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9780762780259

A Sportsman's Library 100 Essential, Engaging, Offbeat, and Occasionally Odd Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Reader

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780762780259

  • ISBN10:

    0762780258

  • Format: Paperback
  • Copyright: 2013-04-02
  • Publisher: Lyons Press
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Summary

Stephen J. Bodio's famous review column in Gray's Sporting Journal(1981-1992) included discussions on everything from hook and bullet how-tos to modern novels and science writing. Continuing in that tradition, A Sportsman's Library: 100 Essential, Engaging, Off-Beat, and Occasionally Odd Fishing and Hunting Books for the Adventurous Readerdraws on the same wide-ranging curiosity and encyclopedic knowledge of sporting literature that informed "Bodio's Review." From all the familiar, beloved classics-books by Izaak Walton, Robert Ruark, and Norman Maclean-to the hidden gems that no one but Bodio could have uncovered (ancient treatises on falconry, and modern considerations of the "catfish as metaphor"), each one of these short reviews is illustrated in color and presented in a browsable, easy-to-read format. Nowhere else could an explanation of the intricate beauty of a classic salmon fly rub elbows with a consideration of the craftsmanship of a Best London double. And rarely do you see the science of the hunt juxtaposed against the hunt's depiction in art. Introduction by television personality and outdoor writer Jameson Parker.

Author Biography

Stephen J. Bodio is a former book reviewer for Gray\u2019s Sporting Journal and the author of several books, among them A Rage for Falcons, Querencia, and Aloft: A Meditation on Pigeons and Pigeon-Flying. He is a longtime resident of Magdalena, New Mexico.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

 

Part 1: Fishing

 

Chapter 1: Sheridan Anderson, Curtis Creek Manifesto

Chapter 2: Jim Babb, Fly Fishing Fool

Chapter 3: Dame Juliana Berners, Book of St Albans, etc.

Chapter 4: Burkhard Bilger, Noodling for Flatheads

Chapter 5: Russell Chatham, Dark Waters

Chapter 6: David James Duncan, The River Why

Chapter 7: Negley Farson, Gone Fishing

Chapter 8: John Gierach, Trout Bum

Chapter 9: Arnold Gingrich, Well-tempered Angler

Chapter 10: Roderick Haig-Brown, A River Never Sleeps

Chapter 11: Ted Hughes, Collected Poems

Chapter 12: William Humphrey, My Moby Dick

Chapter 13: Luke Jennings, Blood Knot

Chapter 14: Nick Lyons, Full Creel

Chapter 15: Norman MacLean, A River Runs Through It

Chapter 16: Teresa Maggio, Mattanza

Chapter 17: Gavin Maxwell, Harpoon Venture

Chapter 18: John McDonald, Origins of Angling

Chapter 19: Thomas McGuane, 92 In the Shade

Chapter 20: Frank Mele, Small in the Eye of a River

Chapter 21: Harry Middleton, On the Spine of Time

Chapter 22:  Seth Norman, Meanderings of a Fly Fisherman

Chapter 23: Patrick O’Brien, The Last Pool

Chapter 24: Datus Proper, What the Trout Said

Chapter 25: M H Salmon, The Catfish as Metaphor

Chapter 26: Paul Schmookler, Rare and Unusual Fly Tying Materials: A Natural History

Chapter 27: O’Dell Shepard, Thy Rod and Thy Reel

Chapter 28: G. E. M. Skues, Way of a Trout

Chapter 29: Jeremy Wade, River Monsters

Chapter 30: Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler

                                   

WINGSHOOTING

 

Chapter 31: “BB” (Denys Watkins Pitchford): Manka the Sky Gypsy

Chapter 32: William Beebe, Pheasant Jungles

Chapter 33: Vance Bourjaily, Unnatural Enemy

Chapter 34: Tom Davis, The Tattered Autumn Sky

Chapter 35: George Bird Evans, The Upland Shooting Life

Chapter 36: Charles Fergus, A Rough Shooting Dog

Chapter 37: William Harnden Foster, New England Grouse Shooting

Chapter 38: Caroline Gordon, Aleck Maury, Sportsman

Chapter 39: Col. Peter Hawker, Instructions to Young Sportsmen…

Chapter 40: Van Campen Heilner, American Duck Shooting

Chapter 41: “Mr.” Markland, The Art of Shooting Flying

Chapter 42: Timothy Murphy, A Hunter’s Log

Chapter 43: Datus Proper, Pheasants of the Mind

Chapter 44: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek

Chapter 45: Ivan Turgenev, Sportsman’s Notebooks

Chapter 46: Guy de la Valdene, The Fragrance of Grass

Chapter 47: Charley Waterman, Gun Dogs and Bird Guns

 

 

GENERAL HUNTING, GUNS, TRAVEL,  MIXED, & MISCELLANEOUS

(includes falconry and some odd fishing)

 

Chapter 48: Roy Chapman Andrews, Across Mongolian Plains

Chapter 49: V. K. Arseniev, Dersu the Trapper

Chapter 50: John Barsness, The Life of the Hunt

Chapter 51: Peter Beard, The End of the Game

Chapter 52: W. D. M. Bell, Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter

Chapter 53: Caroline Blackwood, In the Pink

Chapter 54: Angus Cameron & Judith Jones: LL Bean Game & Fish Cookbook

Chapter 55: Jim Corbett, Maneaters of Kumaon

Chapter 56: Frank & John Craighead, Life With an Indian Prince

Chapter 57: Isaak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Out of Africa

Chapter 58: William Faulkner, The Big Woods

Chapter 59: Emperor Frederick II, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus

Chapter 60: John Graves, The Last Running

Chapter 61: Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art

Chapter 62: John Haines, The Stars, The Snows, The Fire

Chapter 63: Frances Hamerstrom, Is She Coming Too?

