Not new but a great book

Hitch

Well-known member
Here's a book certainly to be of interest to many of you. It's not a new book, so some of you may already have read it. But the third edition is expanded and worth the time, even if you have already read a previous edition.

I wrote Dr. Reiger after reading his book. Here is a portion of the email recieved in reply.

Dear John,
Thank you for that wonderful e-mail. I'm very happy that you found the book so helpful.
I began waterfowl hunting on Lake Okeechobee in the 1950s, when I was a teenager. The lake was then almost pristine and the hunting was superb. My two older brothers (one of whom is indeed George Reiger) and I joined our father out on the edge of the open water and shot mainly ringnecks and lesser scaup. If we had only stopped closer to the dike as we headed out of Fisheating Creek, we would have had better shooting on puddle ducks, but as you know, ringnecks fly like bats out of hell and are a real challenge to kill cleanly. We also liked them because they decoy so nicely.
It was my oldest brother Tony, not George, who got us all into hunting, and when I shot my first duck on the lake, a hen ringneck, his only comment to me when I brought it back to the blind, was, "Did you shoot it flying?" Thus, it was Tony who not only introduced me to the gift of hunting but to what I call in the book "the code of the sportsman."
After getting my Ph.D. in 1970, I taught at the University of Miami for twelve years and did a lot of duck hunting in south Florida, especially on Lake Trafford. Before the bass fishermen poisoned the lake to get rid of "excess weeds," Trafford often produced tremendous shooting.

Best regards,
John

---------------------------
As Dr. Reiger noted, George Reiger is his brother. Dr. John Reiger shares his brother's talent for writing, IMO. Dr. Reiger's book is a fast and great read...things every hunter and waterfowler should know.

Here is a link to his book.

AmericanSportsmenOriginsConservatio.gif


http://www.amazon.com/...Reiger/dp/0870714872

You may also find this interesting...here is a link to an interview Dr. Reiger gave to the Sierra Club...

http://www.sierraclub.org/...rtsmen/people/reiger

Hitch
 
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Very interesting, think Ill pick it up for a stocking stuffer for Blake. He has been reading everything he can get his hands on lately!

Wonder if it would be at my local book shop...

Thanks for sharing!

Bridget
 
Very interesting, think Ill pick it up for a stocking stuffer for Blake. He has been reading everything he can get his hands on lately!

Wonder if it would be at my local book shop...

Thanks for sharing!

Bridget


Check out AbeBooks.com. They deal in used books but the prices are sometimes downright ridiculously low. I've paid as little as a buck for books.
 
but I can't imagine a person of Blake's age enjoying it.....

For someone of Blake's age I'd suggest stuff with some "adventure" in it....some association with people his own age so that he can relate.....something along the lines of "Ruark's "The Old Man and The Boy", "the Old Man's Boy Grows Older"

Anything by Jim Kjlegard, (not well know these days but he wrote some "excellent" young adult books-think BIG RED-along with an excellent duck hunting oriented book about a Lab-STORMY).

Throw in some Joseph Wharton Lippincott, (to this day THE WOLF KING, WILDERNESS CHAMPION and THE WAHOO BOBCAT remain on my ALL TIME FAVORITE "Blake's age" reads and I make it a point still to re-read them every few years)...

Both Lippincott and Kjelgard tend to be a bit "anthropomorphic" in the writing but thats liveable to me in that age range and particularly so given that they were written in the 50's when this was common in writing..

Earnest Thomas Seton's and Edwin Way Teale's stuff, (like the SEASON's series), will turn the boy into a Naturalist if he has any tendancies in that direction). Trapline's North by Steven Albris for a great story of the experiences of a young man not that much older than Blake in the winter woods.

If you want to stick with Duck Hunting then the "fiction" of Gordon McQuarrie will surely interest him....enough duck shooting to keep anybody happy and he'll find out what it was like back in the "old days" when kids were "used" instead of being "pampered"....

Once upon a time all of the books above could be found in the library, both school and public, but these days you rarely see them, (check the CARD CATALOG--buwahahahaah--do they still have those), to be sure they aren't in the basement.

Just some thouughts on what might be of interest to a young man based on what I enjoyed at the same age.....

Steve
 
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Bridget,
I have to agree with Steve on the Jim Kjlegard books. What I will tell you is don't get him just one. I think I read everyone of the books that he wrote.

Jim
 
Thanks for the input guys, Ill look into those as well..

Blake really surprises me sometimes with his thirst for knowledge of the outdoors, hunting, and its heritage. Fiction and non fiction...
He could not give two shakes for school but will sit and read a 300 page book about hunting from darn near start to finish in one sitting.


