades of his life Charles Alexander Sheldon led a fairly normal upper-class existence. He came from a well-to-do family involved in marble quarrying and spent his formative years with New...
An Artist In Big Game Country: Almost Skunked!

An Artist In Big Game Country: Almost Skunked!

Often, it is my custom to make careful pencil sketches of the characteristic rocks and growth of a locality, and from time to time an adventure is the result of the quiet and waiting. On a remote lake in Maine, two deer were feeding at the water’s edge, and just...