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Daryl Kirby's GON Blog

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Editorial-Opinion February 2024

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…

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Editorial-Opinion January 2024

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…

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Editorial Opinion – December 2023

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.…

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Defining Navigable Streams In Georgia

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…

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It’s Not Easy, And We Aren’t Pretty, But… GON

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, …

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GHFF Gets The Job Done For Sportsmen

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…

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First And Foremost, GON Makes A Magazine

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…

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At All Costs

Go big or go home. That’s all good and well, great advice. Unless, of course, the impacts of going home are far worse than the potential rewards of going big. Stating the obvious there, but there seems to be an ever-escalating ‘at all costs’ mentality in all walks of life. A young hunter seems desperate…

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Public-Access, Navigable Stream Status Coming To A Head

In three and half decades of making outdoor magazines in Georgia, I can’t remember the idea of a group of politicians getting together that has me more interested—and fearful—than a House of Representatives Study Committee that will be meeting this summer. If you own land in Georgia with a stream or river flowing through your…

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Gun Violence And Common Sense In America

Few events are more distressing than waking up to the news of some deranged idiot shooting people at a school or mall. Is there a solution—a magic wand move that would make it 100% certain we never wake up to that news again? The answer is no. But if we’re going to do something to…

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