BEST quality Coggswell & Harrison London – made non- ejector back- action sidelock, 16 gauge, six pounds even with 29″ barrels choked very lightly (near cylinder and SK 1 by today’s standards; probably a “lady’s gun” with its 14″ stock as it is too ornate for a young person’s. Despite the length it fits very …
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Chukar Hunting the Old Way
My long- time Canadian hunting correspondent, Alex Sharif, who I met through Valerius Geist, is primarily a sheep hunter and a mountaineer. But when he sent me a few photos from his cousin Afshin in Idaho,I was intrigued. Afshin is a Goshawker, and he hunts Chukar in the kind of country they have always inhabited, …
Wall Street Journal!
The fine writer Jonathan Rosen (The Life of the Skies) did me the great favor of reviewing Hounds of Heaven for the WSJ Review Supplement’s Christmas Books issue. What is more, he showed that he understood the theme of all of my work. If you don’t subscribe, the review is behind a paywall, but here …
Guardian/herding dog differences
I’ve written extensively about our relationship with our working livestock guardian dogs and have written very little about life with our herding dogs. The difference between the two types of dogs is remarkable. None of our guardian dogs over the age of about two months old has ever been willing to play with a …
The Second Coop
We knew there was a second, a female, around. Yesterday she showed up, big as life (or bigger– at 16’9 oz she was the biggest Coop I ever weighed). Luckily she was quick to catch, by one toe and a primary feather, though she somehow got them on two sides of a beanpole! Phone cam …
Murderer Captured, Tried, and Sentenced to Transportation…
We caught the male Coop today. But not before he killed ANOTHER pigeon, an incoming homer who had just come in from a Socorro training run– what a welcome. He killed her right beside the “Bal chatri” trap I had set on the ground in the garden– I thought he was caught, but he flew …
Writerly quote
From Samuel Beckett, sent by Tom McIntyre, and all too true: “I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance…Now my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, “It’s a lie!” So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I ever …
Leonard Cohen 1934- 2017 RIP
I first saw Leonard Cohen play at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967. Joni Mitchell, in an orange striped mini-dress, led him out.He looked like a rabbinical student. He played ‘Suzanne’ as I remember, and I vowed to buy it as soon as it was out. I have bought virtually everything he has done. I …
Recovering
Libby is doing well, although the broken rib really hurts when she she coughs, and she is going to a dentist today to plan tooth repair. To certain complainers: I did not publish unattractive pics of Lib without her permission; I did ask, before I took the photos, and she gave it gladly, in the …
Quote
Lane Batot sent in this quote from “that clever ‘Anonymous’ person”: “Pedigree indicates what the animal is supposed to be; Conformation indicates what the animal appears to be; Function indicates what the animal actually is.”