Belle Baruch: The Troublesome Child
Ever the tomboy, Belle Baruch hunted and fished, chased German spies, surprised her family with equestrian triumphs and scandalous affairs. When it was all done, she willed 17,500 acres for public education.
Heroic Efforts to Save Texas Quail May Soon Pay Off
With ample rainfall, healthy cover, and an abundance of quail in the summer of 2010, hunters in the Rolling Plains region of West Texas anticipated another bumper crop of their beloved birds the following season. Instead, the birds vanished, leaving biologists...
Mint Juleps and Memories
Historically the most elegant, the most typically Southern of all alcoholic beverages, the mint julep remains a symbol of the vanished South.
Hooray Ranch: A Wingshooting Spectacle
Come fall, mind-stretching numbers of ducks and geese descend on Hooray’s fields and ponds.
Thunder in Bear Canyon
We knew they were there. We’d first seen them a year ago this past September—a mama bear and her three cubs working the upper end of, appropriately enough, Bear Canyon. She was in superb shape, a real veteran and obviously a master at her craft, for each of her cubs...
Ibex Adventures in Spain
Not long after meeting our English-speaking guides, “actually government officials” in charge of the management of the Sierra de Francia Mountains, we were on a steep mountainside when a group of rams erupted from their beds to dash up and over a mine field of...
Wing-Shooting Scotland In October
Last October was a special month. I was in Scotland, and for two days I hunted red grouse in the moors near Inverness — one day of driven birds and one day of walk-up. It was the trip of a lifetime with friends and family. Excitement rode beside us as we...
Adventures in Minnesota’s Black Bear Country
They look cute from a distance but up close, they are like a 400-pound racoon. A momma coon may have six or eight coonlets in a year, a bear might have twins, rarely triplets and then only every two years. Cubs are born bald and blind at about a half pound during...
The Meat Dog
“Any dog courageous enough to bust himself up to point a bird for me earns my respect. And it is for their tireless and gritty hard work that I am forever grateful.”
The Old Bull of Sawmill Creek
How a piece of wildlife art directed one man’s hunting destiny.