Before I was old enough to drive, my friends and I had already scouted several fishing holes around our hometown of Slidell, La. We bicycled to these piscatorial pleasure pits between times when our dads could take us “real fishing” and when we should have been studying or in class. Most people call their favorite [...]

In the spring of 1986, we were newly relocated to suburban Denver on our latest corporate transfer. The guy next door had a 1976 factory orange MGB which, I noticed, he seldom took out of the garage. It looked perfect. One day in chatting, he said he really didn’t know anything about them. He bought [...]

In a recent round with local historian, Paul Dunn, and some sportscaster friends, I was impressed by the care of the architects in preparing for the hosting of the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Open Golf Championships by returning the famed Pinehurst No. 2 course to its mid-20th century look and feel. It seemed almost [...]

Hanging meat doesn’t necessarily proclaim an enjoyable hunt. Quite often, the most successful adventures come on days where a sportsman never even fires a shot and no game makes it to the dining room table. One can measure true success more by what one experiences in the wilderness — the heavenly peace, animals observed and [...]

Turtleback, inverted saucers, the hood of a Volkswagen – all terms used to describe the green’s complexes of the revered Pinehurst No. 2. Regardless of the descriptions, the greens on Pinehurst No. 2 are some of the smallest targets in golf. In 1935, Donald Ross, the famous architect of Pinehurst No. 2, and over 450 [...]

In 1948, a French watchmaker named Maurice Jacquemin revolutionized light tackle fishing. At that time, most people fished with bulky, difficult reels requiring some skill. An inexperienced angler, and even some old pros, could easily create a mass of tangled line that might ruin a day on the water. Jacquemin, an engineer for the French [...]

When the Spanish explorers first began to trek across North America about 500 years ago, they discovered “dragons,” dubbing these giant toothy reptiles, “El Lagarto,” or “the lizard.” Over the centuries, English-speaking people corrupted the Spanish phrase into “alligator.” For 400 years, many settlers considered them vermin worthy only of eradication to protect humans and [...]

Stinging raindrops mixed with sleet projectiles pelted the foreboding forest like fine birdshot fired from a thousand distant shotguns as I walked up the trail toward the deer stand. In thick darkness, I followed the path as it snaked through somber rolling hills shrouded in mist and obscured by the precipitation. The previous evening, I [...]