Articles
The Honor Hunt
Beginnings and endings, beginnings and endings—these are all most folks remember in life. You remember your first day on the job, for example—when new colleagues giggled because you wound up…
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Francolin
We leave scars on the land that never quite go away. Some change the land for better and some for worse. Farmers plow, plant, and build. Miners peel back the…
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High Plains Lowdown
Say “sharp-tailed grouse” to an old sodbuster and he’ll tip back his wear-stained, weathered, wide-brim Stetson, spit out a chew of Copenhagen, look you in the eye and then to…
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A Time of Quiet Wonder
Each year, a certain autumn day breaks and slips over the Connecticut River, covering the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont with morning light. It is the beginning of a reunion for…
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Raising Quail
If you’ve enjoyed quail or a quail egg in a high-end restaurant, chances are it came from Manchester Farms in Columbia, South Carolina. The family-owned operation got its start when…
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The Road Continues: Bird Camp
Bird Camp is an eagerly anticipated annual pilgrimage, now in its ninth year. The players have remained the same, except for Brian Fay (the Counselor), who dropped out after the…
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Alone in the Woods
There are times every bird season when I sneak out on my own to enjoy the woods Robert Frost called “lovely, dark and deep.” These are special days when time…
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The Road Out Ahead
The last Friday of September, after weeks of preparation and packing, the Burb and the late-1960s vintage and timeworn Bell travel trailer known as the Road Abode were ready for…
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Field Treatments
At the top of the field, a farmer was baling his final cut of hay for the season. The sweet smell of cut and drying hay filled the hot, humid…
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Roaring Shadows
I love a fast-and-furious day of hunting Hungarian partridge, but there are times when a desire comes to travel through shrub grasslands in the shadow of the Rocky Mountain range…
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Scars
There is a rough stone wall at the bottom of the Blackmer place in Massachusetts that runs north to south along the forest edge. In New England fashion, it is…
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Breeding Season
For several years, I helped out on a hunting preserve that offered several species of gamebirds, including pheasants. Depending on the time of year, the pens held anywhere from 200…
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