Flooded-Timber Mallards

Flooded-Timber Mallards

Daylight promised its coming in typical Delta fashion. Scudding clouds that produced off-and-on splatters of heavy, iced rain drops riding a north wind that hardly qualified as gusts. Still, that wind was more than ample to toy with denuded oaks, easily making eager...
Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 12 Trailer

Sporting Classics TV Season 6 Episode 12 Trailer

Get ready for an epic adventure in Greenland as Chris Dorsey and friends hunt eider and muskox in this week’s episode of Sporting Classics with Chris Dorsey on Outdoor Channel. The team of Dorsey, Terry Graunke, Steve Farris and Charlie Potter navigate through...
The Old Songs

The Old Songs

Sing me the old songs. Tell me the stories of times gone by. I want to spend an evening or so with you to hear about your dogs. I want to see your guns. I want to read your favorite books. I want to warm my hands in front of your fire and try     your pipe tobacco and...
Three Boys and a Cannon Barrel

Three Boys and a Cannon Barrel

It was a Federal Criminal Conspiracy: three boys, a cannon barrel and scaup to drive them crazy. The saltwater scaup are mostly gone now, but back when I was a boy they would raft offshore, a thousand, ten thousand at a time. It would take a booming gale to get them...
Requiem for a Peregrine

Requiem for a Peregrine

Everything about the peregrine falcon is spectacular — even in death. “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” – Aldo Leopold Early one evening toward the end of April, my English setter, Tina, and I...
Nothing To Do for Three Weeks

Nothing To Do for Three Weeks

I left long before daylight, alone but not lonely. Sunday-morning stillness filled the big city. It was so quiet that I heard the whistle of duck wings as I unlocked the car door. There would be ducks leaving Lake Michigan. A fine sound, that, early of a morning. Wild...
Woodcock Days

Woodcock Days

The best hunting spots are secrets among friends, where a bird in the bag is just a bonus. A mist conceals these mountains. They are gray like bone. The sun will not rise above them for another hour, and yet it is eight o’clock. This is a favorite spot. I find...