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Hunting
The population rebound of the American alligator is one of the great wildlife stories of my lifetime. I have been applying for a permit since Georgia’s first alligator season and was finally selected for the 2006 season. As I reflect on that awesome hunt I had last year, my excitement level builds in anticipation of…
Clint McPhee sat on the ground with his back to a fence post and his binoculars resting on his knees. The rusted barb wire fenceline, grown up in Johnson grass and blackberry briars, was the high point on the edge of a cut hayfield that sloped away to a dark treeline 200 yards away. The…
It was the last day of the 2005-06 hunting season. I had all but given up on seeing a giant buck that I hunted for two seasons. That morning, my hunt was uneventful. I hadn’t seen a single deer, which really isn’t so unusual for this small patch of woods. The hunting was just hit…
When Heath Oglesby ripped open the envelope and began flipping through the photographs he had just developed at the local Walmart, his jaw dropped. “Dudley… Dudley! This ain’t good,” he said, drawing the attention of his hunting buddy William Dudley. Heath and William were 18 years old at the time, and Heath’s dad, Paul Oglesby,…
Georgia resident O’Neill Williams has been entertaining outdoor enthusiasts for almost three decades. If there is a way to make a living doing what you love, then O’Neill has surely done that. O’Neill, now 63, became interested in hunting and fishing as a small child and today has more than 500 television episodes and 800…
Spend a quarter century hunting a piece of ground, and it becomes a big part of your life. Countless hunting clubs across Georgia have played out the same scenes over the years — gathering at the skinning pole to share the successes and the near-misses, the fellowship around the campfire at night. These hunters spend…
It was nothing to look at, really. I remember it having gray fiberglass limbs, a black handle and a white string. My sister brought it home from high school after one of the coaches gave it to her when the P.E. department received new equipment. In spite of its simplicity, that bow, with all of…
Perhaps only if you’ve been there can you appreciate the dank, damp darkness of a river swamp in the first gray mists of morning. On the banks of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, all is black, or nearly so, with indistinct shapes melding into a swirling gloom. The only sounds are the lapping waves of…
Shooting 3-D archery tournaments is reportedly one of the fastest-growing sports around. At GON, however, no one had ever shot one of the tournaments. We thought we would go pay our fee and try one out to see what the buzz was about. The Lake Oconee Shooting Club near Eatonton had a tournament scheduled for…
According to the turkey hunters GON talked to, the opening weekend gobbling ran the scale from dead slow to gobblin’ their heads off. Some hunters reported birds coming straight in off the roost, gobbling all the way in. Others didn’t hear a peep. Generally, most gobbling occurred early, and once the birds hit the ground,…
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