Hunting Tips, Videos, and Other Media

THE TOUGHEST HUNT: CONVENTIONS!

Some hunts are tougher than others, some are tough physically, while others are tough mentally. On any mountain hunt you know going in that you’re going to sweat, struggle, and huff and puff your way up—and with increasingly bad knees, I know the downhill is going to hurt just as bad. On the other hand, I hate to sit still…but I love to hunt whitetails, and in a lot of good country stand-hunting is the only viable option. It’s late December now, and I’ve spent much of the last month sitting on stands waiting for a good buck to step out. I did it in Nebraska and Kansas, and the last few days I did it in Georgia. Results were, er, mixed…but now that’s behind me, and I’m gearing up for the toughest hunt of all: Convention Season!Read more

HOW I SEE MY BUSINESS

Friends, I’ve had a long and wonderful career in this crazy business. I’ve been lucky in that I got some great breaks along the way. I have colleagues who claim they sold the first story they ever wrote and never looked back. Maybe…or, as to use a pseudo-military acronym my battalion XO, Ron Corbin, coined, “MBIFDI,” pronounced “mabifidee” and meaning, “maybe, but I freakin’ doubt it.” I started trying to write in this business when I was in high school, and I built up at least a boxcar full of rejection notices before I sold my first story! That was in about 1972, when I was still in college.Read more

The Caucasus Mountains are steep and treacherous. The local guides in Azerbaijan are very good and the hunting is extremely successful, but it’s never easy.

Tough Hunts - DFTQ Part 2 - (Mantra of Die First Then Quit)

The Marco Polo sheep is one of the world’s great game animals, hunted on the “roof of the world” in the Pamirs of Central Asia. As a mere gunwriter this was a hunt I never expected to be able to do, and in fact no full-time gunwriter had preceded me. Except: In the early 1970s, when Afghanistan’s Waukon Corridor was open, one of our most respected gunwriters went. He was older and a lifelong smoker; he got altitude sickness and had to be evacuated to lower elevation. Few know about this and he never wrote about it…Read more

Tough Hunts - DFTQ Part 1 - (Mantra of Die First Then Quit)

There were no horns and no meat sacks in the Supercub when we landed. Outfitter Erik Salitan was there to meet me, as was Donna—she’d gotten ill and had flown out a few days earlier. Me, I went full term, continuing to battle terrible weather and never seeing the game I was seeking. So I hugged Donna and greeted Erik, and he looked at me with (I think) genuine incredulousness and asked, “How can you be so cheerful?”Read more

10 Favorite Hunting Trips

I’m often asked about my favorite hunts. Some have been better than others, but almost no genuine “bad ones”…invariably, there’s a good memory in there somewhere! So a simple and honest answer has always been, “the last one…or the next one.” But some memories shine brighter than others, and in many cases ...Read more

The Best Hunt In Argentina

Argentina’s legendary high-volume bird shooting is the country’s biggest draw, with the big-game hunting a smaller subset. Did you know that Argentina is the world’s most popular hunting destination? Okay, maybe it’s not like key whitetail states like Pennsylvania or New York, where hundreds of...Read more

10 Questions To Ask Your Outfitter... Before You Book!

It drives me crazy. Outfitted hunts cost money, so the people who book them must have achieved some success at something. Yet, time and again, I see people making snap decisions regarding hunting that they would never make in business! It’s okay to ask the hard questions, but before you do make...Read more

Top 10 Mistakes Hunters Make In Africa

Ignoring your PH “PH” is short for “professiohal hunter”, You hired him. You did your research on hunting outfitters in Africa . He knows his area and his game…so take his advice! Unrealistic Expectations. You probably won’t take everything on your “wish list”—but you’ll probably take some extras,...Read more

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