daverichey September 6th, 2009

TITLE: Crossbow Hunting
AUTHOR: by William Hovey Smith
PUBLISHER: Stackpole Books
DISTRIBUTOR: Stackpole Books
CONTACT: Stackpole Books5067 Ritter Road, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

WEBSITE: Stackpole Books web site
ISBN: 978-0-8117-3311-4
COST: $19.95 + S/H; paperback

Crossbow hunting has taken the hunting world by storm, and whether some sportsmen love or detest it, is immaterial. Those who argue against crossbow hunting often lean toward traditional archery’s long bow and recurve. Sadly, there is no right or wrong way to hunt with a bow. It all boils down to personal preference and one’s ability to shoot straight.

Whether they or anyone wish to argue the point, the average age of hunters today is growing older. Many sportsmen no longer can pull a recurve to full draw yet others argue that a crossbow is really not a bow. It shoots an arrow, and unlike other bows, this bow is shot from the shoulder. Some arguments for or against crossbow use have become volatile.

This book debunks many of the common myths. For instance, it is not an ideal poachers weapon, even though it is relatively silent. It loses its accuracy beyond 40 yards, and because of the shorter arrow, it also loses its velocity very quickly, making down-range shots less accurate than many people believe. The heaviness of a crossbow is another detriment.

It is, however, a salvation for those bow hunters who no longer can pull and shoot a more conventional bow. It’s ideal for the elderly, the infirm and for youthful hunters with strength problems.

This book covers the evolution of different crossbows on the market today, and how to select the right arrow, target point, broadheads and sights. It covers shooting and hunting techniques for deer, bear, hogs and elk.

It also covers classic crossbow hunts for big game in Africa, Australia and Canada for a variety of big game.

A battle has brewed for many years here in Michigan and in other states. In Michigan, as just one example, a group of approximately 2,000 people have kept everyone who is healthy, and many who are not, from hunting with a crossbow unless they were legally certified as being unable to shoot a regular bow.

George Gardner, the innovator of the 10 Point crossbow company, was unable to hunt with a crossbow for many years because his physical problems were not distinctly addressed by the existing rules. Now, Michigan has allowed a more general and more liberal law about crossbow hunting for the 2009-2010 season, and many more elderly or infirm hunters are welcoming the change.

Some of those folks who fought against crossbows in Michigan may find themselves in a position in the years to come where the only way they could hunt would be with a crossbow. Also, this book even has a chapter on cooking wild game.

This book describes in reasonable depth the various manufacturers of crossbows in the United States. It discusses hunts to Africa and Australia, and includes one to Canada’s Northwest Territories for musk oxen.

The controversy over the use of a crossbow may rage on for years but it mostly falls on deaf ears except for some traditional bow hunters. Many traditionalists argue that the use of these modern imitations of medieval weapons will cause an erosion in the ethics and proper respect for the game being hunted.

Personally, I’ll continue to hunt with my compound bow. However, for those who choose a crossbow because of health reasons, I’m all for them to hunt with this now-legal but old-fashioned method. People will grow accustomed to the bow, and whether I agree or disagree with the crossbow issue is immaterial.

Let’s face it, folks. We’ve lost some hunters over the year. This use of crossbows could bring a resurgence of enthusiasm and interest for hunting among our older sportsmen. We need to save as many of these hunters as possible.

This book makes a solid case for crossbows for hunting. Now that it’s legal in Michigan, each and every hunter must make a personal decision. It’s very possible that this book could provide the knowledge needed for hunters to make a logical and wise decision before buying a crossbow.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Tags: archery, book, Crossbow Hunting, dave richey, disabled hunter, hunt, hunting, opportunity, publsher, review, stackpole books, William Hovey Smith

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daverichey August 26th, 2009

African Experience: A Guide To Modern Safaris by Craig Boddington.

Published by Safari Press Inc., 15621 Chemical Lane, Building B, Huntington Beach, CA 92649-1506. 
e-Mail at < info@safaripress.com >.
Phone (714) 894-9080.
$39.95 only from the publisher.
Safari Press books are not sold through bookstores, and are available only from the publisher.

Craig Boddington’s name has been indelibly linked with Africa, and writing about African big-game hunting, for many years. He has become North America’s most well-known expert on hunting wild game on the Dark Continent, and he has many safaris under his belt and the experiences needed to write well on this topic.

This is just one of many books Boddington has written about hunting in Africa, and it’s possible that African Experience may be one of his finest  works. No other continent has as many varieties of big game and such diversified terrain as Africa.

It also could be said that no other continent has undergone as much change and upheaval as African over the past 50 years. Here, Boddington takes us through the safari industry as it emerged after World War II, suffered through a decline in the 1970s, and came back into glory over the past two to three decades.

