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If the captivating smile of a young Hemingway crouched over a lion isn't enough to pull you inside the covers of The Greatest Hunting Stories Ever Told, the remarkable prose you'll find throughout its pages will. Its target is serious writing, and it bags some powerful literary prey. Lamar Underwood, long an editor at Sports Afield and Outdoors, has assembled a stellar collection from the pens of Hemingway (naturally), Faulkner, Turgenev, Thomas McGuane, Vance Bourjaily, Patrick O'Brian, Robert Ruark, and Teddy Roosevelt, all of whose prose hunts for big answers as well as big game.
While clearly addressed to the fraternity of hunters, the essays and stories in this collection transcend the boundaries of the field. McGuane, writing passionately about how the hunt for food defines who we are in "The Heart of the Game," observes, as Sitting Bull did before him, "when the buffalo are gone, we will hunt mice, for we are hunters and we want our freedom." Hemingway, in "Remembering Shooting-Flying," an Esquire column from 1935, keeps world affairs in perspective when he wonders "how the snipe fly in Russia now and whether shooting pheasants is counter-revolutionary." "The Forest and the Steppe" is one of Turgenev's evocative "Hunter's Sketches"; evocative also defines "Mister Howard Was a Real Gent," one of Ruark's marvelous "Old Man and the Boy" contributions to Field & Stream.
Given the overall subject, there is plenty of sporting drama throughout, but also plenty of thoughtful reflection, and absolutely magnificent storytelling, which is as it should be. When you set your sights on the greatest, your aim needs to be true. --Jeff Silverman
Review
"Every once in a while, a book publisher comes up with a great concept for a series of books that deserve more than superficial recognition. Such a series is "The Greatest Hunting Stories Ever Told", anthologies that should win places on many bedside tables. On the long winter nights that lie ahead, such stories make great reading."--The Lexington County Chronicle
"This is a book wrapped in adventure with nostalgia, a book with writing that both soothes and crackles. Besides being a solid volume on its own, it serves as a fine introduction to a variety of writers readers may pursue at length" -- St. Mary''s Press
"Few would quarrel with the selection of any of the 29 writers included as among the best in the game. ...The stories tell about the planning, the quests, the challenges, and the experiences that make hunting what it is. Hunters will find many passages that bring back recollections of their treasured moments in camp with good friends. Other stories may take readers to place and times they will visit only in their dreams" -- The Conservationist
Book Description
"I don''t regard nature as a spectator sport." -Ed Zern, 1985
Hunting is a serious business-but it''s also about camaraderie, achievements and failures, seeing new places, and revisiting cherished ones. The true stories here feature a variety of game, in locations that range from high Yukon Territory mountain peaks to lowland swamps off of Mobile Bay, Alabama.
This is an indispensable volume for all lovers and students of the natural world. If your definition of home includes fields and marshes, creeks and river bottoms, plains and mountains, consider this required reading.
From the Publisher
Also available is the companion book The Greatest Fishing Stories Ever Told.
From the Back Cover
Hunting is a serious business - it�2s also about camaraderie, achievements, and failures, seeing new places, and revisiting cherished ones. The true stories here feature a variety of game, in locations that range from high Yukon Territory mountain peaks to lowland swamps off Mobile Bay, Alabama.
This is an indispensable volume for all lovers and students of the natural world. If your definition of home includes fields and marshes, creeks and river bottoms, plains and mountains, consider this required reading.
About the Author
LAMAR UNDERWOOD, former Editor-in-Chief of Sports Afield and Outdoor Life magazines, is presently Editorial Director of the Outdoor Magazine Group of Harris Publications in New York. He has edited The Greatest Fishing Stories Ever Told, Man Eaters, The Bass Almanac, and The Quotable Soldier. He is the author of the novel, On Dangerous Ground.
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