Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Writers of hunting stories

I am a fan of Russel Annabel and Jim Corbet. Hemingway was up there too. Ruark awesome.

I like the gun/hunting writings by Barness a lot. My favorite gun and occasional hunting author was Ross Seyfried back when he was still doing a lot of writing.

Some of that has to do with first getting into his writings when I was around 12 yrs old. Everything seems bigger than life at that age from professional gun and hunting author’s to pro athletes, compared to as we get older. I still enjoy his overall breadth of knowledge including the offbeat compared to the typical flavor of the day canned articles that so many others cover.

Too many to list. But Pondoro Taylor had a style that I really enjoy

I love Annabel and have his books, but I read them as good fiction. Paul Matthews wrote years ago, and what of his I've read I like. I think he had a series called Ben and the Old Man, of which I've only found one article in an old Shooting Times. Very similar to Ruark' s work. Mule Deer tells a great non- fiction hunting tale, as did O'Connor. Skeeter Skelton's Me and Joe tales are guaranteed to lower my blood pressure and make me feel 12 years old...if only briefly. And Ben East has been mentioned. His putting to words the stories of old timers was wonderful. Finn Aagaard was one of the very best as well.

Jack O'Connor, Craig Boddington, Elmer Keith, John Wooters, Bob Milek, Ross Seyfried, Peter Capstick, Jim Carmichel, John Barsness, Phil Shoemaker, Ron Spomer, those are some my favorite writers of hunting stories.

Forgot about Shoemaker. Along with Mule Deer, he's among the best today. And Brian Pearce tells a good hunting adventure as well. Wish Shoemaker and Pearce would write a book!

A well-told hunting story can be just terrific!

Guy

I've read everything by Jim Corbett that I could find, as well as Karamojo Bell. They are favorite writers of hunting stories who aren't Americans. As far as writers in this country, Archibald Rutledge is a favorite of mine, and again, I've read everything he wrote that I can find. Same way with Russell Annabel. I also like the usual suspects......O'Connor, Wooters, Jobson, Ben East, Milek, Nash Buckingham, just to name a few.

Back in the 1960's there was a very frequent contributor to Outdoor Life named Erwin Bauer, and he was good too.

I have to go with Patrick McManus :⁠-⁠)

I've been picking through Mule Deer's The Life of the Hunt which I ordered when a bunch of you were talking about his story "The Last Week". The man is talented and he can really convey those moments we all know so well.

Because I'm a dog guy, Gene Hill is always on the short shelf. My lab, Rae, has been doing her part with the woodcock the past few weeks - just some great days in the field.

There's many others I enjoy. But, November is reserved for Faulkner - the stories in Go Down Moses and The Big Woods. Maybe the best writing I've ever read. Some passages are just overwhelming - you have to put it down and let it wash over you.

The Road to Tinkhamtown by Corey Ford is one of the most powerful stories I've read, in any genre.

☝️☝️☝️

Add Ted Trueblood to the list.

I really liked Peter Capstick. Some people question the embellishment of many of his stories but I don't care.

He transports me to Africa like no other writer.

Finn Aagaard is another great hunting/firearms writer.

He was indeed. (Even though some internet sources claim Finn is still around, he unfortunately passed away in 2000.)

One of the interesting things about "hunting" writing is that it's changed considerably since I sold my first magazine pieces in the 1970s. Back then the trend was back toward more hunting "stories," narratives of a day or several in the field. This was in thanks partly due to a then-new magazine named Gray's Sporting Journal, which is where I published my first hunting story in 1976, about a day of elk hunting. (Had previously published one other such story, about a day of flyfishing during a Wyoming winter, in Sports Illustrated--back when it also ran "blood sports" articles.)

This was somewhat of a change, because the trend for years had been toward "how-to" articles in the hunting/fishing magazines for a while. Gray's did well enough that other magazines started running such stories again, including what were then called The Big Three--Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Sports Afield.

This helped my career considerably, and by the mid-1980s I was making my entire living writing, and at least 75% of that was writing narrative stories for all four of those magazines. In 1996 a book company even published a collection of 'em named The Life of the Hunt (even though it included a couple of fishing stories) which sold very well.

But more recently the trend is back toward more technical stuff, whether how or where to hunt, or articles on firearms and ballistics. In fact Craig Boddington and I had an e-mail conversation about that a year or so ago. Many of his earlier articles and books were hunting stories, but they simply don't sell like they used to--which is the reason my last book of hunting stories (Born to Hunt, published in 2011) only lasted through the first printing.

It got fine reviews, but my more technical book, Obsessions of a Rifle Loony, sold far better when published the next year. In fact I don't know how many printings we've done of Obsessions, but it's probably 3-4.

The other factor that changed all this is TV hunting shows, videos and, these days, podcasts. Instead of reading hunting stories, many of today's hunters prefer to watch other people hunt--which of course follows other trends in today's society.

+1.

Prolly because he told stories that most can relate too.

Nothing against stories of beasts in far away lands, but mcManus could make you laugh, simple because you could say “I’ve been there… or could’ve been me..”

I got to know Pat some during his later years, and he was also funny in person--though his spoken humor was often somewhat drier and "shorter" than his writing!

Ed Zern was also a great humor storyteller, and I also got to know him some. He and Ted Trueblood were good buddies, and often hunted and fished together.

Great list on people to search for books from. Francis Sell also.

Pat McManus was the main reason I looked forward to my dad's Outdoor Life's coming in the mail. I'd read Last Laugh and once I got a little older I started reading Carmichael and that was my introduction to learning about guns. A Carmichael article led us to switch from 180 to 150 grains in our 30-06 rifles. We started getting much quicker kills on Deer. Prior to that common consensus was you needed heavy round nose bullets for the brush. Carmichael opened my eyes to that fallacy and that made a real difference for us.