Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Russell Annabel .....opinions?

I just found a July, 1970 issue of Sports Afield; one of the headlines on the cover: GRIZZLIES: Annabel on Outlaw Killers. I'll be reading that on the couch tonight, although I probably read it 42 years ago when that issue first came out

Russell Annabel was an accomplished story teller and the Alaskan equivalent of Africa's Alexander Lake and Peter Capstick. He didn't let facts or the truth get in the way of a good story.

Annabel was a good read and if you can find anything by Joseah Sarber it would be a good companion on Alaska.

Any of the books by Sir Samuel Baker on Africa or Ceylon are fantastic.

Another Roosevelt book is Kermit's "A Sentimental Safari" not on the same level as the originals but rounds out a collection well.

If you find the two Tom Hayes books from the early sixties cheap, go ahead and grab them.

One is Modern Hunting Rifles and the other Whitetail Hunting. He has some pretty good info for that time period. Plus he is very opinionated which is always fun to read in our never offend the advertisers world we live in today. Agree with him or not.

Even if you don't bowhunt, I would recommend Don Thomas books. Longbows in the Far North, Longbow Country and Double Helix which is about Africa, to mention three.

Plus he has written books on bird hunting and fishing that are also excellent.

well Phil you just need to write a good book so i can buy it

actually figured Annabel may have taken some artistic license like Capstick as the stories from both, though on separate continents, have the same sorta feel to them but its still a good read and no harm in it so long as you dont use it as your end all reference of Alaskan hunting....

Evidently Annabel took a LOT of literary license. I can't remember the title, but there is a book out that was written by his daughter after Annabel's death that puts him into perspective and it ain't pretty.

Annabel used stories that should have been third person and made them first person tales with a bit of spice thrown in.

I have all of his works on my shelves and am looking for his daughter's work.

Good, light entertainment, for sure.

I just picked up three books this past week, "Months of the Sun" by Nyschens, a record of forty years of elephant hunting in the Zambezi Valley, "The Long Walk" by Slawomir Rawicz about seven captives who walked out a Siberian Gulag in 1941 and walked all the way to India to freedom, and "Iron Men, the Saga of the Deputy US Marshals who rode the Indian Territory" by C.H. McKennon.

Ed

I have several of Annabel's books and always enjoyed them. Like someone else mentioned I always had the feeling he wrote with much the same "flair" that Capstick did. I'm currently reading The Legend of Ben Lilly and it is quite an interesting read about a unique individual that many call the last of the mountain men. Ol' Ben sure killed one heck of a lot of mountain lions and bears in his time. He was tough as nails!

have that book aswell....a good one....

IndyCa35 Fred Everett's "Tuskers in the Dust" is the second book in the series of Everett's life - from the end of "Heat, Thirst, and Ivory" up to WW2. I hope that he continues writing.

I remember reading him in one or more of the "big three" sporting magazines when I was growing up. I always enjoyed his stories. I guess I'll have to look up some of his books.
I also remember reading Hunter's books which I borrowed from the library several times as well as all of Ruark's books. All great reads.

mjc,

Everett passed away a couple of years ago but I'll look for "Tuskers in the Dust."

rattler,

Kenneth Anderson was apparently another Capstick, Annabel, etc., a very good storyteller who told tales that he might have never experienced personally. He followed the writing success of Corbett, but wasn't the same sort of guy.

I have no problem with such writers, having read and enjoyed many of their stories, but prefer the straight stuff, whether by Corbett or Shoemaker. Or admitted fiction writers such as Wilbur Smith.

As a kid I loved reading Rusty Annabel as well as some others and some of the African authors mentioned here and of course Jim Corbett. Put them all together and I didn't have a chance at a "normal" life. God bless them for giving me the road less traveled by.

If you � like me � prefer accounts of real experiences to exciting fabrications, read Andrew Garcia's autobiographical Tough Trip Through Paradise.

Garcia scribbled his accounts in pencil on penny tablets and had the local girls in the typing class type 'em. I used to know one of the girls (many years later) and hunted elk with her brother and husband.

Garcia's cabin burned the winter that I spent in Superior, and his sons still lived in the vicinity.

honestly i dont care either way, straight shooting like from you, Phil, Finn, Corbett and others or the embellished like Capstick and Annabel....just like knowing which is which.....i can appreciate a good story either way

Rusty Annabel also wrote as a war correspondent in the Aleutian Campaign of WWII. He spent some time around Castner's Cutthroats....a bunch of trappers recruited from the Bush of Alaska to act as forward scouts for the military. He could have undoubtedly gleaned a lot of great stories from that bunch.

I've stayed in his favorite hotel in LaPaz, Mexico.....it seems as though there may have been a second family down there.

Great read and one of my favorite books. Dad gave me a copy when I was 15. I still have it.

Ken,

I've read TTTP a number of times, in fact should probably pick up another copy, as mine's starting to fall apart!

Garcia's TTTP should be required reading in schools.
Another great one is "Buffalo Days" by Col. Homer W. Wheeler.
On the short list I posted near the beginning of this thread people really should read "Meet Mr. Grizzly." This is a special book for a particular reason but if I stated why it would spoil it for readers.
Another little classic is Truman Everts's "Lost in the Yellowstone -- Thirty-Seven Days of Peril."

One of the English professors at the University of Montana taught a "Montana Literature" course a number of years ago. The three books in the course were Tough Trip Through Paradise, The Big Sky and A River Runs Through It--not a bad selection!