For the end of the year. Jutta’s girls in Germany once again, on a bright windy day… An end- of- the- day game painting Jonathan found in a museum in Brussels, with greyhounds. And Princess Ataika, who can find a throne anywhere… at home or on the road, in this case Jim and Penelope Caldwell’s …
Month: December 2013
Rigby Returns
The real thing, made in London on the old patents, the old ways. I have owned one once, a “.275”. So did Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, who shot many elephants with that “tiny”, actually moderate, caliber. And Jim Corbett (man -eating tigers), and Eleanor O’Connor (mostly edible horned things). They have a stock of older …
RIP: Frank Bond, 1943- 2013
Frank Bond, of Santa Fe New Mexico, one of the four founders of the Peregrine Fund; lawyer, rancher, principled politician, father, old- fashioned but innovative conservationist; old friend; perhaps first, in his own mind, falconer, died of a swift- moving cancer last week. The scion of a wealthy sheep -ranching family in northern New Mexico, …
Christmas 2013
Over the desert and up in the range, to Muleshoe ranch we go. Right click for big… Twelve miles of sometimes atrocious dirt and rock track, up to above 8000 feet, with the astronomical telescope on the 10,000 foot ridge above glinting in reflected afternoon light from the west… No art or essays or anything …
Merry Christmas!
Floyd Robbins
Reader and commenter Gil Tracy introduced me to the work of his friend, the wood carver Floyd Robbins of South Carolina. I didn’t think carving was art until I saw these. You have seen the “dead dove” below; take a look at these extraordinary objects. Gil says: “The wisp of snipe has to be seen …
RIP: Mikhail Kalashnikov, 1919- 2013
Kalashnikov was the most influential, if not the most innovative, firearms designer since John Moses Browning. If you had to use your rifle after dropping it in a swamp, would you pick an AR or an AK? He was also an NRA Life member…
Of Colonel Thornton and inedible quarry
My circle of friends has been talking about hunting predators, something I was for a long time reluctant to do for reasons (it now seems) I had not thought out. While I think all quarry should be treated with respect, a coyote skin or a big carnivore skull can be a magical object– as can …
It is official
You might have figured it out in comments below but it is official: because the Feds are allowing a three- decade exemption for wind farms to kill as many eagles as they “need” to, and because they exert no pressure on tribal use (right and understandable for religious practice, but ignoring the profitable if clandestine …
Two for the Books
From Joe Queenan’s bibliophile’s memoir One for the Books: “Great writers say things that are so beautiful, the act of repeating them makes life itself more beautiful.” “I love to pull my books down off the shelf and read striking passages to baffled dimwits who have turned up at my house.”