Outdoor books

Southern

Well-Known Member
Often in various thread topics, someone will mention a favorite book. Last June, there was a good list of books about both world wars, specifically fliers. I bought a few, and have read about half of that stack.

I wanted to try to learn of a few more myself, and bring together some great reads others have mentioned here and there. To prime the pump, some here at my elbow:

A Hunter's Life in South Africa - Gordon Cumming
The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter - W.D.M. Bell
African Game Trails - Theodore Roosevelt
Memories of an African Hunter - Dennis D. Lyell
Out of Africa - Isak Dinesen
West With the Night - Beryl Markham
Eyelids of Morning - Peter Beard
One Rifle, One Land - JY Jones
The Man Whom Women Loved: the Life of Bror Blixen
The Maneaters of Tsavo - J.H. Patterson
Maneaters of Kumaon - Jim Corbett
Hunter - by John Hunter
Sheep and Sheep Hunters - Jack O'Connor
European Hunter - Lloyd Newberry

Da Shootinest Gentleman - Nash Buckingham
My Health is Better in November - Havilah Babcock
Adventures with North American Big Game - Chuck Adams
Hunting the Hard Way - Howard Hill
 
Hiya

Good list - may I also suggest:

Elephant Hunters - Tony Sanchez-Arino
African Rifles & Cartidges - Taylor
Temple Tiger - Jim Corbett
My India - Jim Corbett
Round the Campfire - Tony Henley
Campfires in the Canadian Rockies - W T Hornaday
The End of the Game - Peter Beard
One Mans Wilderness - Warren Page
The Deer Hunters - Philip Holden

....amongst others....!

Cheers
L
 
$_57.JPG
 
Just to add a few to the list.

The Mighty Nimrod- Steven Taylor- A nicely written book about F.C. Selous.
Hunting The Dangerous Game of Africa- John Kingsley-Heath- a modern African Classic.
Adventures of an Elephant Hunter- James Sutherland- One of the best i have read.
White Hunters - Brian Herne

F
 
Those last three books on Mr. Homes' list are three I was coming back to add.
When I get home, I will go to my other bookshelf and get some more.

Wild Animals I Have Known - Seton
A Handbook for Boys - Seton 1910

These are not hunting books, but outdoor books, for sure. The original 1910 Boy Scout Handbook, which Seton wrote after he and Lord Baden Powell met and discussed how to organize Scouting, is so much better than many later books on camping. What my Scouts loved was all about making your own gear, trapping game, catching fish as Indians did, etc.

After Big Game in Central Africa - Edouard Foa
A Hunter's Wanderings in Africa - Selous
A Game Ranger's Notebook - A. B. Percival
African Hunter - Mellon
 
Hunting Camps in Wood and Wilderness Hesketh Pritchard
Mine Eyes to the Hills Patrick Chalmers
Hunting Winds Frank Wallace
Last of the Ivory Hunters John Taylor
Jock of the Bushveld Sir Percy Fitzpatrick

and an absolute cracker of what I guess is a very early "bushcraft" book - Camping and Woodcraft (a handbook for campers and travellers in the wilderness) Horace Kephart 1930 (published New York) This has whole chapters on splitting logs techniques and type of wood for fires, different types of fires for cooking, camp cookery, dressing game, building cabins etc etc

Sh1kar
 
Klench, I have to find those .22 books.
I bought one of my nicest .22s from an elderly gentleman who had about twenty fine rimfires, and more centerfires, from .22 Hornet, K-Hornet, .219 Donaldson Wasp, .218 Bee, .22 Savage HP, to the Swift, most of them custom, in every sort of action.

[h=1]To the Dreams of Youth: Winchester : .22 Caliber Single Shot Rifle[/h]to-dreams-of-youth-win-22.jpg

Horace Kephart - interesting man, and a full life. Scholar, outdoorsman. Set up fine libraries in America and Europe. Met the last of the Old West explorers, like Frederick Remington, and camped and hunted with them.

Our Southern Highlanders - by Horace Kephart, is about the lands of western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, settled by the Scots and Irish, who still dominated the culture there, and what he learned of simple living and woodcraft.
 
Don't you love that old cover art?

Have you ever been able to hunt woodchucks or prairie dogs in the USA?

Woodchucks seem to know how to get in the middle of a wheat field and eat it out, just out of sight and range. If you are shooting a .22 WMR, they will move to .22 Hornet range. If you bring a Hornet, they move to .222 range. I have not hunted any in a decade, but a friend has some burrowing around her horse paddocks, which is a hazard, so I may get after them in a few weeks, with my .22 WMR, from woods nearby.

