Who are your favorite hunting authors?

H

HunterTRW

New member
As the snow continues to deepen here I am, to paraphrase the late Sparse Grey Hackle, forced to take a hunting book and bid defiance to the weather in the very best kind of hunting for such a day--reading about it. One author I never tire of is Robert Ruark: his The Old Man and the Boy and The Old Man's Boy Grows Older both wear well, and he always has something to teach (or reteach) me. I'll spend the rest of January and some of February with him in his native North Carolina, then accompany him to Africa in his Horn of the Hunter. That should get me to Spring and turkey season (if I read slowly).

Who, and what, are you reading as the seasons close in your neck of the woods?

Good luck, and good reading!
 
G

grey_pilgrim

New member
I always enjoy Jack o'connor.

Generally,l there's always some good stuff in Grays Sporting Journal (although definately not all of it).
 
H

HunterTRW

New member
Agreed. His The Shotgun Book and his Complete Book of Shooting (Rifles, Shotguns, Handguns) are both a part of my library. These are excellent references by a writer with solid hunting credentials.

As the late Gene Hill said of O'Connor in his piece titled "The Outdoor Writers" from his book Passing A Good Time, "I was quickly impressed with the clean and direct style of Jack O'Connor, and later on when I got to know Jack personally, we spent a lot of time on the subject of what good writing was. Jack had been a professor of English and held some strong opinions that I agree with. As the dean of gun writers then, Jack made a point of never writing down to his audience and he had that special ability to leave his reader with the feeling that he had been along with Jack on some adventure and had enjoyed himself immensely."

Are there any "gun writers" of O'Connor's caliber (sorry, couldn't resist the pun) writing today?

Good luck, and good reading!
 
B

BillCA

New member
While I don't consider him a "great" writer, I always enjoyed the stories from the typewriter (remember those?) of Peter Hathaway Capstick. I got hooked on his stories in the American Hunter and picked up Death in the long grass and Death in the silent places and read them several times.

He wrote of the notable names in African & Indian big game hunting around the turn of the century. Names like Karamojo Bell, Stigand, Jim Corbett, and Col. Henry Patterson stand out as real men whose lives were not based on a notion of "a right to live in safety". Far from it. Capstick's style brought the reader to understand that in Africa and India it took skill, daring and not a little luck to prevail against mother nature. These men not only lived, but they really lived, sometimes on the ragged edge of disaster for many years.

For me, Jim Corbett remains the most interesting character. Not only a hunter, but one of the earliest conservationists, he argued with the Maharaja [sp?] of India to reduce tiger hunts to preserve the tiger for future generations. It was said that Corbett could take one look at a tiger's pug marks and deduce its size, weight, age, sex and bank balance. He was also the man most called upon to hunt down man-eaters, tigers and lepoards, with a proven record of success. Today, in India, Jim Corbett National Park is a tiger sanctuary, giving testimony to his foresight and the respect of the Indian population.
 
G

grey_pilgrim

New member
Confession time :D I must admit that I glanced at my bookshelf, and relized that i also read lots of patrick mcmanus.

As i said hunter trw, take a look through a copy of Gray's sporting journal, and you'll usually find some good stuff.
 
3

38splfan

New member
Favorite is....

The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, by Col. John Patterson.
the account of his confrontation with two African Lions impeding constuction of a railroad bridge, as well as some of his other hunting escapades.
This book was the basis of the movie "The Ghost and The Darkness" with Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas.
 
H

HunterTRW

New member
I like McManus's work, too, especially the stories in which his mountain-man character, Rancid Crabtree (one of my literary heros), appears. My absolute favorite is titled The Grasshopper Trap from the book by the same name. Pat is a funny, funny fellow, and reading this one I laughed until I hurt.
 
M

Mannlicher

New member
I have read a lot of hunting books, but for me, the finest writers on the genre were Larry Kohler, and Peter Hathaway Capstick.
 
H

HunterTRW

New member
Gordon MacQuarrie is another of my favorites. His duck-hunting stories are both educational and entertaining. Originally published as newspaper and magazine articles, they were compiled and edited by Zack Taylor, and published by Willow Creek Press as Stories of the Old Duck Hunters, More Stories of the Old Duck Hunters, and Last Stories of the Old Duck Hunters.

In the story titled, "Ducks? You Bat You!" he recounts his introduction (at the hands of his father-in-law, the President of the Old Duck Hunters Association, Inc.) (the "Inc." stood for "Incorrigible") to duck hunting. At the end of that day he said,

"The President addressed me: 'How'd you like it?'

"In those days I was very young. It took me a long time to say what I felt. I have never succeeded yet. I simply babbled.

"We drove out of the cornfield, stopped to yell good-by to Norm, who came out to his back door to wave, and then headed for the main highway. I drove. Fred reposed in the back, comfortable as the clucking ducks against whose crate he leaned. At my side sat the President. The light from the cowl partly illuminated his strong, sharp features.

"Finally I said: 'Wish you had let me in on this earlier in the season. There won't be another duck week-end after today.'

