There were at least two Browning Superposeds in Ernest Hemingway’s life. One of them was a very early model that may have come indirectly from Val Browning, the son of John Browning, the genius who designed the gun. However, neither…

The mule-drawn bird wagon trundled through Chokee Plantation in Leesburg, Georgia − a 5,800-acre homage to the vanishing wild-quail hunts that for generations put meat on the table and tendered sporting birds by the good graces of the land.

The first thing we saw, through the mist and fog, were dark shapes on the hillside. In scattered bunches they huddled together, at rest, while others fed around them. A relic of a time when wild bison roamed across the…

No these doves don’t live in volcanoes, but they are thriving around them, and I’m talking the Central American country of Nicaragua. Our party was making the shotguns roar not far from Granada – a town near the shores of Lake…

In late March 2017, Shotgun Life visited Fabbrica Armi Isidoro Rizzini, or F.A.I.R. as we have come to know it, in Brescia Italy. Owner Luca Rizzini impressed us as a straightforward, unpretentious guy committed to manufacturing affordable wing and clays…

In America, you would be hard-pressed to find a more magnificent collection of fine shotguns than at the Safari Club International Convention, held this year during the first week of February at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.…

There’s no shortage of self-help books, blogs and TV shows on how to maintain a successful marriage. They often dispense predictable suggestions such as romantic getaways, better communications and compromise. While those tactics are certainly useful, my friend Paula Formosa…

Two years ago, I was living in an apartment in the basement of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I was working in private practice as a psychiatric nurse practitioner and spending most of my weekends driving two hours both…

For American lovers of James Purdey & Sons shotguns recent developments deliver some good news and some bad. Starting with the good, London best-gun maker James Purdey & Sons has declared Griffin & Howe’s sporting-gun nirvana the Hudson Farm Club…

In 1803, London sporting dog expert William Taplin published the first of two volumes titled “The Sportsman’s Cabinet” – an elaborately leather bound and illustrated compendium described as “A correct delineation of the canine race.” In 2003 Chris Mathan paid…

Story | Photos by John N. Felsher “Shoot,” I yelled as birds exploded in all directions from thick reeds just a few feet from us. “There’s another one. Fire! Here comes a straggler. Get him.” In seconds, my son Steven pumped…

Once you have handled a really well-balanced shotgun, you will never again be satisfied with less. One shooter, back in the 1990s, described it as being like the first time you taste a really great French wine. Your palate changes…

Add the Ritz Carlton at Reynolds Lake Oconee to the select register of luxury resorts to capitalize on the rise in popularity of social clays shooting. With its new Sandy Creek Sporting Grounds, the Ritz Carlton at Reynolds Lake Oconee,…

There is no shortage of pheasant hunting lodges in South Dakota. Yet one lodge seems to rise to the top as an Orvis Endorsed Lodge in 2009 and Orvis Wingshooting Lodge of the year and in 2016.

Story|Photos by Tom Keer Say the word “woodcock” in a room full of bird hunters and you are likely to capture most everyone’s attention. Hunters are fascinated with the eclectic, migratory bird for a wide variety of reasons. Dyed-in-the-wool woodcock…

I’m blessed with the professional opportunity to shoot fine shotguns costing upwards of $100,000 and more. Boss, Fabbri, Purdey, Holland & Holland, all exemplars of sporting guns that will pretty much spoil you for life. Inevitably, when discussing these rarified…

This past October we visited my wife’s sister and brother-in-law in central Nebraska. I was a willing participant. I love my extended family, I love visiting that part of my country and I had a selfish motive: shooting at the…

Stone butts and red grouse on a wine colored Scottish moor. Mule drawn wagons following bobwhite seeking pointers beneath loblolly pines. Rolling hills filled with olive trees and red legged partridge. Undulating plains rhythmically swaying to the wing beats of…

This cutover cornfield hunt in rural Orangeburg County, South Carolina could take place just about any agricultural area. The Canada goose population continues to increase everywhere, which results in liberal bag limits for wingshooters. Goose hunters have to spend time…

The porch was long and spacious. There were comfortable chairs and tables along the wall, and a short drop from the porch down to the natural flora of Texas Hill country spread a few dozen yards out to a limestone…