Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Good reads?

Just looking for some good reads. Any good hunting or shooting books a guy should get?

Hard to beat Barsness' books: Life of the Hunt, Born to Hunt, Obsessions of a Rifle Loony, etc.

I strongly recommend the two books about "The Ghost and the Darkness". The movie wasn't much, but the books are darned good reading.

"The Lions of Tsavo" was written by Bruce Patterson in 1907. Patterson was an English railroad builder who had to kill a pair of maneaters with a .303 or whatever he could borrow to get construction resumed on a railway in Africa. The Indian laborers were so afraid (and justifiably so) that no work was being done. The lions were called "The Ghost" and "The Darkness" because you never saw them. Your tentmate just got grabbed out through the door, and you could hear him scream and bone crunch just outside the door.

"The Maneaters of Tsavo" was written by J. H. Patterson (no relation IIRC) a few years ago, about his safari in the same area. The group was asked by the natives to take out a lion, possibly a descendant of one of the 1907 pair, who was eating them as a regular part of his diet. The PH accepted before Patterson had a chance to even think about whether he really wanted to do this, so there he was - a lion hunter whether he wanted to be or not, just like the earlier Patterson.

I am currently reading American Sniper by Chris Kyle and so far it is a good book. Another good book I have read lately was "No Angel" about going undercover in the Hells Angels. Deception Point by Dan Brown is an excellent book as well. If you are just looking for gun or hunting books Obsessions of a Rifle Loony is a great read.

Alaska's Wolf Man about Frank Glaser who was a state wolf hunter and trapper is really good.

It goes into a lot of detail about the guns and gear he used back then.

When the .220 Swift came out he bought one and loved it. He even shot a couple of Grizzlies with it.

Well worth the 12 bucks at Amazon.

Safari Press has a few compilations of O'Connor's work that are excellent.

I personally LOVE Hemingway's Green hills of Africa; I read it at least once a year.

Kyle's book mentioned above was interesting, if you're into that sort of thing but for war books I really found Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand extraordinarily compelling. For sniper stuff I thought Craig Roberts Police Sniper was awesome; real life stories from the record, largely told by the men in blue themselves.

these are good and i have them but if yah read alot of his writing it will be familiar ground.....i preferred Life of the Hunt and Born to Hunt over Obsessions probably because while i have read a whole lot of John's writing on guns making Obsessions mostly old ground i have read very little of his hunting stories so the other two books were new ground for me.....i love Johns writing and am very glad have them but if you have read most of his stuff only a small fraction of the books are not published in some form elsewhere over the years....

if you like Africa, Capsticks books are a must.....if you have read Capstick than J. A. Hunter and John Burger are awesome writers though anything other than their most common books get expensive to get ahold of.... John Taylor is a good writer aswell....

going towards Asia, there is ofcourse Jim Corbett.....post WWII John Brandt is a real good writer aswell......there is a book out there called "Hunting Trips In The Land Of The Dragon" or some such thing which is a collection of stories on hunting in China by western hunters like Roy Chapman Andrews....

for rifles, The Rifle: Its Development for Big-Game Hunting by S. R. Truesdell is a cool read about hunters from Samuel Baker through guys like Selous and Roosevelt and what there preferences in hunting rifles were and why.....

Thanks for the recomendations. I'm more in to old time north America hunting books. Have read a few from outfitters and some others, need to get a copy of the wolf man book.

Some good ones I have read,
Game masters of the world
Alaska Yukon trophies won and lost
Dangerous river, not really about hunting but a really good book by RM Patterson

Just looking for a few more titles to add to the list

I can recommend these:

Hunting North America 1885-1911 (edited by Oppel and Meisel): a collection of 45 stories

The American Deer Hunter, by Francis E. Sell

The Wilderness of Denali, by Charles Sheldon (Alaska)

One Man's Wilderness, by Warren Page (not all North America but a lot is)

North American Head Hunting, by Grancel Fitz

Mexican Game Trails, Americans afirled in Old Mexico 1866-1940, a collection of 16 stories edited by Carmony and Brown

I might also mention that while rattler is correct that about half of my books being mostly collections of revised magazine stories, the other half (4-5, I believe) were entirely written as books.

