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EARLIER THIS SUMMER I had the opportunity to fish with Dick Grzywinski. Better known as the Griz, the 82-year-old fishing guide is a larger-than-life legend in Midwestern fishing circles (“Lessons from the Griz, the Last Great Fishing Legend of the North”). But the Griz is also an aging legend. He now needs a cane to walk down the boat ramp. His leg, which was injured in a motorcycle accident and nearly amputated, gives him grief. He has trouble recalling people’s names (including mine), but he can remember every good fish he’s caught on this stretch of the Mississippi River and the conditions in which each fish was caught. These days he won’t drop a heavy anchor (he won’t use Spot Lock technology either) when he’s fishing alone. And yet, he…
“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE to split up,” I said, looking steadily at my son. “The hunting’s been tough, and we need to cover more country.” It didn’t surprise me that he seemed fine with the idea. Josiah is 14 and, having been raised on a remote cattle ranch, more capable than many grown men. He’s used to dawn-to-dark days on horseback working half-wild cattle, shooting rattlesnakes, and building fence. And he’s been hunting since he was big enough to keep both ends of a rifle out of the dirt. But he’d never hunted big game alone before. This would be the first time he ever stalked the hills solo in search of a buck to put his tag on, the first time I wouldn’t be there to help range the…
GLEN HEAVNER CAN THINK of a dozen ways to describe the Lower White River: the diamond of Arkansas, the land that time forgot, a state of mind, his favorite place on the planet. “I used to drive 600 miles every day. Now as far as I go is the boat ramp,” says Glen, a retired trucker who lives half a mile from the dock where he and his dad, Larry, keep their twin johnboats. “Life slows down on the White River.” The White flows fast and clear out of the Ozark Mountains, but by the time it winds into the Mississippi floodplain, past the Heavner home, and through the state’s legendary green timber duck holes, it’s wide and leisurely. If life here is slow, it begins to crawl when nearby…
JASON BALDES leans against his dad’s red Toyota 4-Runner, two long braids draped over a T-shirt that reads “Make Buffalo Great Again.” Richard Baldes sits in the driver’s seat, silver hair poking out from under his Buffalo Bills hat. It’s a tribute to the animal, but also to former University of Wyoming and current Bills quarterback Josh Allen. The Baldeses talk about Jason’s travel schedule (too busy, according to his dad), long-ago trips to Africa (formative for them both), and hunting buffalo (Richard doesn’t want to shoot one, Jason longs to do so on a traditional hunt). Father and son, both members of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, stare out at a sea of green grass and buffalo berry bushes as a herd of 30 or so bison munch patches of…
I’VE FISHED with Oliver Ngy on my home waters twice, and I walked away from both trips so inspired I was giddy, yet hopelessly frustrated at the same time. It’s rare for me to meet a fisherman who bucks the mindset of the average angler so hard it makes me feel as though I’m a novice on the water—despite my having been utterly devoted to, and infatuated with, the sport for more than 30 years. But no matter how dialed in you think you are, no matter how well you believe you know your home turf, Ngy has a way of making you rethink everything. And it’s all because he marches to his own beat and runs his own program no matter where he’s fishing. Your program is, at best,…
THE WOUNDS from his fight with a baboon weren’t fully healed when Bismark charged the Cape buffalo. We had spent the day trying to split two satellite bulls from the herd. I had been hired to photograph a plains- and dangerous-game safari in South Africa’s northernmost province of Limpopo, and I was shooting through my telephoto lens as one of the bulls broke from cover and charged. The hunter shot the buff at 40 yards, then again. Bismark, a wire-haired Jack Russell, stood at heel beside his handler, professional hunter Divan Human. I don’t know how many shots were fired—both by the hunter and the PH—as the buffalo thundered to 15 yards, but it wasn’t dying. That’s when Bismark broke heel and tried to ride it. As a lifelong hunter,…