The Bear Hunter's Century. - Paul Schullery
This is a set of stories by and about great bear hunters in North America in the 19th century. They range from Teddy Roosevelt to Wade Hampton, who hunted them with hounds and horseback in the woods, and dismounted to kill them ( well over a hundred ), with a hunter's sword.
 
Introducing boys and girls to hunting and fishing.

Game and Huntng - Kurt Bluchel

This is a book I recently stumbled upon in a used book store. It is a huge book, about 14x12 and 2 inches thick, 10 pounds, full of color photos, of game and hunting all over the world, in every culture, every age. It is really the twenty year work of the author and several photographers. Even a non-hunters love to look at it and read parts. It is filled with recipes and entire meals for game.

I think a book like this is a great introduction for children, who are naturally fascinated with animals and especially new ones.

There are some really nice books like this on salmon fishing, fly fishing and ocean fishing.
 
Can't believe no one has listed Horn of the Hunter by the blessed Bob Ruark.

Fishing and Thinking by AA Luce.

The Magic of Big Game by Terry Wieland is an excellent collection of essays.
 
Robert Ruark - absolutely.

Gun Dog - by John Wolters These are so simple that a boy can train an upland bird dog. Masterful.
Water Dog

The Longest Silence: a Life in Fishing Thomas McGuane
Ninety Two in the Shade
 
Since some of you here enjoy recurves and longbows, here are some books I have enjoyed by those who revived the sport:

Ishi, Between Two Worlds - the story of the last wild Indian found in California, who is taken in by Drs Pope and Young. Ishi teaches them to make bows, arrows, and spears, and how to hunt. They take it all the way to reverse engineering the English longbow, and create an interest in bowhunting.

Hunting the Hard Way - Howard Hill, whose shooting in newsreels and in films like "Robin Hood" creates even more interest, as he takes deer, bear, big cats, elephants, etc.

Become One With the Arrow - Byron Ferguson books and video on instinctive shooting, and at small and moving targets.
 
Robert Ruark - absolutely.

Gun Dog - by John Wolters These are so simple that a boy can train an upland bird dog. Masterful.

You also mentioned this in another thread, I think the one on training cockers? I've ordered a copy and it's on its way to me from across the pond. I am all silly excited waiting for it to turn up :D

I have, literally, thousands of old books at home - when we moved house a dozen years ago there were 35 banana boxes full of them, and I'd think there's at least double that now :oops:.

We have a long holiday weekend coming up, so I'll try to note down some old favourites, but I have to say that Chris Yates "Nightwalk: A Journey to the Heart of Nature", which was only published three years ago, ranks way up there. He has a beautiful turn of phrase that captures the feeling of being outside.
 
You also mentioned this in another thread, I think the one on training cockers? I've ordered a copy and it's on its way to me from across the pond. I am all silly excited waiting for it to turn up :D

I have, literally, thousands of old books at home - when we moved house a dozen years ago there were 35 banana boxes full of them, and I'd think there's at least double that now :oops:.

We have a long holiday weekend coming up, so I'll try to note down some old favourites, but I have to say that Chris Yates "Nightwalk: A Journey to the Heart of Nature", which was only published three years ago, ranks way up there. He has a beautiful turn of phrase that captures the feeling of being outside.

+1

Its strange but whenever I'm laid up with man flu or some such the first book I pickup is "Casting At The Sun" and in particular the early chapters when recounting his childhood fishing trips that echo so perfectly many of mine. Guess its something to do with age and coming to terms with one’s mortality that makes visiting those never to be recreated years so comforting?

K
:old:
 
willie G,

"Gun Dog" and "Water Dog" are both old school. Yesterday, I plundered a huge used bookstore near a work site, and found copies of each, still in the old dust jacket, so bought both to save, in case my son ever gets the urge to train a dog and realizes he knows nothing about it.

The other book I linked on that spaniel thread, I have not read. But a few years ago, I was shooting in a sporting clays match adjacent to where the world championships were being held for retrievers, and that author's dog won, and has won two more titles since.
 
Adrift on the open veld - Deneys Reitz

One Man's Wilderness - Readings from the journals of R.L. Proenneke

The elephant whisperer - Lawrence Anthony

Tracks - Robyn Davidson

Commando Courageous - R.W. Schikkerling
 
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