"The President flicked cigar ashes and replied: 'I thought of that, but deciced to break it to you gently. Too much of a good thing is bad for a growing boy."

MacQuarrie, Mr. President, and the other few members of the ODHA, Inc. are good companions with which to share those cold days when the guns lie locked in the safe.
 
L

Lone Star

New member
I agree re O'Connor, and also greatly respect Jim Corbett, a modest, very courageous man. I've always wondered why he wasn't knighted for his service in killing notorious man-eaters in British India.

John Alexander Hunter had some amazing adventures, too. Look for his, "Hunter" and "Hunter's Tracks".

I knew Capstick slightly and he was just as morbidly funny in person as in his books.

Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews wrote well of his Asian hunting trips for the American Museum of Natural History. Now that museum people and scientists in general are liberal wimps, his name has been reviled, but the guy had guts and a good writing style.

In a literary sense, Andrews and O'Connor were best, although Capstick was probably the wittiest. Corbett was perhaps the most charming and modest, with absolutely vast reserves of courage, patriotism, and kindness toward the Indian people. He richly deserved that Corbett National Park was named for him. And that was done AFTER the British left India, and he had moved to Kenya, where he died in 1955.

Lone Star
 
H

hivel37

New member
Capnrik, yes, I remember Russel Annabel. If I do so correctly, he wrote stories about hunting in the West for Outdoor Life.

Robert Ruark's stories are always good for a cold, rainy day, with plenty of oak to throw on the fire.
 
A

AKhunter

New member
Book

I read Richard K. Nelson's "Heart and Blood." It's about deer, not just deer hunting. Fascinating stuff, he's a local to me author and an Anthropologist by training.

AK
 
B

Bassman-Dan

New member
A Good Read

Most of my favorites have already been named but I have to add a few.
The late Ed Zern always left me laughing with his "Exit Laughing" on the last page of Field & Stream.
Field & Stream also published another of my favorites, Corey Ford, with the monthly adventures of the "Lower Forty Club". His tales of "The Road to Tinkhamtown" and "Letter to a Grandson" are truly unforgettable. I don't think a hunter can read those stories without getting a lump in his throat.
I would also recommend any of the many books written by J. Frank Dobie, poet Laureate of Texas: Rattlesnakes, The Coyote, The Ben Lilly Legend, Apache Gold & Yaqui Silver, and more. Mr Dobie passed away in 1964 after passing along hundreds of tales, stories, and outright lies from the 19th & early 20th centuries. His books provide a fascinating insight into the lives of the people who settled this country such as the early hunters, cowboys, ranchers, and sodbusters.
Always time well spent.
 
H

HunterTRW

New member
We're all on the road to Tinkhamtown

Corey Ford's immortal story of a hunter's decline and eventual death (which, incidently, presaged his own) should be required reading by anyone who aspires to the title "hunter." Consider the story's last four paragraphs:

"And then he heard it, echoing through the woods like peepers in the spring, the thin silvery tinkle of a sleigh bell. He started running toward it, following the sound down the hill. His legs were strong again, and he hurdled the blowdowns, he leapt over fallen logs, he put one fingertip on a pile of slash and sailed over it like a grouse skimming. He was getting nearer and the sound filled his ears, louder than a thousand church bells ringing, louder than all the choirs in the sky, as loud as the pounding of his heardt. The fear was gone; he was not lost. He had the bell to guide him now.

"He came to the stream, and paused for a moment at the bridge. He wanted to tell them he was happy, if only they knew how happy he was, but when he opened his eyes he could not see them anymore. Everything else was bright, but the room was dark.

"The bell had stopped, and he looked across the stream. The other side was bathed in sunshine, and he could see the road mounting steeply, and the clearing in the woods, and the apple tree in a corner of the stone wall. Shad was standing motionless beneath it, the white fan of his tail lifted, his neck craned forward and one foreleg cocked. The whites of his eyes showed as he looked back, waiting for him.

"'Steady,' he called, 'steady, boy.' He started across the bridge. 'I'm coming.'"

Excerpted from The Road to Tinkhamtown by Corey Ford. God bless him!
 
C

Clemson

New member
I got in on this thread late -- my apologies -- but I have to put in a plug for Havilah Babcock as an author whose works entertained me for countless hours. My Health is Better in November is a classic collection of stories.

Clemson
 
H

HunterTRW

New member
I'll second that motion, and recommend The Best of Babcock edited by Hugh Grey and published in 1974. This volume contains my all-time favorite Babcock story, "Labor Trouble on the Punkin Vine," a delightful tale about a locomotive engineer who was also a passionate bird-hunter. It begins as follows:

"I always had a sneaking suspicion that the custom of hank-holding was devised to give my grandfather somebody to talk to. My captivity gave him a guaranteed audience.

"'Did I ever tell you the one about Cap'n Billy Mahood of the old Punkin Vine?' he once began with a tentative lift of his shaggy eyebrows. 'Cap'n Billy and his bird dog, and them hot-boxes we had one too many of?'"

I'll leave it to you to find the book and to finish the story, and wish that you enjoy it as much as I do.

Good luck, and good shooting!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top