The Waterhole
At the muddy little pond, a 12-year-old boy would find his place in the world.
Ruark On Safari: Politics
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. Up until the last year or so of Bob’s life, there was always a great urgency in his writing, an impatience in his attitude toward his work, and the desire to...
Fishing for Muskie in Lake Chautauqua
They say it’s the fish of ten-thousand casts. Maybe so. I truly believed that for many years and still won’t argue with those odds. Twice before I had traveled all the way from Georgia to Canada to do battle with the great muskellunge only to fish for days...
The Erie Jinx
Even on the best damned walleye lake in America, sometimes you have to lower your standards a bit and catch what you can. The guy I’ll call X-Factor kept calling and leaving messages on my phone. Somebody told him that I planned to fish Lake Erie in September, and he...
Ruark On Safari: The Grand Old Elephant
An excerpt from Ruark Remembered by Alan Ritchie who served as Ruark’s personal secretary for 12 years. Then finally the day came, and as it so happened with the aid of a ten-year-old Samburu-Rendille maiden, that Bob got on the trail of what promised to be very big...
A Thanksgiving Blessing
For more than 50 years I’ve been going up there. If it happens to be during hunting season – that is, deer season in the fall or turkey season in the spring – I usually have a rifle or shotgun in hand. For at least 30 of those years, my aging mother-in-law always...
Prairie Wings
We had just turned the horses into the wind when I noticed Beck, one of Jeff’s A-Team setters, getting birdy. Was it another bunch of meadowlarks or something better? Then, 50 yards in front of us, Beck locked down tight and Bandit, his canine partner from the A-Team,...
Mountain Lion Against All Odds
As with any type of hunting, circumstances can change abruptly when hunting mountain lion with hounds. There is either a track to run, or there is not, and this changes instantaneously. We had put ten miles behind us in a hike in Idaho’s snow-covered backcountry...