Mule Deer's Life of the Hunt is a collection of short stories, but they are real stories, not reprinted magazine articles. And their quality is far beyond what you see in hunting magazines.

I pull it out every fall to re-read it and get myself in the mood for hunting season. Never fails.

Actually they mostly are magazine stories, though I rewrote some of them for the book, and several chapters were written strictly for the book. Back in the 1980's and 90's more magazines published that kind of stuff, and I made over half my income writing it for Gray's, Field & Stream, Sports Afield, American Hunter and a short-lived magazine that I even edited toward the end, Game Journal.

As far as I can recall, two of the stories in Life of the Hunt originally appeared in Gray's, but the others were from American Hunter, Field & Stream and Game Journal. Maybe there were one or two from Sports Afield too. Magazines really did published stories like that back then!

Glad you enjoy it! Last year I published a sequel called Born to Hunt, which has more stories from my travels, though there's still stuff from Montana.

The Final Frontiersman - Alaska

The Art of Hunting Big Game- O'Connor

Just a couple off the top of my head.

The Sheltering Desert. About two geologist from Germany avoiding the capture and interment by the British by surviving in the deserts of Namibia. Great read. GRF

well for North America Russel Annabel is real good but he is Alaskas equivalent to Peter Capstick im told, a hell of a good story teller but alot of the stories he says happened to him prolly didnt.....they are slightly revised stories that happened to others that he had heard.....he is still a hell of a story teller and his books are hard to put down....

White Tail Nation

The Greatest Hunting stories ever told

Holy smoke!

I reviewed Whitetail Nation in one of the recent editions of Rifle Loony News. Let's just say my take was a little different--if it's the same book. Here's my review:


Whitetail Nation
by Pete Bodo
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25, 306 pages)

