…which will do almost everything. First, a magnum on the French Darne sliding-breech action. A little expensive to shoot, and a bit “kicky”, but able to take everything up to the largest birds. Second, a Stephen Grant Best London pigeon gun, with a sidelever action and rebounding hammers in the last stage of hammer evolution. …
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Prince Xanghui
I have seen black and white line drawings of a falconer with a tazi from Prince Xanghui’s tomb in Xian, on the far eastern end of the Silk Road. Though I used one on my letterhead, the hawk was unidentifiable. I assumed it was a Goshawk which is still flown in the area and throughout …
Dr John Burchard on Breed Standards
My friend John Burchard, PhD, postdoc at the Max Planck Institute under Konrad Lorenz, years in Arabia with saluki and falcon, formerly involved in shows and still a presence in open field coursing and an attendant at conferences on dog genetics, (and owner of two of my pups (;-), on the inherent deficiencies of standards. …
Transferring Old World traditions
As some of you will recall, husband Jim and I just had a paper published in the Sheep & Goat Research Journal in which we summarized the problems western livestock producers are having in dealing with expanding and increasing populations of large carnivores, including grizzly bears and gray wolves in our area. The livestock protection …
Further adventures of Lauren
Mostly photo- blogging this week- it’d amazing how much time maintaining some level of competence takes when you have ANYTHING else to do. But I have been sent lots of good photos and stuff from Mongolia, England, and closer to home… Lauren has been visiting nests: “This was the nest we visited in April when …
Pursuit Hawking
Terence Wright was kind enough to send two splendid photos of the kind of hawking that I can probably no longer do– coursing with dog and pursuit falcon, sometimes over miles. I’ll still try with others this fall, but suspect I just can’t keep up. It was a good run! The dog, lurcher Percy, has …
Johnny UK
Meet (“officially”) Johnny UK and his wonder dog Petra. John Hill is one of our most frequent commenters, an old friend (we met through Darne shotguns), an East Anglian, an honorary Magdalenian and frequent patron of the Golden Spur bar here. He plays blues saxophone and loves good shotguns, wine and French food. Here he …
Guest Post: Jess vs the Breed Box
Regular readers may know that I have long taken a stance against closed studbook breeding registries, which I consider to be unscientific Victorian relics that are causing actual harm to “breeds” by decreasing genetic diversity. Recently a perfect example has surfaced in salukis, where “traditionalists”— ie, people who want to limit the breed’s ancestry to …
Dog Rant
The Lady With the Black Dogs (who happen to be “real” fierce staunch old- fashioned Afghans, rare today) sent me a note and a link, knowing it would provoke me and push all my buttons on genetics, bombast, and bullshit, not to mention on the kind of dog commercialism that makes AR types try to …
Eagle predation on pronghorn fawns
On July 1, as I drove down a two-tract road on the sheep allotment, I came upon two golden eagles on the ground. The raptors rose heavily into the air, weighed down by a recent meal. I drove straight to the spot in the sagebrush where the eagles had been grounded, and discovered the fresh …