There is a juncture in every journey when your heart must find soon again something long, dear, and gently known.
There is a waver in the wildest of wanderlust when the soul runs dry and must come again to the thing, the place, or the somebody that can make it replete.
There is to every life an awakening that the miles ahead are greatly less than the ones behind, that beyond all things lies an end--that you must come again as closely as you can to where you begin.
Turning for "home" . . .
It is not always back to where you departed. It is not always from the place you have been. It is as much of the mind as of the matter--as much a coming, oftentimes, as a going.
Sometimes the voyage is easy; sometimes the passage is steep.
When we follow the ache of our souls, we discover that our emotions have been buried in many places, and that easily the most painful of these are those to which we can never return at all.
Here, in a new and eclectic compilation of masterful stories and essays, one of the most revered sporting authors of our time contemplates the homecomings of the sportsman's heart. He unearths a treasury of broadly divergent encounters, from the delightfully absurd hilarity of "Love Gloves," to the piercingly intense melancholy of "A Prayer from Dark Timber." Each is told with an insight and dexterity that rarely gains expression, and each is drawn from the timeless and beloved pathways of the sporting life that wander between a laugh and a tear.

Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for hunters and firearms enthusiasts. We publish books about shotguns, rifles, handguns, target shooting, gun collecting, self-defense, archery, ammunition, knives, gunsmithing, gun repair, and wilderness survival. We publish books on deer hunting, big game hunting, small game hunting, wing shooting, turkey hunting, deer stands, duck blinds, bowhunting, wing shooting, hunting dogs, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
About the Author: Mike Gaddis is senior editor for Sporting Classics magazine. His work has appeared in Audubon, Wildfowl, The Pointing Dog Journal, and Wildlife in North Carolina. He is also the author of several books on the sporting life, including his award-winning novel, Jenny Willow. He and his wife, Loretta, reside in Creedmoor, North Carolina, with the seventh generation of his beloved setters.