An Adventurous Lady

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

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...
Greatest North American Hunting Trip Ever

Greatest North American Hunting Trip Ever

It was the greatest North American hunting trip ever, though the men’s survival was always in doubt. Fall of 1804, Meriwether Lewis was halfway up the Missouri, St. Louis to Great Falls, though he could not name the Great Falls until he had seen them, yet many months...
Mars the Pointer

Mars the Pointer

He was all alone now, but the birds were still there. He was called Mars because new names can become scarce around a big kennel and someone had come up with Jupiter and with Mercury (shortened to “Mere” and “Jupe” for other pups). Later, he was registered as Morton’s...
No Such Thing as a Bad Day Fishing

No Such Thing as a Bad Day Fishing

The bumper sticker read: A bad day fishing is better than a good day at work. I was sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wondering how I had allowed myself to get in such a frustrating situation. Like all of the other miserable souls around me, I was growing more...
Binding An Elephant

Binding An Elephant

After long days of hunting with no luck, it finally took a bit of native sorcery to make the difference on an elephant hunt. The flight from Atlanta to Johannesburg provides those unwilling to embrace the charms of Ambien with ample opportunity to think. In point of...
The Guns Of The Celebrities

The Guns Of The Celebrities

In 1939, before the U.S. entered World War II, movie star Robert Montgomery enlisted in London for American field service and drove ambulances in France until the Dunkirk evacuation. In a break from helping British heroes, he acquired a pair of guns from James Purdey...
Maynard Reece’s Legacy Is Protected Habitat

Maynard Reece’s Legacy Is Protected Habitat

In all of art history, never has there been a more venerable emblem of wildlife conservation than the tiny U.S. Federal Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp. Invented by an American sportsman during the Dust Bowl to protect habitat for migratory birds, revenue generated...
The Great Emu War

The Great Emu War

Ugly, shaggy, wide in the hips, quarrelsome, six feet tall, prone to grunting, sneaky as the cagiest Appalachian gobblers, with spurs that can rip down steel fences and a brain the size of a small walnut … no, not your mother-in-law, but potentially a new game...