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...
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...
The Elephant’s Got the Gun
One of the first hunters to take advantage of the “Ivory Rush” in the Lado Enclave, John Boyes soon learned just how dangerous his new occupation would be. The death of King Leopold of Belgium in 1909 created an elephant hunters’ free-for-all in the...
Men And Gun Shops, Like Kids In A Candy Store
Boys grow up to be men, but men always stay boys at heart. On a recent gunning trip to Scotland, I witnessed that return to boyish ways. Between driven and walk-up bird hunting days a group of mature, fully grown, adult American males poured into two very high-quality...
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...
An Adventurous Lady
Gertrude Legendre lived a life of adventure, hunting virtually around the world, hobnobbing with kings and celebrities, and then while serving her country, somehow surviving capture by the German Gestapo. The guests at Medway Plantation had finished dinner and moved...
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...
The Rifle That Took The Smithsonian’s Giant Of Kumaon
The yellowed newspaper clippings and fading photographs tell a remarkable story. It was in November, 1967, that David Hasinger, Dr. Karl Jonas and their wives traveled to India to hunt tigers. Beyond the slightest doubt, they were mindful of Jim Corbett’s famous...