Sunset Bear
I visited that spot for the rest of the season, and it was like returning to the scene of a crime and every time the sunset forced me to leave, I felt a terrible weight on my shoulders.
One American’s Dream
Even as a Marine stationed in Afghanistan, Alex Russo never stopped dreaming of becoming a waterfowl guide. If there are any two places on our diverse planet more dissimilar than Kabul, Afghanistan, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, I can’t imagine where they could be. The...
A Healing Place
It was the day of his birth, the genesis of his sixty-third year, and it had been a good one. It could have been celebrated anywhere in the world, as so many times before it had. But not today. Not this time. Today, it had been spent on the small streams near home,...
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...
Ben Lilly The Last Mountain Man
After the honorable David Crockett of Tennessee, Ben Lilly was said to be the greatest bear hunter in American history. He reputedly killed more bears with a knife in hand-to-hand combat than Ol’ Davy ever attempted to “grin” down. In truth, Ben Lilly no doubt killed...
Canine Myths and Misconceptions
I used to think that everyone who’s ever owned a dog considers him- or herself an expert on canine behavior. Upon further review, however, I’ve amended that opinion. I now think that everyone who’s ever been around a dog considers him- or herself an expert on canine...
Escape From A Hell Hole
Finding a big billy wasn’t difficult, but getting his trophy out of the mountain wilderness would become the most perilous struggle of his life.
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 with nary a...
A Thousand Rebel Yells
It was black dark and there was the disarming gush of the swollen, little stream, and I could only sense the rise of the earth above me. But I had done battle here before. I could feel it in my bones, as in the ghostly lines of Mary Fahl’s “Going Home,” from Gods and...