December, blue sky, and too cold to be out for too long, but too beautiful to not—new snow, as well, lots of it, and a month and some change having gone past since Callie and I last hunted, with elk season having swallowed me: the rhythm of those days, hiking so far, and then moving carefully in the woods, reading the tracks. Callie’s pure and beautiful heart trapped by the vagaries of my calendar rather than by her passion; a beautiful ice-queen awaiting the fortunes of the world to turn her way once again. Wanting things to be as they had been before. Watching me, each day, and waiting, and believing—but surely, wondering.
 

It’s impossible to say for certain how many birds are shot every year on game farms and preserves. Estimates go as high as 80 per cent of all the game birds taken in the U.S. That includes the two game-farm stalwarts—bobwhite quail and ringneck pheasant—as well as chukars and Hungarian partridge.

From the time we leave it each October, until we return the following season, I think about going “up north” to hunt grouse and woodcock out of “Camp Bonasa,” which is what we christened our good friend’s house where we stay. The “camp” is a comfortable lakeside cottage, one of two that have housed us, with all the amenities aging grouse hunters require, and so we are not really roughing it, nor have we ever, really. This country we have been going to each autumn for the past twenty-five years is for us a land of peaceful wonder that owns very big pieces of our hearts. And we are all grateful to have been guests for so many years.

James wrote to Jim: “Since you have written about Duck hunting, I thought you might like to see a custom Duck strap I made for a lady customer to give her husband out in California, they both hunt ducks and in the past have ordered fly fishing cases from me, something new for me to try.”

The 2013 turkey season seemed to ring with optimism. About a week before the season opened, I got news that sent my expectations into the stratosphere. My friend Gordon Giuliano’s (a.k.a. “The Don”) employer purchased a 300-acre tract of land we knew as “The Brick Yard.”

As a man-made substance, charcoal may well claim to be the oldest, as well as one of the most versatile, in human history. Like fire itself, the discovery of charcoal was probably accidental, but from that point tens of thousands of years ago, people have found one use for it after another.

You have to admire obsession in a man. It has a life of its own. Obsession lays out the hunting regulations from half a dozen states, and draws flow charts with dates, routes, and driving times. Obsession owns camouflage clothing for every type of foliage in the central United States. Obsession knows no surrender.