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The Italian American Job
As a third-generation descendant of poor Italian immigrants, I have had firsthand experience with the famed culture of frugality for which they are known. This includes some unconventional culinary habits practiced as part of their peasantry traditions. These traditions were born out of necessity. Not only did they come here in the early 1900’s with nothing, but most left families in Italy who had also lived there for generations with nothing. An outflow of their need to subsist on so little was a well documented custom of poaching. This was also born out of what they saw as necessity, needing to find ways to feed their families by any available means.
How to Write Hunting Dog Ads That Actually Get Calls
A lot of folks think if they’ve got a good dog, it’ll sell no matter what.
How to Promote Your Hunting Dog Kennel
If you ask most kennel owners how they promote their dogs, you’ll hear the same answer: “I post them when they’re ready.” That approach might work once or twice, but it doesn’t build anything long-term. The kennels that consistently sell pups, build waiting lists, and stay relevant year after year take a different approach. They promote their kennel all the time, not just when they have something to sell.
A Broken Plate
After a long hiatus I have returned to a sport I loved for many years. As I turn my pups loose now and watch them sail across the south pasture, I reflect on the many turns in the road that placed me here.
Getting to the Point
My journey with pointers began like many of my adventures—with curiosity, a measure of daring, and a willingness to chase an idea as far as it would take me. If it was an Icarus sort of thing, I can’t say I regret flying too close to the sun. The height—the thrill—was worth it. Pointers are a lot like that. They can lift you up, make you feel unstoppable, and occasionally scorch your wings if you’re not paying attention.
Rabbit Massacre
After eating my way through the holidays last year, I desperately needed some exercise, so when a couple of my buddies said they wanted to go pheasant hunting, I called my friend, Casey, who’s got access to thousands of acres of prime habitat in Oklahoma’s panhandle and booked a trip. Considering the limited success I have, it’s a miracle that I still go, but such is my relationship with pheasant hunting. If I happen to bag a bird, great, but if not, it’s not the end of the world, as there are peripheral benefits to be found on every pheasant hunt. I get to stretch my legs. I get to watch the dogs work. And whether I bring a bird home or not, I get to make another memory.
Initial Point
My Mississippi farmstead begins and stretches north and east from a big slab of granite known as the Initial Point of the Choctaw Meridian, which is an established survey monument, one of only a dozen or so in the United States, established in the early 1800’s. A dingy brass medallion with an X inscribed on its face, sits dead center of the stone. From that X, lands to the north and east, as far way as Tennessee and Alabama measure their boundaries exactly back to the small grove of beech trees and ultimately to the shaded brass marker therein. Along with coordinates and other official seals inscribed on the stone, are the words,….. ‘NEVER TO BE MOVED.’
Two Men and Two Mules
This is a true story. It is set in a time of many transitions, including in Sussex County, Virginia, the transition from mules to tractors in the cultivation and harvest of peanuts. The time was 1945. The characters were Richard Spain, just home from service in the Army in WW II, and renting a small peanut farm to work, and Clarence Edwards, a mule dealer.
Tall Timbers: Burning Down the House
I’ve heard of folks figuring out the price tag on costs to raise wild quail, but I don’t know of anyone who has kept track of the amount of time that goes into the breeding, training and developing of a championship gun dog. Both are significant. Take that dog number, multiply it by 55, and you’ll have one heck of a lot of hours all represented in the dogs that qualified to run across 28 braces in the February 2025 National Championship for Bird Dogs held at Ames Plantation. The first brace of this 126-year old Super Bowl caliber event commenced on February 10th . The final brace ran over two weeks later on February 27, and during that time weather conditions ranged from a soggy, below-freezing 22 degrees Fahrenheit day to a 75-degree Fahrenheit sweat lodge. If you don’t like the weather in Grand Junction then wait five minutes.
The 2015 Florida Open All-Age Championship
All trialers know how sometimes and rarely things come together at a field trial to produce a magic event. So it was at Chinquapin Farm in January 2015.
A New Grouse Hunter
Sam Scales had just sold his AI Startup to a consortium of Private Equity firms for $1 Billion (his share) and embraced a new-to-him sport: Ruffed Grouse Hunting. He brought to it the same intensity he had to the Startup. He was a math genius with a photographic memory and a control freak, traits that did not equip him for easy companionship. But one trip into Maine abandoned-farm country, where he saw one grouse rise and fall to the shot of his host, hooked him.
Danner Sharptail Hunting Boot Review
This is my review of the Danner Sharptail 8” GORE-TEX hunting boots. The day I received these boots in the mail and opened the box, my wife walked into the room. She immediately saw the Danner box and started telling me, for the fifth time, about how she used to sell shoes at an outdoor adventure store in Nashville and how they sent her to some special class to learn about all about boots. I hadn’t even gotten the boots out of the box yet, and she’s telling me that Danner makes the best boots, bar none. I waited until she finished her story and left the room before taking the boots out of the boxes so I could form my own opinion. My first impression upon removing the boots from the box was how well built they looked and felt. The boots were sturdy and stiff like tiny little Sherman tanks for your feet.
My Invention
I have always been blessed with just the right amount of intelligence to get neck deep into something, but never enough intelligence to get out successfully. This was one of those occasions. It involves two bird dog bitches and a dummy, me.
Losing It
Harry Bain had been an all-age for-the-public pointing dog trainer-handler for thirty years. In that role he had lived in south Alabama, trained trial and hunting dog's mid-July through mid-September in North Dakota and traveled the major all-age trial circuit September through mid-March. Summers he had fished the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere until the last week of June when he readied for the trip north.
