Posts by Brad Bailey
Clarks Hill Lake Live-Bait Linesides In December
Live-bait fishing for hybrids and stripers can be crazy good this time of year on Clarks Hill, with limits in minutes when the fish are bunched on points and humps feeding on herring—if you’re there at the right time. If you’d like to see proof, take a look at fishing guide Eddie Mason’s Facebook page…
Read MoreMentor Of Blues Bog, Final Chapter
Maggie ran as fast as she could, her hair streaming behind her head, her anger driving her feet as she sprinted across the pasture heading for the tree line. It’s not fair! she thought. She and her brother Dillon hunted legally, but now someone trespassing had shot Dillon’s 13-pointer. Another shot of angry adrenaline spurred…
Read MoreThe Mentor Of Blues Bog Part 4
Dillon Craft tossed and turned all night unable to sleep for replaying the sound of the high-powered rifle shot he had heard at midnight from the direction of Blues Bog. He could just imagine some night hunter dragging his 13-pointer away… At first light he sped out of the farmyard on the 4-wheeler heading for…
Read MoreThe Mentor Of Blues Bog Part 3
The last thing Dillon remembered was a blast that sounded like a stick of dynamite exploding between his ears, and a white-hot flash of light that seemed to make the forest vanish in a bright haze. Then he was weightless and flying through the air; a brief flight abruptly halted by the end of his…
Read MoreThe Mentor Of Blues Bog Part 2
Maggie’s screams split the air in Blues Bog. It was the most terrifying sound Dillon had ever heard he thought as he tossed the empty rifle aside and jumped forward to grab Maggie under her arms from behind. In his panic, it was all he could think of to do to try to save his…
Read MoreThe Mentor Of Blues Bog
Thanksgiving Day morning nine months earlier: Dillon Craft thought his heart was going to pound right through the front of his hunting jacket. Fifty yards from where he sat nervously in his deer stand, a monster buck was thrashing a decent 8-pointer. Dillon could see only flashes of brown deer hide through the trees…
Read MoreThe Ghost Hunter Of Shinbone Creek, The Conclusion
“Did you hear that?” said Dewitt as he rose from his camp chair. He stood away from the crackling fire to listen. Hamp, Dewitt’s older brother, sitting on his heels by the fire to pour coffee from a smoke-blackened pot hung over the campfire, shook his head. “Didn’t hear it,” he said. “Me neither,” said…
Read MoreThe Ghost Hunter Of Shinbone Creek Part 4
“Leia!” Hamp shouted across the dark food plot. “Leia!” His voice was choked with worry and rising panic about what had happened to his granddaughter. The hunting blind was empty, but puzzlingly, her rifle was still propped up in the corner. Hamp Varner and his brother Dewitt had hurried from their hunt camp to the…
Read MoreThe Ghost Hunter Of Shinbone Creek Part 3
Brent was afraid to climb down from his stand. The teenager had never seen his father in such an angry rage. George Gentry stood beneath his 17-year-old son’s deer stand, soaking wet, water dripping from his face, glaring upward toward Brent’s stand and shouting in an utter fury. “Brent, you fool,” he screamed, his voice…
Read MoreThe Ghost Hunter Of Shinbone Creek Part 2
Long before daylight on the opening day of archery deer season, Hamp stood alone at the edge of the camp. Overhead a million stars twinkled and blazed in a black, moonless sky. The air was stone still, and for mid September, cool. Radar, the border collie, stood beside him, looking up quizzically, wagging his tail.…
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