Story Fair 2023

Written by: Charles Few. Lancaster, PA The day had been cold, dark and foreboding. It was now late in the afternoon. There was a front moving in and several inches of snow were predicted. Right now, however, the ground was clear and dry. If it did snow, this would be the first snowfall of the season. It was mid December in Pennsylvania. Rifle deer season had closed and the second season for grouse was open. So far, I had missed the entire autumn hunting season. Major heart trouble followed by a particularly nasty gut infection had brought...

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Written by: Gino Venditti. As my wife, Sarah, and I stood in the conference room of the B Rizzini Factory located in Marcheno, Italy, we waited for our factory tour to begin. We looked through the product catalogs laying on the conference room table, a catalog from this year and from years past containing the different makes and models of shotguns waiting to be introduced to the world. In a sense, a history of the most recent decade of product innovations and introductions lay there before us. Stacks of wood blanks lined the edge of hallway leading to...

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Written By: Matthew Farr. Sequim, WA Red dirt stained my boots as I strode down an old two-track. A young aspen stand stood to my left while my young pup was ahead to my right. She looked back at me with anticipation noting both my tightly gripped shotgun and uncertainty in my eyes. Without past experiences to reassure us, we were relying on the stories of others. We were there searching for validation from a proverbial king, which neither of us had seen before. I strained my vision into the thicket and glanced back to my dog. “Ember,” I...

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Written By: Mathew Pankratz. Wisconsin Rapids, WI I’ve always been a believer that things will work out in the end, but when you’restruggling through, as I often am, making it to the end can feel daunting. To start the 2023grouse hunting season, I had three weeks off and was looking to make the most of them. Birdswere plentiful and the weather good. Camping in a tent with just my setter, Cider, wasenjoyable, and we were finding plenty of young and fairly dumb birds. I was connecting with theeasy shots when I should and even the difficult ones were landing...

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Written By: Luke Merickel. Richfield, MN A fresh blanket of snow had fallen earlier that morning. The past two days, we enjoyed snow free ruffed grouse hunting which is a treat in the late November woods of Northern MN. It was a Sunday morning and time to head back to Minneapolis to prepare for the work week ahead. (Shells and kibble need to be paid for somehow). We slept in, had a nice breakfast, loaded the dogs and my fiancé in the truck and hit the road. Unbeknownst to her, I had a quick cover picked out to hit...

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Written By: Daniel Barry. Philadelphia, PA Growing up,I loved hearing stories of the glory days of upland hunting in the First State. As akid, my father would tell me stories of how the landscape of Delaware had changed since “backin the day”. We drove past fields where homes were being built and he would say. “Yeah I usedto help farm all of this” sweeping his hand across the horizon. My father and grandfather were avid bird hunters, chasing the once-abundant wild bobwhitequail throughout Delaware. The Hedgerows where once a many reliable covey lay were nownext to neighborhood developments, rather than...

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