by Chad Love

For those of us who grew up in the B.D. epoch (before digital), reading was the primary way to stoke our young imaginations. There were few books that fired my pre-adult synapses more thoroughly than Jean Craighead George's "My Side of the Mountain."

This classic adventure/survival/nature tale about a boy named Sam, a falcon and their woodland adventures spurred many a childhood fantasy of mine. There were two people I wanted to be in 1979: Luke Skywalker and Sam Gribley. I knew, even at that tender age, that I'd never be able to make it into the cockpit of an X-wing, but Sam's world was wondrously real, tangible and right outside my back door. Reading "My Side of the Mountain" was a huge factor in sparking my lifelong interest in hunting, fishing and the natural world.
 
So it was sad to read (via Stephen Bodio's always awesome Querencia blog) of George's passing.
 
From Bodio's blog:
Old friends and heroes are dying faster than I can write about them. Jean Craighead George, author of one of my favorite childhood books*, My Side of the Mountain, and sister to the even better- known conservationists and falconers , the twin brothers Frank and John, died last week at 92. NYT here, Wiki here, her own home site here.

by David Draper

I've been traveling through Turkey for the past couple of weeks, both in Istanbul and along the Mediterranean coast. Most of my time was spent doing lots of “research” a.k.a. eating, and if there's one thing I took away from all this hard work it's that Turkey is a street-food country. Everywhere I traveled, there was someone on a street corner selling something to eat, whether it be roasted corn or chestnuts, simit (sort of like a sesame-encrusted bagel), rice-stuffed mussels, fresh melon, or, like most places in Europe, some type of grilled or roasted meat on a skewer.

by Phil Bourjaily

Here’s me, on the set of the Gun Nuts TV show, holding my pick for the ideal youth turkey gun: a 20 gauge 870 Express Jr. with a red dot sight.

It is short, light, doesn’t kick much with the right loads, and it’s easy to hit with. My younger son shot his one and only turkey with it, and I have since taken it from him and killed turkeys with it, too. While you don’t have to put a $500 Zeiss Z-point on a kid’s gun, I think some form of red dot sight (and a lot of target practice before the season) is the best way to be sure a kid doesn’t miss.

by Bob Marshall

Sportsmen's groups got some new ammunition in their fight against the energy industry's push to open more public fish and wildlife habitat to development: A new Department of Interior report shows that 70 percent of public areas under lease by energy companies currently are "inactive" - meaning they are neither producing energy or part of an approved or pending development plans.

This helps put the lie to claims by energy's friends in Congress that public lands "locked up" for fish and wildlife are creating a supply problem causing high gas prices.