For hunters, listening to the accounts of kindred spirits recalling the drama and action that go with good days afield ranks among life's most pleasurable activities. Here, then, are some of the best hunting tales ever written, stories that sweep from charging lions in the African bush to mountain goats in the mountain crags of the Rockies; from the gallant bird dogs of the Southern pinelands to the great Western hunts of Theodore Roosevelt. Great American Hunting Stories captures the very soul of hunting. With contributions from: Theodore Roosevelt, Nash Buckingham, Archibald Rutledge, Zane Grey, Lieutenant Townsend Whelen, Harold McCracken, Irvin S. Cobb, Edwin Main Post, Horace Kephart, Francis Parkman ,William T. Hornaday, Sc.D, Rex Beach, and more.
For hunters, listening to the accounts of kindred spirits recalling the drama and action that go with good days afield ranks among life's most pleasurable activities. This newly updated volume - with an introduction by editor Stephen J. Bodio -- contains some of the best hunting tales ever written, stories that sweep from charging elephants in the African bush to mountain goats in the mountain crags of the Rockies, from the gallant bird dogs of the Southern pinelands to the great Western hunts of Theodore Roosevelt. Stories include: The Wilderness Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt Tige’s Lion by Zane Grey Lobo: The King of Currumpaw by Ernest Seton-Thompson My Antelope by Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson The Alaskan Grizzly by Harold McCracken Wolf-Hunting in Russia by Henry T. Allen Hunting on the Turin Plain by Roy Chapman Andrews
Follow the trails of hunters—the original storytellers—as they interpret signs, examine tracks, and chase and catch their prey (or fail to). Readers can curl up with the best authentic hunting fiction and non-fiction, bringing the great Mount Kenya and the prairies of the American Bison into your living room. From Theodore Roosevelt and Gene Hill to Rick Bass and Charles Dickens, remember classic hunting tales and discover new stories of hunters’ luck, camaraderie, and use of smarts on the trail. The thrill of the chase and the passion for outdoor living are elegantly brought together in this exquisite volume, certain to delight both hunters and short-story aficionados. With work by more than one hundred of the world’s most eminent authors and hunters, including: Theodore Roosevelt Zane Grey Ted Nugent Aldo Leopold Rick Bass Philip Caputo Geoffrey Norman Gene Hill And many more!
ALSO INCLUDES ALL-NEW MATERIAL When it Comes to Hunting Stories, Go Big or Go Home! For more than 20 years, hunter, humorist, and one-heck-of-a-storyteller Steve Chapman has been entertaining and inspiring his fans with his many adventures in God’s great outdoors. Now, he brings you this trophy case collection of his most awesome anecdotes—tagged, bagged, and ready for you to read and enjoy! Revisit some of Steve’s most memorable moments along with some all-new, never-before-published stories. From the wide-eyed anticipation of his very first outing as a teenager to a disappointing day in the deer stand many decades later, you’ll experience all the highs and lows of hunting as only Steve can describe them. And far more important, with each thrilling tale, you’ll draw closer to the One who created this big, bountiful world where you can pursue your ultimate passions. That’s where these unforgettable hunting stories really hit the mark!
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and host of Netflix’s MeatEater comes “a unique and valuable alternate view of where our food comes from” (Anthony Bourdain). “Revelatory . . . With every chapter, you get a history lesson, a hunting lesson, a nature lesson, and a cooking lesson. . . . Meat Eater offers an overabundance to savor.”—The New York Times Book Review Meat Eater chronicles Steven Rinella’s lifelong relationship with nature and hunting through the lens of ten hunts, beginning when he was an aspiring mountain man at age ten and ending as a thirty-seven-year-old Brooklyn father who hunts in the remotest corners of North America. He tells of having a struggling career as a fur trapper just as fur prices were falling; of a dalliance with catch-and-release steelhead fishing; of canoeing in the Missouri Breaks in search of mule deer just as the Missouri River was freezing up one November; and of hunting the elusive Dall sheep in the glaciated mountains of Alaska. A thrilling storyteller, Rinella grapples with themes such as the role of the hunter in shaping America, the vanishing frontier, the ethics of killing, and the disappearance of the hunter himself as consumers lose their connection with the way their food finds its way to their tables. The result is a loving portrait of a way of life that is part of who we are—as humans and as Americans.
