Garden & Gun October/November 2021

EDITOR’S LETTER Turtle Stewards LOOKING AFTER CRITICAL NESTING HABITAT FOR LOGGERHEAD SEA TURTLES DAVID DIBENEDETTO Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief Bottom right: Andrew Hyslop Early one morning last June, during the height of loggerhead turtle nesting season, I hopped aboard a boat in McClellan-ville, South Carolina, with Captain Chris Crolley. We were destined for Cape Island, one of four undeveloped barrier islands in the 66,000-acre Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a twenty-minute run through a labyrinth of tidal creeks that Crolley knows well, but it’s not always easy. Locals like to joke that even God has trouble getting there at dead low tide. Our plan was to rendezvous with the turtle team, led by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologist Jerry Tupacz, as they made their way…

Who’s That Doggie on the Cover? Plus: Get your pooch in the pages of G&G Meet Calvin, the cover model for our Best of the Sporting South issue. G&Gphotographer Andrew Hyslop owns the English cocker (and took the shot). Rumor is Calvin is proving to be as sharp in the field as he is in front of the lens. If your dog likes to mug for the camera, our annual Good Dog Photo Contest is in full swing, and we’re looking for pooches of all types: fun loving, serious, hardworking, hardly working, newly born, nimbly aging, purebred, mixed breed—you name it. One overall winner, picked by G&Geditors, will appear in our next issue, and your votes will determine the readers’ choice winners. Enter and vote now at gardenandgun.com/gooddog .…

CONTRIBUTORS Russell Worth Parker WRITER “I’m probably best at fishing, but I always say if turkeys gobbled all year, I’d be useless” —David Joy, who wrote about flounder gigging in Savannah (p. 116) After retiring from the Marine Corps this past summer, Russell Worth Parker took his ten-year-old daughter, Annabelle, on an RV journey from their home in Wilmington, North Carolina, across the country, stopping at such sites as Yellowstone and Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. “I was inspired by someone who retired a few years before me,” Parker says. “He said that he’d seen more overseas than he had in the United States. I agreed and wanted to change that.” For this issue, Parker, who has also written for Shooting Sportsman and Outdoor Life, profiled fellow outdoorsman Jonathan…

LETTERS “For anyone like me who likes a tub bath, here’s a tip: A can of Budweiser floats” RAISE A GLASS For me, 2020 involved making a pitcher of something alcoholic, cooking, eating, and repeating it all again. By January of this year, I suspected I was partaking in alcoholic libations a little too much, so I quit. (Still cooking and eating, though.) This week, my Garden & Gun drinks issue (August/September 2021) arrived. I drove eighteen miles east to get a huge fresh watermelon from a farmer I know, then I drove thirty-five miles in the other direction into Louisville to the “fancy” liquor store to buy cachaça (Drinks) and Plantation Stiggins’ Fancy Pineapple Rum (“In Good Spirits”). I happily dove headfirst off the wagon. Pat Swetnam Simpsonville, Kentucky…

Social Chatter GARDENANDGUN.COM AND BEYOND WE ASKED... What is the best Southern sauce? In our Talk of the South newsletter, readers told us which condiments they can’t live without. I’ve got to have pepper sauce for my turnip greens. Kathy W. Vinegar-based barbecue sauce. I cannot imagine pulled pork without it, nor life without pulled pork. Roy H. Tabasco. And you can mix it with Duke’s for a tart and spicy mayo. Ann W. Duke’s mayonnaise is the true taste of the South. Frank P. Homemade Jezebel sauce with cream cheese on a buttery cracker. Bob K. Big Bob Gibson’s white barbecue sauce. Dan H. Any sort of hot sauce. Tabasco is fine, but hotter is better. Kathleen M. White sauce and Death Relish from Home Team BBQ go…

INTERVIEW Right on Cue CNN’S KAITLAN COLLINS NEVER MISSES A BEAT (OR AN ALABAMA GAME) By Jenny Everett Production/photo editor: Natalie Gialluca When CNN promoted Kaitlan Collins to chief White House correspondent earlier this year, she seemingly earned a second title: chief Crimson Tide correspondent. In May, for instance, the twenty-nine-year-old Alabama native appeared on the network’s morning show. But instead of asking questions about the Biden administration, an anchor asked her about the New England Patriots’ draft picks from the University of Alabama, her alma mater. After some serious in-depth analysis of the players and the relationship between Patriots coach Bill Belichick and Alabama coach Nick Saban, Collins ended the segment with: “Roll Patriots.” ¶ That interaction offers a perfect distillation of her life in D.C. and politics. While…