Books for new hunters. Your suggestions.

[dannyb278]

All, I'm putting together a blog post for books that new Hunters should read during their first year in the field. I'll be sure to include some standards like A Sand County Almanac as well as more modern books like MeatEater. I'd like to hear your thoughts on books that you would recommend to new Hunters. Anything from tactics, hunting stories, to philosophy to ethics to history. Thanks.

 

[1976]

Mike Eastman's books on elk, mule deer and antelope hunting are good books to read. Also Robby Denning on mule deer, anything by Robert Ruark is great for some african adventure or the old man and the boy is one you can't put down.

 

[1_pointer]

Hunter's Heart by David Petersen is a good read IMO for a first year hunter.

https://www.amazon.com/Hunters-Hear...dp/0805055304?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

I'm also big on the biology and habitat books for specific species.

 

[dan.kirkpatrick]

I second any of the eastmans books,,,hunting throphy antelope is a favorite,very well written

 

[Schaaf]

While not necessarily a hunting book I always recommend The Dangerous River by R.M. Patterson.

If that book doesn't get you fired up to go roam the hills and experience new things I really don't know what will.

 

[dannyb278]

Mike Eastman's books on elk, mule deer and antelope hunting are good books to read. Also Robby Denning on mule deer, anything by Robert Ruark is great for some african adventure or the old man and the boy is one you can't put down.

I am woefully under read when it comes to Eastman's work. I need to read it as well. And Robert Ruark is definitely going on the list, as well as Patterson/Tsavo Man-eaters. Those African hunts just provide such a great backdrop of adventure.

 

[dannyb278]

Hunter's Heart by David Petersen is a good read IMO for a first year hunter.

https://www.amazon.com/Hunters-Hear...dp/0805055304?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

I'm also big on the biology and habitat books for specific species.

Hunters Heart will Definitely be on the list. I have heard great things about it, but haven't got around to it myself. Will have to change that.

 

[dannyb278]

While not necessarily a hunting book I always recommend The Dangerous River by R.M. Patterson.

If that book doesn't get you fired up to go roam the hills and experience new things I really don't know what will.

Another book to add to my personal list, having never heard of it. I love a good ripping adventure tale.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

Dannyb278,
I am a late onset hunter, I didn't pick up a rifle until I was 22 and now at 28 my passion for hunting has exploded and I am applying in multiple states and trying to get more involved in hunting community. I read a ton on the topics you described during my first couple of seasons and these are the books currently sitting on my "hunting" shelf. I think there are pieces of each that can foster a love and intellectual understanding of hunting and more generally environmental history.

Hope this thread keeps going as I would love to add to my shelf.

A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
American Buffalo –Steven Rinella
My Life with the Eskimo –Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Meat Eater – Steven Rinella
Death in the Long Grass-Peter Capstick
The Heart of a Hunter- Laurens van der Post
Boone: A Biography – Robert Morgan
A Hunter’s Heart- David Petersen
The Art of Hunting Big Game in North America- Jack O’Connor
Forty-Four Years a Hunter- Meshach Browning
Game Management – Aldo Leopold
The Animal Dialogues – Craig Childs
American Serengeti –Dan Flores
The Destruction of the Bison – Andrew Isenberg
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World – Mark Kurlansky
Far Tortuga – Peter Matthiessen
The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway
Moby Dick- Herman Melville
Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
The Complete Guide to Hunting Part 1 and 2 – Steven Rinella

 

[dannyb278]

Dannyb278,
I am a late onset hunter, I didn't pick up a rifle until I was 22 and now at 28 my passion for hunting has exploded and I am applying in multiple states and trying to get more involved in hunting community. I read a ton on the topics you described during my first couple of seasons and these are the books currently sitting on my "hunting" shelf. I think there are pieces of each that can foster a love and intellectual understanding of hunting and more generally environmental history.

Hope this thread keeps going as I would love to add to my shelf.

A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
American Buffalo –Steven Rinella
My Life with the Eskimo –Vilhjalmur Stefansson
Meat Eater – Steven Rinella
Death in the Long Grass-Peter Capstick
The Heart of a Hunter- Laurens van der Post
Boone: A Biography – Robert Morgan
A Hunter’s Heart- David Petersen
The Art of Hunting Big Game in North America- Jack O’Connor
Forty-Four Years a Hunter- Meshach Browning
Game Management – Aldo Leopold
The Animal Dialogues – Craig Childs
American Serengeti –Dan Flores
The Destruction of the Bison – Andrew Isenberg
Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World – Mark Kurlansky
Far Tortuga – Peter Matthiessen
The Old Man and the Sea- Ernest Hemingway
Moby Dick- Herman Melville
Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
The Complete Guide to Hunting Part 1 and 2 – Steven Rinella

Way to read up! You've got some great ones on here. Rinella is awesome, I'm a big fan of his.

Most of these are in my library as well, and will likely make the list.

A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
American Buffalo –Steven Rinella
Meat Eater – Steven Rinella
Death in the Long Grass-Peter Capstick
A Hunter’s Heart- David Petersen
The Art of Hunting Big Game in North America- Jack O’Connor
The Complete Guide to Hunting Part 1 and 2 – Steven Rinella.


I would also suggest anything by Jim Pozewitz, and Jim Harrison, especially Just Before Dark.

