About a quarter century ago I shared a quail field near Albany, Georgia, with an aging quail plantation owner who, like me, also enjoyed hunting big game across the American West and beyond. As we walked toward a brace of his pointers that froze simultaneously at the...
A. B. Frost’s paintings captured all the tenseness & humor of sporting situations while retaining the natural characteristics of the hunter & the hunted. Because of the artist’s familiarity with human nature, his love for the sport and the...
“I don’t want to bunt every time. I’m going to swing for the fence.” Jay Kemp is explaining how his most successful painting came to life. He wanted to paint a big bull elk, he says, running a hand through his hair, green eyes looking beyond...
We arrived in St. Croix around three this afternoon. The atmosphere was a bit heavy, some weighty humidity. The wind carried in an air of salt — mnemonic zephyrs of days yester. Scents have an uncanny power to conjure old memories. Catch a whiff of the sea when you...
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...
A Deer Hunter is Born I was only 14 in the fall of 1956, but I was already a passionate pheasant hunter. Once the hunting season opened, while the other guys were at football practice or shooting pool and playing the pinball machines a Mel’s Grill, you could...
Our Editorial Director, Scott E. Mayer, called me into his office to help him mount and bore-sight a scope on a Mossberg Patriot Predator 308 Win. After a few instructions on the rifle itself and its constituent parts, he handed me an envelope and a blank “Thank You”...
If the Spirit of Christmas embraces things such as love of family, togetherness, warm feelings, goodness, excitement and faith, then my mother was the quintessence of that spirit. Many adjectives seem appropriate when describing her love of life in general,...
The greatest equine artist of all time, and arguably the greatest animal portraitist, was the 18th century Englishman George Stubbs. The toast of the town in his day, when the cream of British aristocracy beat a path to his door to have him paint...
When hunting with dad, he always brought his kindling hatchet with us on hare hunts in case we needed a fire to get warm. I’ve been thinking about that this holiday season. Recently, I was talking with some fiends who were introducing their young children to the...
