Reading about hunting

Most of my reading is on the internet.

You can find books and magazines at your library on hunting.

I used to get books from the library before the internet. I used to belong to book clubs and still have them here.

Here in Ct the local newspaper building is for sale. There is no paperboy anymore.

We still get the American Rifleman and Hunter with the NRA life memberships.

Sorry to say, but I cant think of anyone who really writes like they used to. Not that there aren't good gun writers, but they are technical writers or just write about their most recent trip in a lifeless manner. there aren't any real story tellers out there any more. Peter Capstick does a pretty decent job though (Death in the Tall Grass, etc).

Like Daveboone, neither can I think of any hunting writers of today that I really enjoy reading. I use to enjoy Capstick, Ruark and Keith. Never did care for Hemingway.

I enjoyed a few books by Capstick, also read unrepentant sinner by Haskins. I work overseas, so I read alot- amazon kindle is my best friend. I watch a lot of youtube hunting videos here too, wishing I was hunting. Basically hunting porn.

I used to read a lot. Not so much anymore, but I have read just about every book Zane Grey wrote (my grandpa collected them), and he had one called "the last of the plainsmen" that I think most hunters would enjoy and may not come across on their own.
Its Zane's first hand account of going hunting with Buffalo Jones at the turn of the century, who chose to lasso wild animals and collect them as opposed to hunt with a rifle. I'm sure it's very embellished, it's written more like a novel than a documentary, but if you like hunting "stories" it's worth a read.

Meditations on Hunting, by Jose Ortega y Gasset.

"The Old Man and the Boy" by Robert C. Ruark

And Ruark's "The Old Man's Boy Grows Older". Those two books are right at being a short course in ethics. Not just hunting, but life itsownself. And they're right at being "hunter's poetry".

Peter Capstick passed on in 1996. Always enjoyed his books. Real. Unlike Hemingway's fiction. Zane Grey is 100% fiction.
Most of the current crop of outdoor magazine writers are extensions of their rag's advertiser's marketing departments.

Steven Rinella is by far the best I have read of modern writers and his TV Show Meat Eater absolutely demolishes all "Sit in a blind on a corn feeder in Texas" hunting shows which seems to be everything else I find on TV!

American Buffalo and Meat Eater are both incredible books and I would probably not own guns and be on this forum if I had never read them!

What is your hunting interests? Waterfowl and upland bird hunting has a vast library of quality books. Do you want stories or "how To"? Big game or just Whitetail?

I quit buying magazines years ago but I have a fairly large library, IMHO the post war thru the 80's was the golden age of Outdoor/hunting writers.

^ Gene Hill- Hill country, A Hunters Fireside book
George Laycock- The Hunters and The Hunted
Ben East- Narrow Escapes

All are out of print but should be attainable.

There's a book called one man, one land, one rifle (or something like that) about a guy who killed every big game species in N America using the same Win model 70 30-06. I need to read it one day- heard its a good book.

huntsman said:

^ Gene Hill- Hill country, A Hunters Fireside book
George Laycock- The Hunters and The Hunted
Ben East- Narrow Escapes

All are out of print but should be attainable.

Click to expand...

ANY of Gene Hill's books are worth reading.

FL-NC said:

There's a book called one man, one land, one rifle (or something like that) about a guy who killed every big game species in N America using the same Win model 70 30-06. I need to read it one day- heard its a good book.

Click to expand...

This is it, isn't it?

https://www.amazon.com/One-Man-Rifle-Land-Hunting/dp/1571571698

Sounds pretty good.

308- that's the one. I heard its an interesting read. Pricey though- shame its not available on digits.

Daveboon,

I don't agree that it's the writers. I say it's this internet and forums like this one who have made those magazines less interesting.

You wrote; "Sorry to say, but I cant think of anyone who really writes like they used to. Not that there aren't good gun writers, but they are technical writers or just write about their most recent trip in a lifeless manner. there aren't any real story tellers out there any more"

Here we are the writers and we can tell of our shooting and even show pictures etc.

My favorite is an old book by Jack O'Connor titled The Art of Hunting Big Game in North America. Also any Capstick. I have an anthology of a bunch of excellent hunting short stories titled "Seasons of the Hunter", by Robert Elman and David Seybold. A Hemingway collection of stories titled Hemingway on Hunting. Ruark can be good, especially "Use Enough Gun".

Sorry, these are all old writers. Read them anyway.

A lot of the old timers are good reading. The new writers are either too focused on equipment, use too many tired clichés, or try to copy the old timers.

Far too many otherwise good articles are ruined for me because in the middle of the story the author has to explain how he sent such and such a bullet of such and such caliber from such and such a rifle at such and such a speed into the animal's "boiler room". I like the technical details but they would be better in a sidebar caption or footnote, not inserted into the story's climax.

In my opinion there hasn't been a hunting writer worth a dam since the passing of Jack O'Connor and Elmer Keith.