Edited by Lamarr Underwood
Softcover 334 pages
Available from Rowman & Littlefield
1-800-482-6920
$16 + $5 Shipping
This is a compilation of great and historic American hunting stories written by some of the greatest outdoor writers of the past; men like Col. Townsend Whelan, Theodore Roosevelt, Nash Buckingham, and Zane Grey.
The first chapter is Roosevelt’s excellent work HUNTING THE GRISLY. Roosevelt uses the original spelling of grisly as in a grisly murder to his credit. In addition to his own experiences in hunting them he also gives a long list of other people’s experiences with the result being a naturalist’s balanced view of the subject. He points out that the grisly was much more aggressive when all he had to face was the bows and arrows of the Indians but experience with the white man’s firearms had given most of them an attitude adjustment resulting in the majority preferring to avoid confrontations with man.
Roosevelt recounts every behavior from the rare maneater to the equally rare coward along with every type in between resulting in a highly accurate overall view of the great beasts.
The chapter “In Buffalo Days,” written in 1893’ gives a detailed look at the American buffalo, something that is almost entirely lacking in modern accounts of this great beast resulting in most people having only the most superficial knowledge imaginable.
Col. Whelan relates the story of a hunt he had in British Columbia, written when he was just a lieutenant. In 1901, he and Bill Andrews made a six-month-long hunting and exploring trip in areas the map marked “Unexplored,” an adventure folks today can only dream of. They traveled over 1,500 miles without ever seeing a sign of another human. Previously two men had tried to cross that land on their way to the gold rush. They were never seen again.
There is a 1916 account of the Alaskan grizzly. In those days the grizzly had not yet learned to fear man and his firearms, and he was much more inclined to attack. There is an account of a giant grizzly that charged and took 12 shots with the 12th being a brain shot that finally brought him down.
This is matched by a turn of the century black bear hunt in the Smokey Mountains where rugged Southern mountaineers and their bear dogs run down the bears.
There are stories of hunting moose, waterfowl, mountain goat, turkey, elk, quail, deer, and other game set in turn of the century America where the frontier was still very much with us. There is even an 1847 story of hunting on the Oregon Trail showing just how it was for those on that famous trek.
If ever there was a book about hunting “In the good old days” this is it and it also offers a good insight into those times and how folks lived and hunted then. There is something for every hunter in these pages and this book will serve to whet the appetite for the thrill of the hunt just before hunting season.—Jim Dickson