In late June I went on a prairie dog shoot south of Miles City, Montana, hosted in part by Savage Arms. These events are usually �guided,� meaning a local outfitter takes you out on private land that would be otherwise unavailable. The outfitter was a guy from Miles City named Bill Perkins. After Bill and I got to know each other, he loaned me a book he�d found interesting, entitled Whitetail Nation: My Season in Pursuit of the Monster Buck, by Pete Bodo.
I asked Bill why he found it so interesting, and he said it was because it was a well-written book by a guy who�s very typical of many of Eastern deer hunters he�d guided. The big similarity Bodo had with those clients was his enthusiasm for hunting, especially in the big country of the West. The second thing was Bodo�s shooting skill.
Even before I read Whitetail Nation several things interested me. First, it was published a major name with offices in both Boston and New York City. It�s been a while since whitetail hunting books regularly appeared from such East Coast publishers.
Second, I�d never heard of Pete Bodo, and I�m acquainted with the names of most hunting writers in North America, and many of the writers themselves. It turns out he�s an Austrian-born writer who lives in New York City. He�s a senior editor (magazine-speak for staff writer) for Tennis Magazine and sometimes writes for Atlantic Salmon Journal and the �Outdoor� section of the New York Times. Half of his previous six books were on professional tennis, two of them written �with� Pete Sampras and Patrick McEnroe. Another was a book on Atlantic salmon fishing, and another a novel about two guys who come to Montana to fly-fish, The Trout Whisperers.
The dust-jacket quotes (which usually come from friends) make Whitetail Nation sound like the ultimate deer-hunting book ever written:
�This book has everything you would want from a hunting story: style, humor, suspense, and lots and lots of antler.�
�Fun, honest and humble, Pete Bodo is the guy you want telling stories around your campfire.�
�His lucid descriptions of the landscapes and his poignant expressions of the odd spiritual revelations that come with killing ensure that this is no ordinary hook-and-bullet story.�
�No ordinary hook-and-bullet story� is putting it mildly. Whitetail Nation turned out to be both a good portrait of a fairly average urban deer hunter, and one of the most infuriating hunting books I�ve ever read.
It follows Bodo�s deer hunting adventures in several states on his quest for the trophy buck he�s never taken in years of hunting. It begins with a guided hunt in Saskatchewan, where he sees the giant whitetail anybody who travels to Saskatchewan hopes for at around 400 yards.
Bodo, however, doesn�t take a shot because he hopes and halfway assumes the buck will come closer, even though �my 7mm. Remington Magnum could deliver a bullet just two inches below my point-of-aim over the four hundred yards between me and the deer.� (What?!! If that�s so, then his rifle must be sighted-in at least seven inches high at 200 yards.)
Well, it turns out there was a good reason for Bodo not shooting: He�s a truly lousy shot. Even though his two deer rifles are scoped bolt-actions chambered for the 7mm Remington and .257 Weatherby Magnums, and he does most of his hunting from stands where a good rest is quite possible, the odds are definitely in favor of any deer that might cross his path.
One of his trips is to Texas, where Bodo takes several shots over two days at a medium-sized whitetail buck that keeps coming to an automatic corn feeder about 60 yards from the back porch of a friend. (To his credit, he does note that �It was impossible to call this hunting....�) He even rested the .30-06 borrowed from his Texas host on the rail of the porch. It turns out that was the trouble: He rested the rifle�s forend directly on the wooden rail, and hard rests cause rifles to shoot high.
Bodo even supposedly knows this, as does his friend (�a gun nut and collector�) who�s sitting right beside him. But he keeps shooting at the deer until, on the second day, the buck finally starts wandering off due to loud noises coming from the porch and bullets flying over its back. Bodo then shoots offhand and kills the buck�though this still doesn�t say much for his shooting.
After missing the first time, he shot the rifle at an 8x10� piece of white paper placed next to the corn feeder. The two shots landed on the very edge of the paper--at least 4� from the center. Bodo pronounced the rifle �fine� and didn�t bother to adjust the scope. Evidently hitting a fairly large target somewhere at 60 yards is good enough.
Despite the book�s title, Bodo also travels to Montana to hunt mule deer. He manages to miss the first big buck he sees, despite resting his 7mm Magnum on shooting sticks. He then finds another good buck in a coulee below him and misses it twice at 70 yards, before finally hitting the buck in the butt as it runs off.
Bodo, though, doesn�t know where he hit it, since it disappears �laboring� behind a rock outcropping. Bodo assumes he killed the buck, probably because he�s shooting a 7mm Remington Magnum, a cartridge many deer hunters consider a semi-cannon. So he leaves his rifle leaning against a barbed-wire fence before hiking down into the coulee and around the outcrop.
The buck isn�t dead, of course, and he finds it lying down with its head up, looking at him. Bodo has to scramble back up the side of the coulee to retrieve his rifle. Luckily the buck stayed put and Bodo could finish it off from a few feet, with the only shot he doesn�t bungle in the entire book: He misses other deer throughout the fall, and wounds a doe with an arrow and loses her.
Due to all this bad shooting, I thought Houghton Mifflin Harcourt might have published the book because of typical big-city, East-Coast anti-hunting sentiment, to demonstrate that hunters are indeed jerks who blast their way through the woods, wounding and missing deer.
On the other hand, from my own dealings with New York editors I know that they often consider anybody who hunts at all a real expert, since they don�t know anything about hunting. This is because it�s almost impossible to hire a serious hunter to work in New York City.
