Books

scrumbag

Well-Known Member
Hello folks,

Need to get some reading material in.

What would people suggest as good titles from Hemmingway, Ruark et al?

Or any other good reads for that matter.

ATB,

Scrummy
 
I'll start the ball rolling; try Hunter by J.A Hunter, Buckley, Hunting Big Game in Central Africa, Adventures of an Elephant Hunter, James Sutherland (truly a classic and one of the best i've read); The Mighty Nimrod by Stephen Taylor - a biography of F.C. Selous and very well written.

F
 
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Have you read Hemingway's Green Hills of Africa or Ruark's Horn of the Hunter? Those are the usual ones quoted by these authors, and they're very good, especially the latter.
Duff Hart-Davis Among the Deer is a really good book.
Ronnie Rose "Working with Nature" is very interesting and makes me concerned for the future of wildlife management in Scotland. Despite being written a few years ago it is more and more relevant.

Anything by Jim Corbett is worth a read. Getting the omnibus edition of this books is worthwhile.
 
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The Old Man and the Sea
I don't read story books but I remember listening to someone reading this on the wireless.
 
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Conure in this thread (Well look who got old and fat - Page 3) recommended "Leopards in the Night" by Guy Muldoon.

I bought a copy with the intention of reading it when I next fly to South Africa, but I'll have to revisit that plan as it's a cracking read and I'm almost through it already :oops:

As others have said, anything by Corbett is good, as is John "Pondoro" Taylor, Bruce "Shamba Raiders" Kinloch....even Peter Capstick is fun!

Another vote for Duff Hart-Davis' "Among the Deer", and also "Working with Nature" by Ronnie Rose.
 
I am just now starting to read, "The Lost Trappers", written in the 1840s by an ancestor of mine who followed Davy Crockett and Sam Houston to Texas, then lived among the mountain men as Presbyterian missionary. He knew Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger and others.


I have just been given "Across the Olympic Mountains: The Press Expedition, 1889-90"
in an original 1967 edition
by Robert L. Wood
It is about the first men to cross the Olympics, sponsored by the newspaper in Seattle, which later published serialized accounts.
The author, like the friend who gave me the book, had decades of hiking and climbing the same trails, thus an appreciation of how tough these old-timers were, as they live off the land while surviving blizzards, floods and grizzly bears.

If you like history, the best I have read lately is, "1776", by David McCollough, about the campaign of Howe vs Washington after the battle of Bunker Hill and into the stalemate of the winter of 1776. Thoroughly researched, inside the minds of not only Howe, Clinton, Cornwallis and Washington, but junior officers, from their official correspondence and their letters to wives and close friends. It is a great lesson in human psychology and character, as brilliant ideas are ignored by seniors, decisiveness, boldness, timidity, hesitation and simple mistakes by one person at any level can lead to huge turns of events.
Deer hunting
http://www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk/showthread.php/107834-Deer-stalking-books
2015 list
http://www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk/showthread.php/100995-Outdoor-books
 
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Isolation Shepherd by Iain Thomson is worth a read. A story of the last shepherd in Strathfarrar before the glen was flooded by a hydro scheme. Iain moved this wife and baby to a small shepherd house miles from the nearest road and most easily accessible by boat up the loch. His job was to look after the sheep whilst supplementing his wage and feeding his family from the small-holding, his cows, the trout from the loch and from shooting venison (the meat of which they stored in a salt barrel. The venison was shot with a .22! and they seem to have lived on venison for most of the year).
I'm mid-way through his second book, The Long Horizon. It's good but I preferred the first.
 
'Into the thorns' by Wayne Grant. I had it for Xmas and had read it when I met him in South Africa earlier this month. He was instructing at the N. Cape PH school. Great guy and book. Almost a tome really.
'A hunters wanderings in Africa' by Frederick Courtney Selous
'A return to the long grass' by Peter Hathaway Capstick
I an just about to start 'Horned death' by John F Burger
 
Anything by Cormac McCarthy, and particularly, if you enjoy writing about animals, wilderness and the natural world in general, The Border Trilogy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of The Plain), The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark and for a wild west tour de force like nothing you've ever read before, Blood Meridian.
 
