I was sitting at my desk, looking out of the shop window into the woods, and wondering exactly what kind of big, bushy, snarling mammal had just dragged a wild turkey down into a hole under a nearby birch tree. Living in Maine, home to Stephen King, can be interesting. […]

In the pre-dawn hours I made my way to a Texas-style deer stand – a first for me. The stand, a small, wooden building sat on a hill overlooking a brushy, creek-bottom. This was my first White-tailed deer hunt other than the Coues variety found in my home state of […]

The weather has been miserable. This morning, when I put out the chronograph, the wind chill factor was -25°F, which meant swapping in warm batteries every fifteen minutes or so…both for me and the chronograph. Snow plowing was required to clear a path to targets and the wind was blowing […]

Imagine a fighter plane designed in 1944¹ that could still hold the top speed record in 2009. That is pretty much the story with the .257 Weatherby Magnum. Considering all of the cartridges that have faded over the years, their performance eclipsed by something newer, it is extraordinary that the […]

It seems like everyone I served with in the military was a Southerner. They taught me most of what I know about hunting and fishing and, in exchange, I’d like to think I taught them something about the game of poker. Broke most of the time and struggling to support […]

Elegant designs hold a high degree of aesthetic appeal. Two designs that immediately come to mind are the 612 Scaglietti Ferrari and Monica Bellucci. But all things in life are not Italian. When it comes to production rifles, for me, it is the CZ 550 FS square bridge Mauser. Czechoslovakian […]

Forty years ago, after returning from an Air Force Arc Light rotation, I picked up my wife and month old number one son at the airport. He was a project we started before I left but, unfortunately, I wasn’t around for the work in process or his completion. It was […]

With high interest, and lack of ammo or cases, it is often necessary to make your own cases for some of the oldies. A good example is the Winchester family of self loading rifles that came out about a hundred years ago. None of the ammo or rifles are produced […]

Living in rural Maine, I often find myself in unfamiliar surroundings for a variety of reasons; hunting, fishing and recreational hiking are several that come to mind. There’s a lot of brush, dense tree growth and the topography consists mostly of one mountain beginning where another ends. It’s pretty easy […]