Category: Book reviews

Arctic Red River, Gana River, Nahanni Butte, South Nahanni, Ram Head. Any sheephunter knows what we are talking about. NWT Outfitters, MacKenzie Mountains, Redstone River. Famous names, famous outfitters. Dall sheep, moose, caribou. The far North of the continent.

A few quick trips by jet and propeller plains will get you there, to the heart of the MacKenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories, Canada. A comfortable lodge in the middle of nowhere, and a crew of good people awaits. It’s like they have always been there, ready to provide a trip of lifetime to the traveling hunter who dreams of experiencing the North country.

If you had arrived there in the early 1960s, things would have looked slightly different. The Government of the NWT had just decided to open the MacKenzie Mountains to outfitted hunting, and the first pioneers were chosing their areas, and trying to figure out not only how to get there, and get their hunters in and out, but also how to establish a permanent presence in a place far from infrastructure and outside support.

Who were these folks, that jumped into this adventure with both feet? How did they cope? Who worked for them as their guides? What about the bush pilots, wranglers, cooks, government staff? What are their stories? Paul Deuling, in what must have been a gargantuan task, set out to document the history of the pioneers, the old-timers, while most of them are still around, as well as the adventures of those that came after them. Some stayed one or two years, others almost a lifetime, but all of them helped shape the outfitting in the industry in the NWT that it is now.

The 407 pages that this book is long are not enough to capture all the adventures. Many of the individuals portrayed in this book could likely write a book about their lives that would not be boring. In an attempt to be all-inclusive, no doubt sacrifices had to be made in terms of space.

At times, especially when describing the first few years of each outfit, the information relayed becomes a bit repetitive, but mostly this book provides a glimpse into a way of life that many of us secretly dream or have dreamed about at some point.

It is probably worth to own this book as a hardcover paper copy, just to leaf through it and look at the pictures. However, if you are cheap (like me) or on budget, it is also available as an e-book in Kindle format. In order to best show the photos that sometimes go across two pages, the e-book shows two pages at ones, reducing the font to a size that I cannot read without glasses on my iPad. I cannot imagine reading this on a phone or a small- sized reader.

You can order the book here or on Amazon.

If you are a hunter, you have most likely been confronted with questions about the drivers that send you afield, either spit at you dripping with the venom of the convinced anti-hunter, with no expectation of a reasonable answer, or inquisitive, by an open-minded non-hunter, who is seeking to understand. You may have any number of ready-to-go responses that cover both situations. If you take the trouble to read “A Hunter’s Heart – Honest Essays on Blood Sport” cover to cover, all of your standard replies will be challenged.

The book contains 41 essays, that range from memories from the field and accounts of personal experience and emotional evolution in hunting, to analysis of arguments and ethics. If all you want to read are stories that highlight the accomplishments and benefits of hunting and hunters, you will not like this book. If you like to see confirmed in writing that anything in hunting, be it technological or behavioral, as long as it is legal, is sufficient justification for our actions, you have picked the wrong read. If you want to learn about what has driven others into or away from the pursuit of hunting, if you want to discover how some of our go-to arguments in defense of hunting sound hypocritical to some non-hunters, but also if you are keen to read good reasoning in favour of hunting, this might be the book for you.

It is hard to summarize this work in a few paragraphs, because its constituent chapters are so divergent in nature. Some are uneasy to read, because they hold up a mirror that doesn’t always show the hunter in the best light. Read them anyway, and see how others might see us. You may not read this book from beginning to end in a captivated daze, as you might an adventure story, and probably that is good, because the food for thought offered is best consumed in bite-size chunks. That said, I read it quickly, and read it whole, and enjoyed it, and feel that I need to read it again.

A lot of the material could have been written with the traditional bowhunter in mind, as it speaks of the journey that many of us have gone through, seeking experiences rather than the quickest way to a kill, finding challenge in doing with less technology instead of adopting more.

