I’ve been shooting in New Brunswick, Canada, for a decade. Usually 8 or 10 of us make an outing in the fall. We are an ordinary lot, halfway though life’s actuarial leach field and pretty well fixed. We’re not likely to be tapped for a Benetton ad.
Some of us are avid hunters and deadly shots, and some of us have a gun that doesn’t fit and needs a different choke and the safety keeps sticking. I was using the wrong size shot and too light a load. I’m beginning to get arthritis in my shoulder. I have a new bifocal prescription. My boots hurt. The sun got in my eyes.
This is not one of those men-go-off-in-the-woods hunting trips full of drink, flatulence and lewd Hillary Clinton jokes. For one thing, some of us aren’t men. A couple of us aren’t even Republicans. We pack neckties, sports coats, skirts and makeup (although I don’t think anyone wears all four). There is little of the Cro-Magnon in this crowd. Though there is something about three bottles of wine apiece with dinner and six-egg breakfasts … Did someone step on a carp? And you’ve heard about Hillary . . .
Our New Brunswick sojourn is not a wilderness adventure either. We’re no Patagonia-clad apostles of deep ecology out getting our faces rubbed in Mother Nature’s leg hair. And we’re too old to need a 30-mile hike, a wet bedroll and a dinner of trail mix and puddle water to make us think life is authentic. If we’d wanted to push human endurance to its limits and face awesome challenges of the natural elements in their uncivilized state, we could have stayed home with the kids.
No. We spend the shoot in the deep woods but at a good lodge with an excellent chef. The chef not only cooks six-egg breakfasts and Bordeaux-absorbent dinners but also packs delightful lunches for us; for example, moose sandwiches, which are much better — also smaller — than they sound.
この記事は The Upland Almanac の Winter 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は The Upland Almanac の Winter 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Tail feathers - STANDARDS AND PRACTICES
\"An armed society is a polite society,\" the NRA says in one of its dicta, cribbed from Robert A. Heinlein, a 20th-century American science fiction writer.
Day's End - IN PRAISE OF FENCEROWS
Driving north along the Hudson River, I gazed at a pastoral autumn scene: sere fields of faded yellow harvested corn, stubbly and broken amongst the clods of black earth, almost smooth from my vantage point. Spiky brown veins of wild growth marked barriers between plots. Occasionally, the gray bones of a mature oak rose among the brown shrubs to stand over the yellow fields. A sentry, keeping silent watch as white frost crystals slowly melted into invisibility.
That Time of Year Again
Without doubt. The most idyllic form of hunting in Ohio is seeking the woodcock. - Merrill Gilfallan, Moods of the Ohio Moons: An Outdoorsman's Almanac (1991)
I Don't Wanna'!
I'm an old hand at being retired, though - have been practicing for 25 years.
Hunting the Huns: Alberta's Big Sky Country
The prairies of southern Alberta are vast, beautiful and full of prime bird habitat. Crop fields are interspersed with abandoned farms, rolling hills are intersected by coulees and creek beds, and Hungarian partridge and sharptailed grouse occupy some of the best and most picturesque habitat on the continent.
Side Dish - End of Season
Sporting trips are not only about sport, as many other experiences are discovered alongside. And my trip to Lakewood Camps in Maine was certainly just that.
AN EXTENDED STAY
There is no reason to leave Michigan in the fall unless the opportunity of a cast and blast adventure at a historic sporting lodge in Maine comes calling.
KEEP IT HANDY
If you think shooting a ruffed grouse on the wing with a shotgun is tough, try shooting one in flight with a still camera.
A Longtime Love Affair
It's possible to hunt your favorite birds in a lot of different places, I suppose, but I don't do that.
Profile of an Artist: Harley Bartlett
Harley Bartlett was born in 1959 near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. However, having lived in Rhode Island for most of his life he considers himself a Rhode Islander.
