My four-year-old son has a lot to learn. Teamwork, self reliance, judgment and decision making, risk management, delayed gratification, initiative, critical thinking, loyalty, faith… the list of skills that’ll he need to make his way in the world goes on and on. It’s an overwhelming educational endeavor, before you even consider all the straight-up, Read More
Two thousand miles of heartland are between us. I’ve always been bad at staying in touch, the same isn’t true of my brother. Eleven weeks ago, the playing field was leveled when I became an uncle. Within the first ten weeks my brother has gone solo for several days with the little guy, been on a road trip, Read More
After years of talk we finally pulled the trigger and got a boat. We had debated the merits of a raft vs. drift boat, new vs. used, and mostly how the heck we could pay for either. In the end a used drift boat with a price we couldn’t resist fell into our lap., Read More
Tears streaming down her face, I agreed to head back to the car and and hang out for the last 20 minutes of shooting. The sound, and even the thought, of shotgun blasts had her terrified. We had never had this problem before and the two younger kids were unfazed, simply wanting to shoot, Read More
Raising my gun at the sound of wing beats, I hoped for a wild rooster to flush from the under brush. Nothing materialized. Moments later my precocious pup came out of the brush with a hen that was a little too slow getting off the ground. It was Christmas Eve 2008 and I was, Read More
I’ll admit, I struggle to take my kids hunting with me as much as I would like. It’s logistically challenging and not all situations are well suited for children under the age of five. Winter is tough and so is anything that involves a lot of hiking or long days. In the absence of, Read More
“Dada… um… is that elk dead?” asked Everett, peering tentatively from the garage doorway, eyes pinned to the hanging animal. “It sure is.” I answered from my seat at the butchering table. “Want to come in and see it?” “That means it can’t move anymore” he said, either reminding himself or seeking confirmation before, Read More
My son was so excited for the first day of hunting season, and the morning was such a blooper reel of false starts, forgotten gear and last minute errands, that I nearly failed to calibrate expectations. We’d left the highway, the state roads, and the graded gravel behind before I thought to check in, Read More
It’s a park now, mown green-space and graveled paths owned by the city of Williamsburg Virginia. But when I was a boy, not so much older than my son is now, “Government Property” was a tangle of tidewater forest and marshland where earthen battlements – remnants of the civil war – lay hidden in, Read More
The submerged root-ball looked like a horror movie prop. Its deepest mysteries were hidden in shadow, but what reached the light was pure menace. Meaty shrouds of river gunk waved from grabby tentacles over crevices pregnant with evil possibility. No one yelled “don’t go in there!”, and they didn’t need to. I knew I wanted, Read More