Vol. 4 Num. 1 – December/January 2016

Gathering our news of the world from a nightly network television broadcast has long been a fact of daily living in America, through generations. For many years, either from a network studio or broadcasting from the field, Tom Brokaw has been our evening information anchor. Covey Rise spent a weekend in the pheasant fields of South Dakota at Paul Nelson Farm last fall with Mr. Brokaw, a native son of South Dakota and longtime pheasant hunter.  

From a personality profile on an inspiring man and hunting devotee to a gun profile of generational significance, we share another exciting feature written by Miles DeMott, about a Stevens shotgun passed down to young hunters-to-be.  

The Continental Field Trials hosted by Florida’s Dixie Plantation are the epicenter for top-level bird-dog competition, and have been for decades. Barbara Teare writes about the Plantation’s history and Field Trials’ important role in setting the bar for the ongoing improvement of the dog breeds. 

Nancy Anisfield takes her German shorthaired pointers—trained on hunting birds in the Northeast’s dense upland coverts—to discover pheasant and other game on Castle Valley Lodge’s wide open 14,000 acres.  

 And we embark on a driven shoot in the UK with prominent sporting-travel hosts Bettws Hall, written by author and shotgun expert Chris Batha.  

Vol. 4 Num. 2 – February/March 2016

For several issues reaching back to early 2015, Covey Rise has brought to our readers insider looks at incredible outdoors products and the people who make them. Several converge in the February-March 2016 issue—and the first such story is on a great man who has made his mark on working-dog training for centuries. Delmar Smith has an authentic approach to getting to know a dog’s mind—molding it like an artist molds a lump of clay—and helping to shape the dog’s behavior. “To train like a pro, you have to think like a dog,” Delmar says.

Next, we learn how Russell Moccasin has made one-of-a-kind, made-to-order footwear for decades from their workshop in Berlin, Wisconsin.

David McKay Brown is a skilled and talented craftsman making best guns under his name in Scotland. We visit his workshop to behold his beautiful guns.

The Georgia artist Bucky Bowles makes inviting and authentic paintings, transporting viewers into each scene—in other words, he is constantly “Painting the Familiar,” which is the title of our feature on Bucky and his work.

Chef Sean Finley of The High Adventure Company makes memorable meals in exquisite upland-hunting settings. We check in with him at Cheyenne Ridge in South Dakota to learn his approach to great food (and we share his recipes!).

Vol. 4 Num. 3 – April/May 2016

Finding a sense of place: part of the appeal of being in the outdoors is finding the places that feel right, that feel natural, that feel like home. In our April-May issue, we introduce you to people and places you’ll want to know about and visit, starting with a ranch-brokerage firm in the West that can help you find your new homeplace in one of nine Western states in which they’re licensed to do real-estate business—Live Water Properties, with headquarters in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Live Water understands what sportsmen and women want in a ranch property.

Finding a fit in the outdoors can happen even when you hunt without a gun, as author Paul Fersen shares in “Hunting as a Picker-up.” Fersen works as a picker-up or dog handler on driven-bird shoots in the US, and delights in watching the action and helping to harvest the downed birds.

Sometimes a lodge does everything just right and you know you’ve found a special place. Near the Georgia coast, Dorchester Shooting Preserve is one such place, with well-managed habitat that’s home to fast-flying quail.

In South America, La Estancia de Cafayate is a luxury retreat that offers majestic views of the Andes Mountains, excellent locally-produced wines, horseback riding, and challenging golf—all proximate to some of the world’s best wingshooting in the country’s Salta region.

International travelers will find a hunter’s home in the midst of the City of Light, namely Paris’s Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature or Museum of Hunting and Nature. Read in this issue about the museum’s history and its collections.

A showcase of every adventure is a well-prepared meal. Chef Scott Leysath is known as The Sporting Chef because he brings game to the table that he’s personally gathered and he cooks it up deliberately. Learn some of his culinary specialties.

JUNE - JULY 2016

All wingshooters get a special thrill from seeing, holding, or shooting a best gun. These are works of art as well as highly functional tools of our passions. In the June-July issue, we meet stocker, a sculptor of wood who creates the beautiful stocks on best-quality guns: his name is Paul Hodgins. Born and raised in the UK and living and working now in the US in Logan, Utah, Hodgins was part of a unique apprentice program at Holland & Holland that he joined in 1973 at age 16. There, he had intense training and acquired the skills to become a stocker, or a “sculptor” of finely finished wood on best shotguns. Read “Sculpting Wood” by Greggory Elliott and you’ll have an even greater appreciation for the craftsmanship that goes into a best gun.

More on the best of the best takes you to Longpine Plantation outside of Thomasville, Georgia, for a story on a special-invitation quail hunt from Covey Rise’s back-page columnist Dr. John C. Blythe. Though a son of the South and a lifelong quail hunter, Doc Blythe had never hunted truly wild quail on a private plantation—before being invited behind the gates of Longpine, as he writes, “a nearly 6,000-acre savanna of towering longleaf pines and open fields. It presents one of the most unique and picturesque sites a quail hunter can imagine. Add to that a wagon pulled by a brace of Clydesdales, hunters mounted on Tennessee Walking Horses, pointers rigid on point—and you have a picture almost too ideal to be real.” 