Half a century ago Field & Stream somehow persuaded their great Idaho columnist, Ted Trueblood, to move to New York and work in their Manhattan office. Trueblood lasted a year or two before fleeing back to Idaho, where he made less money but could go hunting without hours of combat driving.
I was even once persuaded to interview for the job of editor of Outdoor Life. An employment-office �head hunter� came up with my name, because I�d recently resigned as editor of Gray�s Sporting Journal, a job done from Montana even before the Internet made such an arrangement much easier. One of the suits in Outdoor Life�s office said they�d consider letting me stay in Montana, so I flew into JFK Airport and spent a night in a Manhattan hotel before walking to the interview, along with a million office workers dressed either in black (women) or blue suits with power ties (men)
When talking with the suit who�d mentioned the possibility of staying in Montana, it soon became apparent that he�d lied�though he did tell me that they might eventually consider moving the editorial offices to the Catskills, since �they�re just like Montana, with deers and trouts and everything.� Ah, the Big Apple!
Along with being a Big Apple writer and incompetent shot, Bodo is full of myths about animals, yet continually attempts to sound scientific and informed. He tells us that deer belong to the �cervid genus.� Uh, no, not exactly. Whitetails and mule deer both belong to the genus Odocoileus, part of the family Cervidae.
He tells us elk were originally plains animals, a myth started when Lewis and Clark crossed the Rocky Mountains in September and didn�t find any elk on Lolo Pass. This was because Lolo Pass was the main Indian route over the mountains. Not only did Indians like to shoot and eat elk, but Indian horses ate most of the grass along the route over the summer. As a result any sensible elk stayed away from Lolo Pass, but plenty of other elk lived in other mountains from Old Mexico to Canada.
Bodo also tells a story about being at a party with some blowhard who explained that elk live both in Asia and North America because they originally lived on the larger super-continent Laurasia, which broke up due to continental drift. Bodo shares this fascinating bit of knowledge with us, but Laurasia broke up about 225 million years before any Cervidae appeared in the fossil record. In reality, elk came to North America over the Bering Land Bridge less than 50,000 years ago, like many other Asian species such as moose and grizzly bears.
He also explains that mule deer are really crosses between whitetails and blacktails, a theory popularized by wildlife biologist Dr. Valerius Geist 20 years ago�and since disproven.
Maybe I�m being overly sensitive about the biological mistakes. I majored in biology and still read a lot of current research, and many hunters wouldn�t recognize the errors. But Bodo also tells us that bullets from a .30-30 will plow right through brush and remain on course, but the bullets of his .257 Weatherby Magnum will deflect into the stratosphere on the merest blade of grass. How he knows this is never explained, since he never shoots his .257 Weatherby or a .30-30 throughout the book. How he can differentiate between bullet deflection and missing is also a mystery.
Aside from all those mistakes, he constantly uses the word �cockwalloper� to describe any big buck. Now, I�ve traveled to about 20 states and provinces in three countries to hunt North American deer, and have heard the words mossyhorn, monster, pig, Booner, toad and muy grande to describe huge bucks, but never cockwalloper. It doesn�t appear in my unabridged Webster�s or the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, and completely baffled Google. Maybe it�s an Austrian term, but doesn�t sound much like German. Maybe it�s part of the English dialect known to some as New Yorkese.
Oh, well, just another mystery in a long list of mysteries inside Whitetail Nation. After I read the book and talked a little about it, Eileen had to read it to, and if anything was even more dismayed by his shooting. Bill Perkins says only about 10% of his hunters shoot competently, while the other 90% are split between mediocre shots and those who shoot like Bodo. I have some empathy with urban Eastern hunters who aren�t all that good with a rifle, because it�s hard to practice with when the nearest range is hours away, but geez.
Both Eileen and I read all of Whitetail Nation, though not in one sitting because between some fairly amusing stories about visiting Cabela�s or drinking too much with friends the night before opening day (like many average hunters), he eventually ends up shooting like a drunken sailor. If you can borrow a copy, or buy one at a big discount, it is indeed an interesting read, sort of like a train wreck in the woods. But I wouldn�t pay retail.

I agree with your review of it overall but in the end I enjoyed it simply because of the different views of hunting around the US.

"The Old Man and the Boy" Ruark
"Campfires and Game Trails" Boddington
Archibald Rutledge's books
"Shots at Whitetails" Koller

Not really well know but I enjoyed "A Look at Life From A Deer Stand" Steve Chapman

John,
that is funny RE the Manhattan experience. I laughed thinking of the way I poured thru the "Perfect Storm" and enjoyed it very much as a story about a loss to a fishing community. But then I read a number of related books including The Grey Seas Under by Farley Mowat and came to see the lack of knowledge in the editor who proofed the "Storm" work. The tennis crowd and the hunting side are worlds apart in the big city.
I can say I have friends who live in the big apple I would hunt any where in the world with and look forward to our trips when they happen, but none work in publishing. Shame that.

Sask,
not hunting per say, but if you are into fishing the Hungry Ocean by Linda Greenlaw is a good read by someone who went and did it. I am glad she is not a fisheries manager, thats for sure.

I also enjoyed the biography of Fred Bear of archery fame. Cant think of the author but He was an employee of the Bear Company during the hayday.
I am sure there are some good untold stories behind Fred's life and travels.