Sooner or later, most shooters get around to trying a muzzleloading rifle. When that urge came over me, back in the ’50s, there was no such thing as a replica hunting rifle. I dug up an original caplock rifle in a hock shop in Richmond, Texas. To say it had seen better days is a serious understatement, but all the parts were there and the bore still showed signs of having been rifled at one time.

Anote in a recent magazine stated that the feral hog has become the second-most popular big-game animal in California. It struck me that he may be approaching that status in Texas, too … if not also in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and several other Appalachian states.

Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine recently reported that black bears appear to be recolonizing the Piney Woods of East Texas. That’s interesting news because the patriarch of the Colorado County deer camp in which I grew up told us many a campfire tale of hunting bears in the Big Thicket during the 1890s.

Back in the 1930s, nine-year-old boys with imagination and a flair for the dramatic were wont to assume superhero personas (and costumes) and go about the neighborhood rescuing damsels, battling evildoers, and generally standing up for truth and justice.

For me, the end of deer season always signals the beginning of predator-calling season. January and February are the lean months, when victuals are scarce for all Nature’s critters. That makes the squeal of a wretched rabbit (or a reasonably good facsimile thereof) attractive to the meat-eaters.

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; Summer 2020 - After a quarter century of whitetail hunting, the author’s wife was rewarded with the buck of a lifetime. Her name is Jeannie. We called the deer “the early buck” because our only sightings of him in two seasons had been very early in the morning. Both times he’d appeared in the gray dawn near our camp house...

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; Fall 2021 - In the virgin forests of northern Manitoba dwell the kind of black bears dreams are made of. If bears’ eyes are so lousy, why was this one peering up at me in my tree stand, from a distance of 20 yards, as though reading my dog tags? The question rattled through my skull as I instinctively tried...

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; March 2020 - The Alaskan Arctic is a harsh and unforgiving land, demanding a very high price of those who would take her magnificent big-game animals in fair chase.

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; Spring 2021 - Leopard maulings of sport hunters have never been particularly uncommon, but fatalities from them have never been as numerous as from the other members of the Big Five.

Reprinted for Houston Safari Club Hunter's Horn; Fall 2020 - Actually, it’s as good a place as any for a private rodeo, on a lonesome yellow road snaking across the velvety, gray-green Wyoming prairie, with neither tree nor fence between the vast horizons. I’m at home in the saddle and don’t mind riding a snuffy horse, but on this particular October morning I’ve got other things on my mind.