Sporting Classics

Sporting Classics is a genuine 5 star publication, but it gets 4 stars on this blog meaning you don't need to subscribe to it unless you really want to (and maybe you should). The reasoning is that Sporting Classics is not squarely aimed at the upland enthusiast, although it does not ignore him or her.

This beautiful magazine features fine writing on all topics afield. It is oriented to gundogs on a seasonal basis, as the 2009 autumn cover shows.

A feathered bird, a feathered dog, and a feathered fern.

At other times, it caters to hunting big game in far-off places, as the January 2011 cover in this entry's headmast shows. One would not be inclined to ask a Welsh Springer Spaniel to flush those Cape Buffalo, even if they were eager to do it.

The recent Hemingway edition (30th anniversary collector's issue),has a beautiful photo essay of a drive shoot in Scotland. The landscape, dogs, birds, and even those breeks are what every rough hunter dreams of, at least on occasion.

The magazine is printed on heavy, bright, glossy stock that makes these pictures almost frameable right from the magazine and makes it a bit of a heft to include on an airplane trip and (maybe unfortunately) difficult to toss away once you've read it.

Sporting Classics often dips into the treasure trove of years past. That Hemingway edition also has a readable and entertaining article by the great upland writer, Nash Buckingham ("Playhouse"). The article is richly illustrated with reproductions of upland scenes in oil.

In articles and in advertisements, Sporting Classics features quite a bit of beautiful game and natural art, including this forlorn bronze quail.

A bronze quail chortles from a fencepost.

An enjoyable feature is called "Passages: Thoughtful words that will live with us forever." It is an outdoor version of "Thoughts and quotes on the business life" that you may enjoy reading in Forbes magazine. Here is a remembrance on the autumn days spent afield with your dog:

The perfection of life with a gun dog, like the perfection of an autumn, is disturbing because you know, even as it begins, that it must end. Time bestows the gift and steals it in the process. George Bird Evans, An Affair with Grouse, 1982.