Puppy-Training Tips from the Pro

Puppy-Training Tips from the Pro

Legendary dog trainer, Al Brenneman, promoted a simple, straightforward, common-sense approach to starting a puppy in the field. The best part of doing what I do is the cast of characters it’s allowed me to rub elbows with along the way. In other words, it’s the...
Why Do People Hunt?

Why Do People Hunt?

We hunt for the same reason that foxes chase mice…because we’re genetically programmed to do it. Evans Chambers and I were reminiscing the other day, as old men are wont to do. Evans lives in Enid, Oklahoma, and has been affiliated with the Grand National Quail Hunt...
Sharing Shelter with the African Leopard

Sharing Shelter with the African Leopard

Whether a croc or leopard, the brave young woman handled each close encounter with the same degree of calmness. Mary left the dugout canoe and started to walk through a forest. The rain was coming down hard, but it was warm rain, not the cold rain of her native...
How to Cure and Smoke Wild Boar

How to Cure and Smoke Wild Boar

Curing and smoking pork is a very simple process that has been practiced for hundreds of years. As a boy growing up in very rural Red River County in northeast Texas, I remember watching my dad cure and smoke hams from the domestic hogs he raised. Through the years,...
Did You Ever? Vanishing Aspects of Youth in Yesteryear

Did You Ever? Vanishing Aspects of Youth in Yesteryear

I would contend that boyhood in yesteryear, when most pursuits involved being outdoors, had it all over today’s technology-driven world. Increasingly with the passage of time I find myself reflecting on things I did as a youngster. That’s the purview of age, and as...
All Writers Are Liars

All Writers Are Liars

All writers are liars, whether reef-fishing miles offshore on the Atlantic or fishing through a hole in the north country ice. The smokestack of the hulk gloomed from the depths, barely visible when the July sun ricocheted off the surface of the sea. Halfway to the...
Snake Tales: Too-Close-for-Comfort Snake Encounters

Snake Tales: Too-Close-for-Comfort Snake Encounters

As I reached up with the rope, I found myself eye-to-eye with a very large cottonmouth moccasin. Like, really large. You probably won’t find this a shocking news flash, but most folks don’t like snakes. Even at the sight of one, most will flee for shelter, or grab the...
Wayward in Hayward

Wayward in Hayward

What amounts to a pale comparison for your grizzled mentors may be the best you’ve ever seen. The man who taught me grouse and woodcock lives with his wife in a Vermont hamlet just this side of Canada. He has some gray in his beard these days but only enough to...
Sunday Shenanigans: Mysterious Ways

Sunday Shenanigans: Mysterious Ways

Sunday or not, day of rest or not, I reckon we’ve got a pair of bucks out in the woods that need to be tended to. When modern deer hunting seasons were first established in Georgia during the late 1950s and early ’60s, it was against the law to hunt on...