Guy de la Valdene

Guy de la Valdène, photographer/filmmaker, writer, conservationist, international sportsman, and gourmand, was born in New York City but raised in France. He is co-director, with Christian Odasso, of the pioneering 1974 cult film “Tarpon” (released as a remastered DVD in 2008), featuring Jim Harrison, Thomas McGuane, Richard Brautigan, and music by Jimmy Buffett. He is author of three highly regarded nonfiction works on hunting, two of which—Making Game: An Essay on Woodcock (1985, 1990) and For a Handful of Feathers (1997)—are considered classics in the field, and the other being The Fragrance of Grass (2010), as well as a novel, Red Stag (2003), and a fishing memoir, On the Water (2015). De la Valdène, a contributing editor for Field & Stream, lives in northern Florida and is working on a book about the natural life of the lake that anchors his Dogwood Plantation.

Author Articles

"To Cast a Fly"

Half a millennium ago someone had the idea to attach a measure of line to the end of a long cane pole and use its reach to entice trout and salmon with crickets, flies, and grasshoppers. Rudimentary wooden reels with extra line encouraged the ensuing generation of anglers to cast the fly beyond the tip of the rod. Today the intention is the same, but the...

"Remembering Woody"

Woody Sexton and I sat next to each other in the stern of his wooden, sixteen-foot Nova Scotia skiff, waiting for the cloud that shaded the morning sun to pass. A soft grey mantle rested on the flat and there seemed little point in poling, so we waited—engine idling, the bow troubling the surface of the water—for the sun to escape and expose the flats...