Seeing with a Hunter’s Heart
Hunting is paradoxical: Immersing one’s self in a hunt that could end in death is life-affirming.
The Treasure of Simply Belonging
For restless years I harbored an unrequited craving for a 28 gauge. It came from reading too much Mcintosh, and misconceptions, perhaps, of life and love. In a hundred fantasies, the little 28 would come as breathlessly to shoulder as my high school heartthrob, a...
Pa’tridge Fever
The proper hunting man experiences a special reverence for grouse country.
A Woman in White
By all the laws of nature, George Blackwell should have quietly died of hypothermia in that very spot. But nature doesn’t always apply her laws with an even hand… At about the midpoint of his 67th season, George Blackwell looked at the world around him and...
Keeping the Uplands Alive During the Off-Season
These tips for making the most of your off-season time help get you out of the house and prepare for the upland bird hunting season ahead. Sadly enough, the upland hunting season has been over for some time. We pass the days reliving those memories in the field...
This Old House
When the old house was occupied, its splintering walls were stout, its diminutive shelter a fortress of good spirits, its heartwood hale and its ambiance light with ale. Way long ago now, in the antediluvian and simplistic age in which I knew boyhood, circa. 1954,...
True Blue
Grandma’s farm consisted of five acres, mostly wooded except for a half-acre garden loaded with berries and vegetables. Out back stood a shed stuffed with old rakes and spades and other hand tools. Mason jars were scattered among bushel and berry baskets filled with...
Finding Socrates
The story of how a boy found a stray puppy that went on to be a great pheasant dog for him and his dad. A dog surprised us the spring of my 10th birthday when Aunt Helen banged the screen door behind her. As she shuffled in the dark of dawn toward the Sunday paper, a...