Archibald Rutledge was the 20th century’s most prolific sporing scribe. Known to family and friends as “Old Flintlock,” he was an internationally acclaimed poet, beloved teacher and author of close to three score books. He also came with a single vote of winning both the Nobel Prize for literature and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1949.

He resurrected the faded glory of South Carolina’s Hampton Plantation on the Santee River ,with its rich history tracing back to a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a U.S. Supreme Court justice and a visit by President George Washington. The effort is described in his best-known work, Home by the River. Most of all, though, he was a hunter for the ages.

Often remembered for tales of deer and turkey hunting, he was also an avid wingshooter…

A quarter-inch of ice lay on the surface of the flooded Arkansas rice field in early January. Tank, a 6-year-old German wirehaired pointer, sat quietly in the blind as we waited for the morning’s first ducks. A heavy overcast made it seem colder than it was.

Tank, a solid brown male with a white chest patch and spiky beard, showed his impatience only through the quiver in his knees and an occasional puff of anxious air huffing from his jowls. His pale yellow eyes stayed fixed on the sky.

Four mallards circled in low toward the decoys. Two of us missed; one connected on the trailing bird. From his perch, Tank could see the body-shot drake sail straight away over the field, dropping in the woods almost 300 yards from the blind. With the “Back!” command barely out of his owner’s mouth, Tank hurled himself from the blind, smashed into the ice-coated water and began chunking his way across….

From James Bond’s first pistol to the official sidearm of the U.S. Army, from the shooting lines at the Grand to the high-volume dove-shooting of South America, you will find the name Beretta winning medals and downing birds.

There is, in the world of firearms, no more ubiquitous name-not Colt, not Winchester, not Browning. Berettas are everywhere in every conceivable configuration…