Chapter 64: Jim Harrison, Just Before Dark

Chapter 65: MacDonald Hastings, The Shotgun

Chapter 66: The Helmericks, We Live in the Arctic

Chapter 67: Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa

Chapter 68: George Leonard Herter, Bull Cook and Authentic Historical recipes and Practices;

Chapter 69: Frank Hibben, Hunting American Lions

Chapter 70: Geoffrey Household, Dance of the Dwarves

Chapter 71: William Humphrey, Home From the Hill

Chapter 72: Steve Hunter, Pale Horse Coming

Chapter 73: Joe Hutto, Illumination in the Flatwoods

Chapter 74: C. J. P. Ionides, A Hunter’s Story

Chapter 75: Robert F.  Jones, Blood Sport

Chapter 76: Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac

Chapter 77: Dan Mannix, A Sporting Chance

Chapter 78: Thomas McGuane, An Outside Chance

Chapter 79: Thomas McIntyre, Seasons and Days

Chapter 80: Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Chapter 81: Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Hunting

Chapter 82: Jack O’Connor, Hunting in the Southwest

Chapter 83: Rebecca O’Connor, Lift

Chapter 84: Brian Plummer, Diary of a Rat Hunting Man

Chapter 85: Saxton Pope, Hunting With the Bow and Arrow

Chapter 86: Mikhail Prishvin, Nature’s Diary

Chapter 87: Steven Rinella, The Scavenger’s Guide to Haut Cuisine

Chapter 88: Teddy Roosevelt, Wilderness Hunter

Chapter 89: John Rowlands, Cache Lake Country

Chapter 99: Robert Ruark, Something of Value

Chapter 91: Franklin Russell, The Hunting Animal

Chapter 92: Ernest Thompson Seton, Lives of the Hunted

Chapter 93: Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson, A Woman Tenderfoot

Chapter 94: Paul Shepard, The Tender Carnivore and The Sacred Game

Chapter 95: Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Old Way

Chapter 96: John Vaillant, The Tiger

Chapter 97: Brian Vesey-FitzGerald, It’s My Delight

Chapter 98: T. H. White, The Goshawk

Chapter 99: T. H, White, Gone to Ground

Chapter 100: Colin Willock, The Gun Punt Adventure 

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

Excerpt

 

Life With an Indian Prince

By John J Craighead and Frank C. Craighead, Jr.

Hancock House

January, 2001

 

John Craighead and his twin brother Frank, lifelong naturalists, explorers, and conservationists, may be best known for their studies of the grizzly in Yellowstone in the sixties and seventies.  But their work started in the thirties when, as teenagers, they studied and photographed birds of prey for theNational Geographic.  Their article led to a book contract forHawks in the Hand(1939) and an invitation from an Indian Prince, R.S. Dharmakumarsinjhi ("Bapa") to come and see how falconers in India still carried on  a tradition that was hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old.

They passed into a world that, despite Daimlers and swimming pools, was still medieval.  From October 1940 until April of 1941 they traveled, photographed and filmed everything from falconry and coursing with trained cheetahs to a royal  wedding.  They never dreamed that, soon after their return, the flames of World War II and the passions of Indian Independence would sweep away the entire society that they had glimpsed.  The brothers published a short article, "Life With an Indian Prince," in theNationalGeographic, and went off to train naval pilots for survival in the South Seas.

Although they made a film forNational Geographic, it was never released.  About fifty years later, Frank Craighead delivered a detailed day-to-day diary of the trip, together with hundreds of color slides, to S. Kent Carnie of the Archives of  Falconry in Boise, Idaho.  Carnie realized that, rather than an obscure text of interest only to falconers and bird of prey specialists, he had his hands on something like a time machine, an intimate glimpse into the high culture of the Raj.  The Archives have made every effort to produce a book worthy of the material, and have succeeded magnificently.Lifeis a lavish and oversized volume of 277 pages printed on fine paper and with color photographs on virtually every page and backed up by a detailed glossary. 

The Craigheads' diaries begin at the trip's start in Pennsylvania . The brothers drive across the country (stopping to climb in the Tetons) then embark from San Francisco on thePresident Cleveland. During the crossing they paint vivid, innocent pictures of prewar South Seas travel, and photograph such things as a Hong Kong still dominated by forested hills, early reminders to the present-day reader of how much the world has changed.

  But the bulk of the book details a sporting season in western India.  The Craigheads participate in trapping and training a princely team of falcons and goshawks (Bapa alone has a team of 33 birds, all attended by professional falconers) using methods unchanged since the dawn of falconry.  They ride on bullock carts with trained cheetahs to pursue blackbuck antelope.  They cross India to attend a royal wedding complete with a retinue of costumed elephants and a ritual lion hunt in the formally managed Gir forest.  Finally, they take their team of trained birds out to hunt hare and partridge, heron and plover, even such medieval quarry as ibis and kite.

Readers should realize that,  despite all the hunting, British India's wildlife was intensely managed and conserved.  The Gir forest lions survive today because they were preserved for the Maharajas' hunts.  Post-Independence chaos and unrestrained population growth have reduced the wildlife of Bhavnagar, and all India, to a ghostly remnant of what existed in 1940.  Bapa devoted the rest of his life to conservation and the preservation of endangered species, as did the Craigheads.

But this book is a grand testimony to a time when the problems of the late Twentieth Century were still on the horizon.  The lives of the upper classes were the same as they had been for centuries, except for a few modern conveniences, and it was possible to believe that this life could go on indefinitely. This bright window into the past should be of interest to all falconers and naturalists, but also to historians, anthropologists, and anyone curious about lost customs and cultures.

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