The Sporting Life
Filed In: Bird, Experience, Hunt, People, The Sporting Life
In my early days, during bird season I’d hunt an old spur-line railroad while walking to school. Bobwhite quail were the only native upland gamebirds to hunt in northern Illinois,......
Filed In: Bird, Experience, History, Pheasants, The Sporting Life
It all began in 1881, when ring-necked pheasants were introduced in North America. Over the next two decades they were liberated in 40 U.S. states. Mention pheasants to a bird......
Filed In: Culture, Dog, Experience, Hunt, People, The Sporting Life
The Plantation Wildlife Arts Festival has become one of the largest and most recognized wildlife-arts exhibitions in the country. But it is not just the show itself that brings people......
Filed In: Bird, On the Hunt, Quail, The Sporting Life
I’ve always been reluctant to take a partner along when I hunt the singing windmill arroyo, whose loveliness and loneliness seem to demand solitude. Still, sometimes I relent and feel......
Filed In: Dog, Kennel, People, The Sporting Life
Epiphanies are confounding. You never know you’re going to have one, right up until the moment you do. They can’t be summoned, predicted, or carefully constructed from the sturdy building......
Filed In: Hunt, Memories, On the Hunt, Quail, The Sporting Life
Cle-cle-cle. The sound was unmistakable—mountain quail. I hadn’t guessed I could find them this close to home. We saw their three-toed tracks in new-fallen snow. When we bounced a covey......
Filed In: Dog, Memories, People, Personality, Story, The Sporting Life
Rummaging in my hunting cabinet the other day, I came across a sheep bell. It is the one my dad used last century to keep up with his wide-ranging dogs.......
Filed In: Memories, People, Personality, Stories, The Sporting Life
Occasionally a writer comes along with a knack for putting into words aspects of the sporting experience that all hunters feel yet find difficult to describe or share with others.......
Filed In: Chukar, hunting, Lodge, On the Hunt, Partridge, The Sporting Life, Travel
The first bird up was a chukar partridge and it skied rapidly and then cut left. The sweet-mounting and swinging Caesar Guerini 20-gauge loaner gun barked and the partridge folded.......
Filed In: Bird, Chukar, Hunt, hunting, On the Hunt, The Sporting Life
The very name of the chukar evokes the sound of its call and the ache in my legs at the end of the day. Chuka-chuka-chuka. Idaho’s Salmon River is called......