"A sophisticated, deeply informed account of real life in the real CIA that adds immeasurably to the public understanding of the espionage culture—the good and the bad." —Bob Woodward Jack Devine ran Charlie Wilson's War in Afghanistan. It was the largest covert action of the Cold War, and it was Devine who put the brand-new Stinger missile into the hands of the mujahideen during their war with the Soviets, paving the way to a decisive victory against the Russians. He also pushed the CIA's effort to run down the narcotics trafficker Pablo Escobar in Colombia. He tried to warn the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, that there was a bullet coming from Iraq with his name on it. He was in Chile when Allende fell, and he had too much to do with Iran-Contra for his own taste, though he tried to stop it. And he tangled with Rick Ames, the KGB spy inside the CIA, and hunted Robert Hanssen, the mole in the FBI. Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story is the spellbinding memoir of Devine's time in the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served for more than thirty years, rising to become the acting deputy director of operations, responsible for all of the CIA's spying operations. This is a story of intrigue and high-stakes maneuvering, all the more gripping when the fate of our geopolitical order hangs in the balance. But this book also sounds a warning to our nation's decision makers: covert operations, not costly and devastating full-scale interventions, are the best safeguard of America's interests worldwide. Part memoir, part historical redress, Good Hunting debunks outright some of the myths surrounding the Agency and cautions against its misuses. Beneath the exotic allure—living abroad with his wife and six children, running operations in seven countries, and serving successive presidents from Nixon to Clinton—this is a realist, gimlet-eyed account of the Agency. Now, as Devine sees it, the CIA is trapped within a larger bureaucracy, losing swaths of turf to the military, and, most ominous of all, is becoming overly weighted toward paramilitary operations after a decade of war. Its capacity to do what it does best—spying and covert action—has been seriously degraded. Good Hunting sheds light on some of the CIA's deepest secrets and spans an illustrious tenure—and never before has an acting deputy director of operations come forth with such an account. With the historical acumen of Steve Coll's Ghost Wars and gripping scenarios that evoke the novels of John le Carré even as they hew closely to the facts on the ground, Devine offers a master class in spycraft.
An award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America's most sacred-but also most fraught-traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect "soft" urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country's pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement. But the sport's popularity also caused class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and stirred debate about the treatment of Native Americans and the role of hunting in preparing young men for war. This sweeping and balanced book offers a definitive account of hunting in America. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of our nation's foundational myths.
Experience the grandeur, excitement, and peril of the quest for big game in the West from 1800-1900 in this vivid interpretation with engaging narrative, direct quotations, and historic imagery. Hunting the American West is a thoroughly illustrated, narrative history of big-game hunting in the nineteenth-century American West. The engaging narrative draws extensively on the writing of original participants and observers of the subject and - along with an abundance of pictorial materials - affords unusual insight into the diverse methods and motives for hunting big game in the Old West. No other work on the subject conveys the feeling and character of the hunt in its various eras and styles, or its profound consequences, as convincingly.
This innovative study re-examines the dynamics of race relations in the post–Civil War South from an altogether fresh perspective: field sports. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wealthy white men from Southern cities and the industrial North traveled to the hunting and fishing lodges of the old Confederacy—escaping from the office to socialize among like-minded peers. These sportsmen depended on local black guides who knew the land and fishing holes and could ensure a successful outing. For whites, the ability to hunt and fish freely and employ black laborers became a conspicuous display of their wealth and social standing. But hunting and fishing had been a way of life for all Southerners—blacks included—since colonial times. After the war, African Americans used their mastery of these sports to enter into market activities normally denied people of color, thereby becoming more economically independent from their white employers. Whites came to view black participation in hunting and fishing as a serious threat to the South’s labor system. Scott E. Giltner shows how African-American freedom developed in this racially tense environment—how blacks' sense of competence and authority flourished in a Jim Crow setting. Giltner’s thorough research using slave narratives, sportsmen’s recollections, records of fish and game clubs, and sporting periodicals offers a unique perspective on the African-American struggle for independence from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s.