Published 20 years ago, some observations are a bit dated, but most are as relevant today as they were then. A highly recommended read for anyone willing to be challenged in their thinking, and looking for a deeper understanding of the motives that drive a hunter, and the image we uphold to the outside world.

The book is still available from a number of outlets, such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

FD

 

 

Longbows in the Far North

An Archer’s Adventures in Alaska & Siberia

Donnall Thomas Jr.

Stackpole Books

ISBN 978-0-8117-3434-9

 

If you are a sucker for well-written bow hunting stories, especially those taking place in the North country, and you are looking for a good read, seek no more; you have found one. E. Donnall Thomas Jr. spins an enjoyable yarn, has lived and hunted Alaska long enough to lend credibility to his stories, and he hunts with a longbow. He has put together a great collection of tales and thoughts in his book “Longbows in the Far North – An Archer’s Adventures in Alaska & Siberia”.

Whether it is accounts of black bear, sitka blacktail, caribou or moose hunts in Alaska, exploratory hunts in Siberia for brown bear and snow sheep, or more philosophical musings about the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, or the use of archery equipment for dangerous game hunting, his stories do not tire.

These are not your average “I came, I saw, I killed” kind of stories, but engaging tales, with the right amount of introspection. My favourite chapter describes his meeting with a small family of caribou herders amidst a chain of mountains with an unpronounceable name in the middle of Siberia.

Being 131 pages in length, my only regret is that the book isn’t twice as long.

You can buy a used copy on Amazon for the price of two hunting magazines: https://www.amazon.com/Longbows-Far-North-Publisher-Stackpole

 

Long before Saxton Pope and Art Young met Ishi, and learned from him about making bows and hunting with them, other fellows had taken to the stick and string for their “sporting” needs. We are fortunately that some of those took the trouble to write about their adventures. They speak of vastly different times, where wildlife’s abundance was seemingly endless, and where secrets lay behind the boundaries of civilization. Time proceeded at a different pace, and for those with the inclination and a modicum of resources, venturing forth into unknown lands and discovering its hidden treasures was only bound by one’s perseverance/

J. Maurice Thompson, and his brother Will, young men after the ending of the American Civil War, were two of those inteprid souls, and in the book “The Witchery of Archery” described their adventures. It is predominantly Maurice doing the writing, but the book is concluded by a reprint of an article by Will’s hand, printed in Forest and Stream in 1915.

A lot of their adventuring took place in Florida, where they chased prey that would give the 21st century ornithologist or bird watcher severe heartache. Woodpeckers, white and other herons, plovers, ducks of all kind, everything was fair game. In fact, Maurice himself states it this way:

“Anything that flies, swims, climbs or runs is game for the archer. He shoots at everything, from a tom-tit to a hawk or an eagle, from a ground-squirrel to a deer. He is out for sport, and means to have it.”

Times have changed a bit since then, and killing herons to make a buck by selling the feathers is no longer something deemed appropriate or in fact legal. But the essence of bow hunting hasn’t changed much over the course of a hundred and fifty years:

“To be a successful hunter with the bow, you must know perfectly all the habits of your game; you must be stealthy and sly as an Indian, not the least excitable, patient, watchful, storing up in your memory every item of experience; and, above all, you must be keen sighted and steady of hand. For to get within good bow-shot of your game is of the first value, and scarcely second to this is the power of instantly centring all your faculties in the act of shooting.”

Maurice and Will made sure that their firepower matched the number of opportunities, on their multi-week trips: “Our arrows, about three hundred in number…”. A bow hunter these days may feel he has things covered if he brings a dozen on an extended trip.

I enjoyed this book. The language, as with many of the adventure/travel literature of that era, is a bit dry, and there are more than a few words that I had to look up in the dictionary, but the stories tickle the imagination. I paid around five dollars at Amazon for a Kindle edition (which makes looking up the big words as easy as touching the word on your screen), but a free version is available at www.archerylibrary.com/books/witchery/