A Pronghorn Hunt with Outdoor Buddies

This article first appeared in the Outdoor Buddies Newsletter www.outdoorbuddies.org. It is printed with the permission of Outdoor Buddies.

For many years, I have been honored to participate in shooting events with Outdoor Buddies members and supporters. Hunting for pronghorn with them in early October in northern Colorado was a new experience. Outdoor Buddies is a volunteer organizatio...

Arzaga Texas Sporting Journal

I hunted Arzaga twice, first in the fall of 2009 with Steve Lamboy, director of Zoli USA, and Paolo Zoli and his father, Giuseppe. Last fall, I hunted Arzaga with the Zolis, my daughter, Alexandra and with Roberto, its owner. This article details my second visit.

The hunting club Arzaga Drugolo was named after the 12th century estate that included the Drugolo Castle, presently ...

BEYOND THE HUNT: Five Tips for Talking About Ethical Hunting

To shoot or not to shoot—that was the question. I was hunting pheasant at the Kiowa Creek shooting club east of Denver, using a new Zoli 28 gauge over/under shotgun. My dog charged a thicket of corn husks. A pheasant flew out like a missile. I shouldered the gun and established the lead, but as the bird gained distance, I concluded an ethical shot was not possible. I returned the gun to a safe p...

Black Rhinos and Strong Horses

Terrorism, death threats, and illogical reasoning have become the campaign tool of today’s anti-hunting community. To date, the hunter-conservationist community has not adequately prepared a counter strategy. The time is now! The black rhino-Dallas Safari Club (DSC) saga chronicled nicely in the winter issue of Fair Chase serves as the perfect case in point.

I attended that ...

Craftsmen Fly Rod Engraving

I was somewhat educated on fine gun engraving when I sauntered into the M. W. Reynolds shop in Englewood, Colorado, a few years ago. I had visited and interviewed several engravers in Italy. I’d attended two Grand Master Engraving Programs in Emporia, Kansas, and met engravers Ken Hunt, Winston Churchill, Alain Lovenberg, Philippe Grifnée and Giacomo Fausti, a founder of the prestigious Creat...

Five Tips to Help Instructors be More Persuasive-Part 1

I was honored to speak at the 2015 IHEA annual conference in Des Moines. My presentation offered five tips to help hunter education instructors more effectively communicate the critical themes and data in the instruction materials. Also, I tried to present my material in such a way that it could be easily communicated by agency administrators to instructors that did not attend my presentation. I...

Serbia’s Migrating Quail by Peter Lewis Horn II

Even now, when it seems that everything has been discovered, and every place worth shooting has been shot, or closed to shooting, the world still offers hunters new territories to explore. Consider Serbia. The country is likely to call to mind some of the 20th century’s most disquieting conflicts, but Serbia is teeming with game, the likes of which many sportsmen have never seen, much less expe...

Shooting Beretta's Best Dover Furnace

I want the Beretta Shooting Grounds at Dover Furnace to be the Augusta Nationals of all clay shooting venues,” said Jeff Maiorino as we sat with Jeanne Muncey in front of a fire crackling in the lodge’s fireplace. Entrepreneurial and dedicated to preserving a shooting / hunting lifestyle and heritage, owners Jeanne and Jim Muncey have developed two elegant properties. Ten Mile River Preserve...

Shotgun Sports Can Be A Superior Way to Teach Ethics

A few years ago, I experienced a moment that is now seared into my memory. The moment began inconspicuously. I and some of my Rocky Mountain Vintagers pals (www.rockymountainvintagers.org) were ambling from station to station at Jerry William’s superb Quail Run Sporting Clays Clubin Kiowa, Colorado (w...

The Eyes Have It

The brain ‘sees’, not the eyes, yet the eyes train the brain to become the repository of skill. Where performance excellence is the goal, the eyes are used in seemingly contradictory ways – as conduits to the brain to analyze sensory input and as transmitters of inputs that shutdown that analysis. Each function of the eyes can be enhanced through dedicated practice to instruct the brain on ...

Three Principles for Behaving when Confronted With Unethical Behavior

In his beautiful and eloquent book, Spring Creeks, Mike Lawson begins Chapter Eleven: Responsibilities, with this statement: “For whatever reason men fish, they are rewarded simply by the things they see. All the mechanisms of life are visible to those who look for them, from the nature of the very smallest creatures to the natures of men. A man’s behavior on the stream is likely to tell much...