The very best of driven shooting, in the classic European tradition but offered now in the Teton Valley of Idaho—that means a trip with Blixt & Company. We take you there for a special Blixt Sporting Days outing and a simulated driven shoot, where guns (as shooters are called) aim for clay targets released to simulate driven pheasant and red-legged partridge, which are flushed overhead of the guns in erratic and very high flights—challenging shooting, indeed. One return participant of Blitx shoots, Roger Sanger, sums it up about the program started by Lars and Jen Magnusson: “Lars and Jen are trying to uphold the heritage, for example, with necktie and breeks for gentlemen. They haven’t tried to ‘Americanize’ the sport. Many of us like that, it gives you a different feel. You can’t use an automatic or a pump gun, for safety and also because of tradition. Only a two-barrel gun is allowed, for safety and for the sport of it.”

The best . . . we continue with that theme in our vehicle review of the Range Rover Sport, quite possibly the very best “gun bus” you’ll ever drive. Gun bus is the British term for the transport at an estate shoot, often a repurposed military vehicle that carries a group of guns to the shooting grounds. But not the posh Range Rover Sport—it offers first-class comfort, with exceptional performance. The author, Silvio Calabi, quotes the vehicle company’s chief program engineer Stuart Frith on what he is proudest of about the RRS: “(Frith) thought a moment and then said, with British understatement, ‘It’s the way the vehicle seems to stretch the laws of physics.’”

Let’s not forget food, glorious food, done Covey Rise style—Managing Editor Miles DeMott takes us to a memorable meal at Peninsula Grill, an anchor venue in the fantastic Planters Inn, in Charleston, South Carolina. Miles writes: “Planters Inn reinvented a corner and plowed new life into what is now thought to be the most expensive dirt in all of South Carolina. Nice work if you can get it. Essential to this effort has been the companion restaurant, Peninsula Grill.” Chef Graham Dailey plans his menu with creative intent, but he’s vigilant about the restaurant’s business, as well. Join Miles, and Chef Dailey, on an artistic vigil, in Charleston.

Plus, an African gamebird safari, a profile of an incredibly talented artist, our expanded Sportsman’s Bookshelf, and our regular columns and departments.

In planning each issue of Covey Rise, we particularly embrace one word, a word that informs so much of the upland lifestyle: That word is bespoke, or custom-made or made to order.

We’ve shared stories with you on bespoke shotguns (and do so again in the August-September issue), apparel, culinary creations, walking sticks, vehicles, and much more. This time, we add timepieces to that roster and the Montana Watch Company. In “Keeping Time in Montana” read about Jeffrey Nashan and his family producing bespoke wristwatches in their Livingston, Montana, shop. Their watches capture the essence of why a wristwatch is such an expression of personal character.

About the bespoke shotguns in this issue: In 1880, John Dickson the third began planning what’s known as the Dickson round-action shotgun by taking out patents on the gun’s unique design. The trigger plate configuration allows the attractive round action on bespoke Dickson and MacNaughton shotguns (and guns from a few other manufacturers). For nearly 150 years, John Dickson & Son in Edinburgh, Scotland, has been a lead purveyor of this style of shotgun. We share the company’s history.

In each issue, we include what we call a Chef + Plate feature, and this time we visit Chef Dean Fearing in Dallas. Chef Fearing oversees the homegrown and surprising menu—Texas food without borders, he calls it—at Fearing’s Restaurant at the Ritz Carlton in Uptown Dallas. 

Athletic travel teams such as Little League or soccer are mobilizing to go on the road to away games—these teams are a uniting source of pride for many communities: Player families and the community at large rally around supporting the young athletes in their quest for excellence and good sportsmanship. But what about a team of retrievers and their owners on a travel schedule to hunt pheasant and other upland game? Read about it in “Travel Ball for Retrievers,” and the Wildrose Way, in this issue.

Finally, how often have we imagined our hunting partners, our beloved canines, sharing conversations with us, joining in to let us know what’s on their minds? Check out “Let Me Be Perfectly Frank” to get an entertaining dose of that reality.

OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2016 ISSUE

Passions are running high as American wingshooting seasons open and we begin our annual endeavors afield with bird dogs, shotguns, and friends. The triggers of memories are often such stimuli as the smells of the Midwestern and Western prairies, the shady canopy of Northeastern wooded coverts, or the wiry grasses of Southeastern quail fields. This year, we’ll return again to make new memories in our favorite upland locations, reliving our time afield in after-hunt appreciations (see “Toasting the Hunt” and “One Cigar at a Time” in this issue for the proper accompaniments) and revisited in our imaginations in future seasons.

You can begin your exploration now in our October-November issue. First, journey through the quail fields of George Hi Plantation in North Carolina, where the habitat and quail hunting have undergone transformation in recent years. Go there and you can survey the sights from the back of a horse-drawn wagon, until the dogs go on point and it’s your turn to shoulder the shotgun you brought with you. 

Or maybe this is the year to buy a new shotgun. May we suggest a bespoke best London gun? Writer Chris Batha contributes a fascinating and entertaining introduction to best guns, the evolution of their handmade manufacture, and why you should consider one. See “London Best” on page 52. Now for that other element of a prized upland hunt: the bird dog. This time, we visit Pine Shadows in north-central Minnesota to learn more about their Haglin English springer spaniels. Spaniels appear in literature going back to the 14th Century, and to maintain the integrity of this classic sporting breed to this day, Mark and Sophie Haglin, owners of Pine Shadows, adopted a policy of customer care, respect, integrity, and honesty. Their Haglin spaniels are arguably the top springers working today.