Many books for hunting enthusiasts

Thanks to my par­ents being avid read­ers and believ­ing that a good edu­ca­tion starts with a love for reading,

I was always encour­aged to enjoy a good book while I was grow­ing up and I am try­ing to instill that les­son in my chil­dren as well. In today’s tech­nol­ogy world, a lot of my read­ing is now done on some type of com­puter but it still doesn’t com­pare to the enjoy­ment of relax­ing with a good book espe­cially on a cold winter’s night.

With the love I have of hunt­ing and fish­ing, I espe­cially enjoy out­doorsy type books and I just fin­ished a good one. Chip Gross, an avid out­door writer in the area and retired ODNR game war­den, has just had his lat­est book pub­lished, Poach­ers Were My Prey, the story of R. T. Stewart’s career as an under­cover wildlife law enforce­ment offi­cer with the ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife.

For nearly two decades, Stew­art infil­trated poach­ing rings through­out Ohio, the Mid­west, and beyond. Poach­ers Were My Prey chron­i­cles his many excit­ing under­cover adven­tures, detail­ing the tech­niques he used in putting poach­ers behind bars. It also reveals, for the first time, the secrets employed by under­cover wildlife offi­cers in catch­ing the bad guys.

The book is extremely well writ­ten and makes for a great week­end read. The true sto­ries are eye awak­ing about what goes on daily in the wildlife world. Poach­ing, the ille­gal tak­ing of wild game, goes on every day in the United States and through­out the world. Mil­lions of dol­lars change hands annu­ally from the ille­gal sale or trade of antlers, hides, horns, meat, feath­ers, fur, teeth, claws, gall blad­ders, and other wild-animal parts.

As a result, wildlife pop­u­la­tions suf­fer includ­ing endan­gered and threat­ened species and legit­i­mate, law-abiding sport hunters get a bad rep­u­ta­tion. R. T. Stew­art ded­i­cated his pro­fes­sional career to stop­ping such slaugh­ter by actu­ally liv­ing with poach­ers for months or even years.

While on the topic of out­door books, I thought I would list a few oth­ers that I would highly rec­om­mend for a week­end in front of the fire place:

If you love hunt­ing retriev­ers as much as I do, you will enjoy Pan­ther: And Other Sto­ries of Great Hunt­ing Retriev­ers. The story of Pan­ther, the small Labrador retriever with the big heart, leads off this excit­ing col­lec­tion of tales devoted exclu­sively to hunt­ing retrievers.

A diminu­tive pheas­ant hunt­ing dog from the Dako­tas, Pan­ther rose from obscu­rity dur­ing the late 1940s and early 1950s to become the most con­sis­tent win­ner in field-trial his­tory. His 24 wins and 172 cham­pi­onship points rank him as the best field-trialer of his time. Only one thing eluded him: A national championship.

Seven times, Panther’s wins qual­i­fied him to run in the nation­als, where he was known as the dog to beat. And seven times he fell just short of the national title-twice on tech­ni­cal­i­ties that seemed designed to keep the “out­law dog from the Wild West” from attain­ing his right­ful prize.

Though Pan­ther never placed first in the nation­als, he did even­tu­ally earn first place in his iras­ci­ble owner’s heart. And so it is with the other retriev­ers in this anthol­ogy. Each is first in his master’s heart, and each inspires a unique story about the spe­cial bonds that form between man and dog when engaged in the com­mon pur­suit of hunt­ing water­fowl and upland game birds.

For a bit on the lighter side for those who enjoy duck hunt­ing, try Don’t Shoot the Decoys and The Duck Gods Must Be Crazy both by Doug Larsen. Water­fowlers may be obses­sive about their sport, but at least they don’t take them­selves too seriously.

That’s because duck and goose hunt­ing is so often a hum­bling expe­ri­ence and Doug Larsen does a great job of shar­ing that in a very humor­ous way. The col­lec­tion of short sto­ries in both books will have you laugh­ing out loud.

Of course, any of the writ­ings by famed Field & Stream and Out­door Life writer Patrick McManus will have you smil­ing. He has writ­ten quite a few books over the years that are great for some easy light hearted reading.

If you are a fish­er­man, you need to read A River Runs Through It by Nor­man Maclean. Yes, this is the novel that the Robert Red­ford directed film is based on. This is a very enjoy­able read about a fam­ily and their love for fly fish­ing. It has a great story line and it is a very well writ­ten book.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t men­tion a clas­sic that every young per­son should read, The Old Man and the Boy by Robert Ruark. The book is about a rela­tion­ship between a man and his grand­son as they fish and hunt the lakes and woods of North Car­olina. All the while the Old Man acts as teacher and guide, pass­ing on his wis­dom and life expe­ri­ences to the boy. No mat­ter your age, it is clas­sic that should be on your bookshelf.

I absolutely love the hunt­ing sto­ries in the Chesa­peake by James Mich­ener. The sto­ries about the mar­ket gun­ning days of ducks and geese on the Chesa­peake Bay are fas­ci­nat­ing. Michener’s books are very long but they are very enjoy­able and are based on a lot of his­tor­i­cal facts in his novels.

The books listed above are just a few of my out­door favorites. There are many oth­ers and of course the list of how to hunt­ing and fish­ing books that are must reads is much longer and I will cover some other time. If you are look­ing for a way to deal with cabin fever this win­ter or are look­ing for a last minute Christ­mas gift for that out­door enthu­si­ast, you might con­sider a book.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing.

Posted by Rob Hamilton on Dec 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.