Get "Months of the sun" by Ian Nychens on kindle. It's expensive for a kindle book, but worth every penny. Great tales of elephant hunting/poaching - in the Zambezi valley.
 
Heart of the Land: Essays on Last Great Places - Barbato (Ed.)

The End Of The Game – Peter Beard

Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants - John Frederick Walker

and for something a bit different:

A Hunter's Road - Jim Fergus

Longbows in the Far North - E. Donnall Thomas
 
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If you liked A Hunter's Road, by Jim Fergus, you might also like The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing, by Thomas McGuane. It is a series of essays about the places he has fished around the world, especially as soon as he made some good income from his first novel, 92 in the Shade, and takes off for Ireland.

Both the Fergus and McGuane books are stories, so you can just read one at a time, on lunch break, or in the evening. Great escape.

I have met Thomas and like his stories in Traditional Bowhunter magazine, so thanks for that tip on Longbows to the North. I know it will be good.
 
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If you liked A Hunter's Road, by Jim Fergus, you might also like The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing, by Thomas McGuane. It is a series of essays about the places he has fished around the world, especially as soon as he made some good income from his first novel, 92 in the Shade, and takes off for Ireland.

Both the Fergus and McGuane books are stories, so you can just read one at a time, on lunch break, or in the evening. Great escape.

I have met Thomas and like his stories in Traditional Bowhunter magazine, so thanks for that tip on Longbows to the North. I know it will be good.

And if you like The Longest Silence I can also recommend Reeling in Russia by Fen Montaigne, Blood Knots by Luke Jennings (whose mentor was Robert Nairac), Beneath the Black Water by Jon Berry (his story of a life in pursuit of ferox trout) and Fishing on the Front Line by Nick Sawyer (an angler who sought out fishing whilst on active service around the world).

Others to enjoy would be Nightwalk (or indeed any book) by Chris Yates and A Year in the Woods by Colin Elford.

What a pleasure it is to read about other books site members here have enjoyed!
 
Grizzlies and White Guys, the stories of Clayton Mack. The Banville Diaries, Journals of a Norfolk gamekeeper 1822-44
 
Anything by Cormac McCarthy, and particularly, if you enjoy writing about animals, wilderness and the natural world in general, The Border Trilogy (All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of The Plain), The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark and for a wild west tour de force like nothing you've ever read before, Blood Meridian.

Ah Blood Meridian,one of my favourites,what a book!Enthralling!

Now if you are a hunter a naturalist or simply a reader I believe that there are no better books to start off reading as a young bloke than Maneaters of Kumaon and The Man Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag,both by HR Saintliness Jim Corbett.
If BM is enthralling these books are scintillating!
There are others but these two reign supreme over any other that clutches Jim`s coat tails.
 
Get "Months of the sun" by Ian Nychens on kindle. It's expensive for a kindle book, but worth every penny. Great tales of elephant hunting/poaching - in the Zambezi valley.

Anyone read his second book? I didn’t even know he had written a second until today.
 
I have a set of Jim Corbett's books, Fantastic description of flora and fauna and Northern India. Plenty of scary action in some of them.
 
Its already been said but Isolation Shepherd and Working with Nature both very good books and Ronnie Rose what a truly knowledgeable man.
 
And if you like The Longest Silence I can also recommend Reeling in Russia by Fen Montaigne, Blood Knots by Luke Jennings (whose mentor was Robert Nairac), Beneath the Black Water by Jon Berry (his story of a life in pursuit of ferox trout) and Fishing on the Front Line by Nick Sawyer (an angler who sought out fishing whilst on active service around the world).

Others to enjoy would be Nightwalk (or indeed any book) by Chris Yates and A Year in the Woods by Colin Elford.

What a pleasure it is to read about other books site members here have enjoyed!

I've a hard back copy of "Year In The Woods" and for some strange reason I simply cannot bring myself to read it or even flick through the pages.

It may be something to do with not wishing to influence a book I keep meaning to write and have yet to get beyond the opening page but I can't help feeling there is something more.

K
 
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