Daryl Kirby's GON Blog

A curious mind, sprinkled with a touch of skepticism, serves a person well. It’s how we sort fact from fallacy, and clarify the gray areas between. Several years ago you might have seen an email or text of an aerial photo showing a gator swimming across the surface of Lake Allatoona with a grown deer…

I used to have a running dialogue with a buddy and neighbor about our jobs. He was a fireman. These weren’t complaints, more like comparisons… working at GON has been a dream come true for me. Since I was old enough to read and would flip through ancient torn and faded issues of Outdoor Life…

There’s too much noise, stress and angst in today’s world. People with a passion for the outdoors know a peace and calm, a release. We have—thanks be to God—a window into a world far from the struggles of everyday life. The rhythmic clatter and gurgle of your buzzbait will not magically make your credit card…

In 1987, a handful of folks—principally Steve Burch and Brad Bailey—began a journey of blood, sweat and tears to create a new hunting and fishing publication in Georgia. From the beginning, GON was different. It looked different and it felt different. That dirty newsprint could leave a stain on your hands, and it wasn’t as…

A picture of me with the first deer I ever killed appeared in our local newspaper. Not because that 9-pointer was newsworthy, but more so because I had a proud and persuasive mom. The headline was “Young Hunter Shoots Buck.” This was in 1978, and being in a small-town paper was special. I was a…

Is there still a Miss America pageant? Haven’t heard mention of it in years, but I thought of the pageant interview question this morning… a nervous contestant alone on stage, and she’s asked a question. “World Peace!” Turns out those who answered with what was thought of as a shallow cliche were right all along.…

About the only thing more difficult than pronouncing the word navigable is defining it. But define it we might. Lawsuits, unprecedented last-minute midnight action at the capitol, and now public meetings across the state conducted by a who’s-who of legislative  heavyweights… all are currents pulling a creaky old wooden raft toward treacherous waters. Those waters…

It’s not uncommon when putting these GON magazines together each month to take a pause and recognize how blessed and fortunate we are. Seeing all of these articles is a much-needed reminder that we are blessed and fortunate in many ways. We could talk endlessly about the incredible hunting and fishing opportunities in this state, …

If you are one of the many sportsmen who have walked through the doors of an Outdoor Blast in the past two and half decades, you probably met or at least noticed a group of men and women in hunter-orange t-shirts. They volunteered at the Kids Zone, at the venue doors, or they met folks…

First and foremost, GON makes a magazine. We’ve been at it for 37 years. Quite a bit has changed and we’ve weathered some storms since that first tabloid-newspaper style GON hit the store racks with a cover picture from a West Point crappie tournament. The storm of the century began as barely a ripple in…