 

[JohnCushman]

I would also suggest Elknut's playbook...great elk information

 

[Deleted member 28227]

I will definitely add these my list of to read, thank goodness for amazon prime.

Along with the 7 you noted I would definitely add Childs "The Animal Dialogues" I don't think there is a book I have read that really captures those great experience that you would never have unless you are hunting, scouting, or just putting effort to get way back in off a trail. That book really speaks to the idea that time in the woods feeds the soul, and that just being out there is as much of what hunting is about as killing an animal.

This book more than anyone made me appreciate what I was doing and helped me enjoy my time out in the woods during my first 4 years of trying in vain to kill and elk.

 

[dannyb278]

Wllm, Its a bit of a heavy read, but if you are interested in a discussion on hunting ethics, check out "A quite place of violence"

https://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Place-...577&sr=8-1&keywords=a+quiet+place+of+violence

 

[Bomber]

Some great reads so far. Nice list.

I would add the three books from Valerius Geist:
Elk Country
Mule Deer Country
Wild Sheep Country

They're focused on animal biology much more than hunting, but that doesn't mean they're not helpful to hunters. "Elk Country", in particular, is a fascinating and informative book. The photography is world class, too.

 

[LCH]

Fred Bear's Field Notes.

"My Way of Becoming a Hunter", Robert Rockwell.

 

[Matt/VT]

I'm a big fan of Ted Kerasote's book 'Bloodties' for emerging adult hunters. Nice exploration of hunting from several angles.

 

[James Riley]

"Meditations on Hunting" by Jose Ortega y Gasset. Best book I ever read on hunting. Spanish Philosopher

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book, which I incorporated into a paper I wrote back in the 80s. I'll bold my favorite:

"Pushed by reason, man is condemned to go farther and farther away from nature, to construct in its place an artificial nature.

. . .

In the preoccupation with doing things as they should be done - which is morality - there is a line past which we begin to think that what is purely our whim or mania is necessary. We fall, therefore, into a new immorality, into the worst of all, which is a matter of not not knowing those very conditions without which things cannot be. This is mans supreme and devastating pride, which tends not to accept limits on his desires and supposes that reality lacks any structure of it's own which may be opposed to his will. This sin is the worst of all, so much so that the question of whether the content of that will is good or bad completely loses importance in the face of it. If you believe you can do whatever you like - even, for example, the supreme good, then you are, irretrievably a villain. The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when respect for what is has been exhausted.

. . .

Next to the atrocity of the demagogues, the stupidity of the moralist, or their total absence, is the chief cause of the division that today afflicts the human community. There is greater confusion than ever with regard to the norms which ought to govern the relations between men, to say nothing of those which could orient and regulate our treatment of the other realities present in our environment: the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal.

. . .

In itself life is insipid, because it is a simple "being there." So, for man, existing becomes a poetic task, like the playwright's or the novelist's: that of inventing a plot for his existence, giving it a character which will make it both suggestive and appealing. ... ... serious examination should lead us to realize how distasteful existence in the universe must be for a creature - man, for example - who finds it essential to divert himself.

. . .

...the air has another, more exquisite feel as it glides over the skin or enters the lungs, the rocks acquire a more expressive physiognomy, and the vegetation becomes loaded with meaning. But all this is due to the hunter, while he advances or waits crouching, feels tied through the earth to the animal he pursues, whether the animal is in view, hidden, or absent. The reader who is not a hunter may think that these last words are mere phraseology, simply a manner of speaking. But the hunter will not. They know very well that it is literally true: that when they are in the field the axis of the whole situation is that mystical union with the animal, a sensing and presentiment of it that automatically leads the hunter to perceive the environment from the point of view of the prey, without abandoning his own point of view. ... In that mystical union with the beast a contagion is immediately generated and the hunter begins to behave like the game. He will instinctively shrink from being seen; he will avoid all noise while traveling; he will perceive all his surroundings from the point of view of the animal, with the animals peculiar attention to detail. This is what I call being within the countryside. Only when we see through the drama that unfolds in the hunt can we absorb its particular richness. Articulated in that action which is a minor zoological tragedy, wind, light, temperature, ground contour, minerals, vegetation, all play a part; they are not simply there, as they are for the tourist or the botanist, but rather they function, they act. And they do not function as they do in agriculture, in the unilateral, exclusive, and abstract sense of their utility for harvest, but rather each intervenes in the drama of the hunt from within itself, with its concrete and full being."

Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting, Published by Charels Scribner's Sons

 

[North Country]

It seems like there are quite a few steve rinella fans on here but why no love for the scavenger's guide to haute cuisine?

That is honestly my favorite book by him. It's not a pure hunting story but gives you a good look at what the extreme end of wild game cooking looks like. He also describes an awesome elk hunt in Montana. Most importantly I think it drives home the point that wild game is best when you share meals with friends and family.

 

[airlocksniffer]

May have already been mentioned but Beyond Fair Chase by Jim Posewitz.

 

[Schaaf]

May have already been mentioned but Beyond Fair Chase by Jim Posewitz.

Definitely, I was given this book during Hunter's Safety and it still sits on my desk several times a year.

I am also a big fan of Val Geist. His writings on sheep have kept me hooked from the first time I opened one of his books.