Bridget
 
John got mad/upset one day at school when he told his teacher that he read a book on Lewis and Clark that was 150 pages and he finished it,,,,, in two months. He and I read a little each night. Well he came home, after a class mate said that was nothing, she had read the Harry Potter in a month. The kid wouldnt put that book down and finished it in a week.
Two years later, just like Blake he is nose in a book whenever he can. I make sure the mix includes hunting/fishing/ocean adventure stuff to balance the OTHER.

Thanks for the tips Mr Sutton. I will add them to the list for the holiday.
 
Marjorie Kenan Rawlings, and "Black Duck Spring" by Bruce Wright....

and if you want both the "young adult" and you to be entertained try...

"Death in the Long Grass" by Peter Hathaway Capstick....what person isn't fascinated, thrilled and slightly scared by excellent telling of such "pleasantries" as being trapped in a native hut while a prode of lions "licks" the skin off of your partners skull just outside the hut?....all of Capsticks stuff is worth reading I picked this one since there's "lots" of "mayhem".........(these stories are WAY BETTER read out loud around a campfire than the stroy about the guy with the hook EVER WAS).....

In the same vein...."ALASKA BEAR TALES" and "AKBT II" by Larry Kaniut.....the same as above only these from Alaska......

A couple of "coming of age" books that adults will like as much as the youngsters....

"The Earth is Enough"--Harry Middleton

"Goodbye My Lady" and "The Biscuit Eater"--by James Street--this one is a REAL sleeper and I'd be really surprised to hear anyone else say they are familiar with it. It was made into a GREAT movie starring Walter Brennan, Sydney Poitier and Brandon DeWilde, (WE LOVE YOU SHANE), that shows once in a great while and should be seen by anyone that loves dog stories told by someone other than Disney)

One more...."WANDERER ON MY NATIVE SHORE" by George Reiger.....not specifically a "young adult" book this one should be MUST READING by anyone that "lives the life" on the Eastern Seaboard....fascinating to adults and anyone, of any age, that has a "naturalists" view.

Steve
 
Sounds like a good book Hitch. You know I love reading any history books and always have and the thing that always broke my heart was the re-occuring theme of "the hunting used to be good here." Part of the reason I moved up north was the live in that time. There are definately challenges to raising a family so far away from extended family and civilization, but I can't help but wonder if I love it here because it still is what down south used to be. It really hits me when I travel through the prairies in the summer and can see all the great places for bison to live, but there ain't never going to be any anymore. It seems that with access comes over harvesting of any resource in the New World, and its always been that way. I'm happy to live in a place with crappy boat launches and large tracts of roadless country, even if it is unaccessible to me without a plane or a horse.

I would love to have seen the wilderness that Florida was even 100 yrs ago. Talk about inaccessible. I guess gas boat motors would have been an amazing invention to get a guy way back into never seen places.

MIke
 
The Larry Kanuit Bear Tales is a cool book. The stories are just short enough to say "well just one more before I put it down". I'll never forget the one about the fellows fishing pulling up to the shore to pick some blueberries, and how the ones in the boat watched as the guy on shore lost his head in one swipe.

I love the old stories Mike. I was just posting on another forum about Robert B. Roosevelt's Game and Water-Birds of Florida, and Hallock's Camplife in Florida, or also Camping and Cruising in Florida by Henshall...tales of Florida in the late 1800s...the well to do would sail here in their yachts in the winter; camp, tramp, hunt and fish. They would sail the intercoastal in small skiffs to make there way ashore and cruise or paddle the St Johns even further into the wilderness that was.

Hitch
 
Steve has a great list. Every boy needs their own copy of "The Old Man and the Boy" and "The Old Man's Boy Grows Older." Blake will love any of Ruark's books. Many are out of print and can be hard to find.

Capstick is almost as good. I have several of his "Death in the..." books in paperback and have taken them hunting. There is nothing like sitting in a treestand in a Florida swamp as it gets dark after reading some Capstick.

A compliation of short stories put together by Jim Casada called "River God's and Spotted Devils" is good. Check out Safari Press for other books Blake will like.

"The Bear" by William Faulkner is great and scary. Southern swamps seem to be especially scary to us yankees.

"The Yearling" and "Cross Creek Grove" by Marjorie Kinan Rawlings are good. When I lived in Florida I did a lot of hunting around Cross Creek. It was a love/fear relationship with this yankee and the schwamp!

There is also Hemingway, "The Old Man and the Sea" and many others.

I'm sure more will come to me later,

Tom
 
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