Conundrum

At first I was interested in this catalogue, but the longer I looked at it, the more uneasy I became. The kits for analysing owl pellets were fine. But what is with the artificial FEATHERS? I know, it is illegal to pick up feathers.It is also STUPID for it to be illegal to pick up …

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New Coursing Book

To See Them Run: Great Plains Coyote Coursing, with text by Utah folklorist Eric Elaison, splendid photos by Scott Squire, and a long introductory essay by me, is finally out from the University Press of Mississipi… and about time! Our efforts have seen us, for about five years (more?) right through a couple of academic …

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Working tools can be pretty too

More often than not, I like to publish pics of guns like pre- war English doubles; ones that, at their best, blur the line between art and craft. Only their theoretical utility keeps them to one side of that line, and ideally their utility increases as they approach it, like Daniel’s 1870’s Purdey. For my …

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Quote with a little melancholy

Is it true? From James Salter’s new All That Is. “The power of the novel in the nation’s culture had weakened. It had happened gradually. It was something everyone recognized and ignored. All went on exactly as before, that was the beauty of it. The glory had failed but fresh faces kept appearing, wanting to …

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Miles City is still in Montana*

I just saw the video below and am trying to give it some publicity. It is ostensibly an interview with Miles City writer, rancher, and horseman John Moore about the Miles City Bucking horse sale, but he touches on the strange way that difficult life skills have been transmuted into (often expensive) play. When he …

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Big Guns

Like pigeons (which I will soon be writing about again) big bore shotguns are a constant recurring interest of mine shared by few contemporaries– those mostly coastal wildfowlers who used tens in the US, something I was at least born into. When it comes to Big Guns US shooting society tends to live in the …

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