Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Outdoor reading suggestions for High Schoolers ?

Bob, Son of Battle.

Canoeing with the Cree.

Eric Sevareid

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106672.Canoeing_with_the_Cree

Moutaineering The Freedom of the Hills

The Revenge of Geography and Earning the Rockies by Robert D Kaplan

Ruark's Something of Value. This one will test your school's tolerance level

Alaska's Wolfman by Reardon


mike r

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_in_the_Sky

Tunnel in the Sky is a juvenile science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1955 by Scribner's as one of the Heinlein juveniles. The story describes a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited planet, who soon realise they are stranded there. The themes of the work include the difficulties of growing up and the nature of man as a social animal.

Plot summary
The novel is set in the future, when Malthusian overpopulation on Earth has been averted by the invention of teleportation, called the "Ramsbotham jump," which is used to send Earth's excess population to colonize other planets. However, the costs of operating the device mean that the colonies are isolated from Earth until they can produce something to justify two-way trade. Because modern technology requires a supporting infrastructure, the colonists employ technology from the frontier era (such as horses instead of tractors).

Rod Walker is a high school student who dreams of becoming a professional colonist. The final test of his Advanced Survival class is to stay alive on an unfamiliar planet for between two and ten days. Students may team up and equip themselves with whatever gear they can carry, but they are otherwise completely on their own. They are told only that the challenges are neither insurmountable nor unreasonable. On test day, students walk through the Ramsbotham portal and find themselves alone on a strange planet, but reasonably close to the pickup point. Rod, acting on his older sister's advice, takes hunting knives and basic survival gear, rather than high-tech weaponry, on the grounds that the latter could make him overconfident. The last advice that the students receive is to "watch out for stobor."

On the second day, Rod is ambushed and knocked unconscious by a thief. When he wakes up, all that he has left is a spare knife hidden under a bandage. In his desperate concentration on survival, he loses track of time. Eventually, he teams up with Jacqueline "Jack" Daudet, a student from another class whom he initially mistakes for a male. When she tells him that more than ten days have elapsed without contact, he realizes that something has gone wrong with the portal that was supposed to recover them and that they are stranded.

They start recruiting others to build a settlement for long term survival and Rod becomes the de facto leader of a community that eventually grows to around 75 people. Disagreements reveal the need to elect a government for the new town. Rod has no taste for politics or administration and is happy to have Grant Cowper, an older college student and born politician, elected mayor. Grant proves to be much better at talking than at getting things done. Despite disagreeing with many of Grant's policies, Rod supports him. Grant ignores Rod's warning that they are living in a dangerously hard-to-defend location and that they should move to a cave system that he has found. When a species that had been thought to be harmless suddenly changes its behavior and stampedes through their camp, the settlement is devastated and Grant is killed. Rod is put back in charge.

Heinlein tracks the social development of the frontier community of educated Westerners deprived of technology, followed by its abrupt dissolution when contact with Earth is reestablished. After nearly two years of isolation, the culture shock experienced by the survivors highlights for them and the reader the pain and uncertainty of becoming an adult by reversing the process abruptly. Each of the students returns from being a self-responsible member of an autonomous community to being regarded as a youth.

All of the students go back to Earth willingly except for Rod, who has great difficulty reverting from the status of head of a small but sovereign state to a teenager, who is casually brushed aside by the adult rescuers. However, his teacher (and now brother-in-law) and his sister persuade him to change his mind. His teacher also informs Rod that his warning against "stobor" ("robots" spelled backwards) was just a way of personalizing the dangers of an unknown planet to instill fear and caution in the students, as all students receive the same warning, regardless of the planet they are sent to for the final exam.

Years later, Rod is briefly depicted accomplishing his heart's desire. The novel's ending finds him preparing to lead a formal colonization party to another planet.

^ This book is a must read for all young men

Also add the following:

Blood & Thunder by Hampton Sides (biography of Kit Carson)

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (about the Spartans at Thermopolae)

Anything by Louis L'Amour

Yes. Anything by Jack London.

I agree about Into Thin Air. But disagree about Into the Wild (I think it's a downer because he was so tortured)

-148° (about the first winter ascent of Mount McKinley)

The Old Man and the Boy by Ruark as so many others here have recommended.

This should be in every outdoorsman's library. I like short stories and find them easy to read. Among my other favorites are the adventure stories by Ben East. He put together several books of survival adventures that I really like. My very favorites are the Stories of the Old Duck Hunters books by the late Gordon MacQuarrie. His writings have been put into three volumes and I treasure each of them. With geezerhood fast approaching for me, I do not know if any of these would interest young people today. I'd like to think they would.

Appreciate all of the suggestions. I sent a list to my upline to review and act on if we have funds remaining. As some have mentioned, the books proposed and incentivized by the publishers tend to be from left to FAR left. Trying to add a little balance for our mostly rural, still mostly conservative population. Again, Thank you for your input !

Big +1

Nothing Like it in The World
The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869
Stephen Ambrose

Unrepentant Sinner , Col. askins, and The Revenant by Michael Punke

KJV Is for Today.

https://www.kjvtoday.com/home#TOC-The-King-James-Version-is-Demonstra

Every student at every age will benefit from reading the Bible as a daily habit. Don't get them the dumbed down teenage, contemporary paraphrases. They should start and continue on the KJV labeled 1611 Authorized Version.

That's the best gift a parent can impart to a child or teen, along with the gift in the links below.
BTW, The second one is in a foreign school.

Moby Dick Herman Melville
Captains Courageous Rudyard Kipling
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
Kon-Tiki Thor Heyerdahl

One of my favorites the last few years.

Capsticks books were excellent. Been too many years since I've read them.

Orion,

If they don't think that the Bible is good outdoor adventure wilderness reading, remind them of the following.

John the Baptist started a church in the wilderness.
He looked just like you'd expect a mountain man to look like. He had a camel hide coat.
They didn't pay that country preacher.
He ate bugs and had to rob honey bee hives for food.
He preached power to authority and the king chopped his head clean off of his shoulders.
Jesus wouldn't give that king the time of day after doing that to his friend.
.......
Next....