Sporting Clays on the Bourbon Trail: Part I, Nemacolin

We climbed up into the new 400-horsepower Porsche Cayenne S, ready to embark on a mad road trip that would take us deep into the heart of Kentucky bourbon country. The itinerary was ambitious by any measure – eight days, seven posh sporting clays venues, 13 flats of shells, eight bourbon distilleries and a fresh box of Gurkha Evil cigars. Our departure date was September 11th.

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Briley Backs the New Baserri Shotguns With Warranty Work and Line of Chokes

[caption id="attachment_1689" align="alignnone" width=""]The Baserri Chronicles Part I: New shotgun companies are a rarity these days, and so when one comes along we’re eager to track its progress. That’s the idea behind our series, the Baserri Chronicles. In this first installment, we see how Baserri Shotguns forged a key relationship with Briley International.[/caption]The shotgun industry powerhouse, Briley International, is backing newcomer, Baserri Shotguns, with full customer support and a forthcoming line of extended chokes.

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Eye Fatigue: The Clays Shooting Time Bomb

What is the biggest problem Todd Bender sees with 75% of the skeet shooters he coaches?

You might think it’s a shoddy gun mount, an ill-fitting stock or a chronic flinch.

In fact, after 20 years of coaching and dominating competitive skeet shooting, Todd believes that many clays shooters crash and burn from acute eye fatigue.

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Camp Swampy

Dale Spartas might be the luckiest guy I know, for I’m very envious of the fine double guns he owns – as well of his Camp Swampy. On second thought Spartas has no doubt simply worked harder than I have – acquiring all those wonderful shotguns – as well as Camp Swampy. Dale and I were staying at Camp Swampy recently, using it as our base camp for hunting Hungarian partridge.

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How to Use Google Earth To Find Good Bird Cover

One of the most talked-about items in our new book Serious Grouse Hunting, Book 1 is how to use Google Earth to find bird cover – specifically ruffed grouse and woodcock cover. Here’s a quick primer (some of this material is in the book), followed by a story about our experience using Google Earth while hunting in Maine the first week of October.

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Hemingway’s Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway

Our friend Silvio Calabi gave us a heads up that the book he co-wrote called “Hemingway’s Guns: The Sporting Arms of Ernest Hemingway” was about to be published. Having seen some of the chapters in advance, we were excited about the new information revealed from the in-depth research. Silvio gave us permission to run a chapter titled “The Winchester Model 21 Shotguns,” which appears following  the introduction below.

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Winchester’s New 20-Gauge SX3

There are three versions of Winchester’s Super X (now shortened to the SX). The Super X Model 1 semi-auto first appeared in 1974. This was one heck of a shotgun, but production ceased in 1984 as the Super X was very expensive to produce because many of its parts were milled rather than stamped.

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Remembering Michael

[caption id="attachment_1653" align="alignnone" width=""]Photo courtesy of David TravanionA rare snapshot of Michael McIntosh.[/caption]Michael McIntosh, one of America’s foremost shotgun writers died on Saturday, August 14, 2010, at his home in Iowa. He was 66 years old.

Other people called him Mike, but I never did. To me, he was always Michael – and if a finer friend than Michael McIntosh ever existed, I have yet to meet him.

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