African Experience takes the reader through this renaissance to become the vibrant and vital industry it is today. Read about the day when Kenya offered glorious hunting to the reopening of Chad. It covers all big-game animals, including the Big Five and the much smaller plains game.

It offers detailed information on game such as the antelope, bongo, buffalo, bushbuck, duiker, eland, elephant, greater and lesser kudu, ibex,  leopard, lion, mountain nyala, nyala, oryx, rhino, roan antelope, sable, sitatunga, waterbuck, zebra and many others.

This 302 page, color photo illustrated book is filled with valuable information that can show a prospective hunter how to plan a trip, how to stretch your money wisely, how to plan a successful hunt, what to do and what not to do. There even is a chapter that discusses  “safari manners.”

This title should become the indispensable go-to book, and it presents a great  history of the Africa safari as well as thrilling author anecdotes about hunts. Boddington has spent most of his adult life traveling through Africa, and hunting large and small game with a variety of well-known outfitters and professional hunters.

My advice for anyone contemplating a hunting trip to Africa is to buy this book, and read it thoroughly. Lay it aside for a week or two, read and study it again, and begin planning your hunt of a lifetime. It is as essential to a successful African hunt as a straight-shooting firearm.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Tags: africa, African, Boddington, Book Reviews, dave richey, experience, guide, hunt, hunting, Michigan, outdoors, safari

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daverichey January 4th, 2009

TITLE: Hunting The American West: The Pursuit Of Big Game For Life, Profit, And Sport, 1800-1900
AUTHOR: by Richard C. Rattenbury
PUBLISHER: Boone & Crocket Club
DISTRIBUTOR: Boone & Crocket Club
CONTACT:
Boone & Crocket Club
250 Station Drive
Missoula, MT 59801
ISBN 978-0-940864-60-3
PHONE (406) 542-1888
WEBSITE Boone & Crocket Club

COST $49.95 plus shipping

Books published by the Boone & Crockett Club are highly sought after, collectible, usually appreciate in value, and are lavish productions. This book is no different: it is big, and was printed in an oblong format with decorated endpapers and brown paper covered boards with dark brown titles and an attractive dust jacket.

The book spans all forms of hunting in the United States and its mainland territories during the 19th century from 1800 to 1900. This was the heyday of western big-game hunting, and it featured some tragic wildlife slaughters but it also spawned conservationists like President Teddy Roosevelt, who founded the famed Boone & Crockett Club.

This is something much more than a large picture book. It is a handsome piece of work that chronicles the beginnings of the conservation movement. It also was a period of western expansion, an era of exploration and the opening up of the western states and territories to hunting, much of which occurred in areas where no one other than a Native American may have once trod to hunt for meat to feed his family.

This book, with its superb narrative, tells us that most of the hunting was for the more abundant of game species: antelope, bears, bison, deer, elk and sheep. Wonderful historic illustrations fill the book with old color paintings and photographs, and black-and-white drawings and photos.

In 396 pages, there are nine chapters: The Object Of The Chase; The Subsistence Hunters; The Sport Hunters (1800-1865); The Arms Of The Chase; The Market Hunters; The Sport Hunters; The Image Of The Chase; The Sport Hunters (from 1865-1900); and The Hunter-Naturalists. A lengthy bibliography comes at the end of the book, and offers readers the opportunity to learn more about hunting books published during that era.

This is a book to get lost in, to take a long look at where hunting has come from and we have good ideas of where it will be going in the future with other conservationists and sportsmen leading the way.

Many of the color illustrations were once used as wildlife art on the covers of catalogs produced by firearm manufacturers. These illustrations stir the soul of present-day hunters, just as they did for our fore-fathers.

This book covers a time of big-game abundance in most western areas, and chronicles the gradual decline of wild bison and other game. Once sportsmen saw game numbers sliding downward, many lobbied for more and greater protection against market hunting. It set the stage for hunting seasons and a limit to what a hunter could kill.

Make no mistake about it: this is a big book. Richly illustrated, and filled with documentation of the work of some of the artists and photographers who roamed the west recording in drawings and photos, the passing of one era of plenty to another that marked the beginning of conservation clubs and a greater sense of protection for our natural resources.

The Boone & Crockett Club, founded by Teddy Roosevelt and friends, marked the real beginning of the major upswing of a national conscience about our wildlife resources and how our big-game was hunted. This is a wonderful historical look, through words and images, at what hunting was during the 19th century in the west.

It is a book that tells a great story, and it’s one that all sportsmen should read.

Tags: "B&C Club", "big game", "Richard Rattenbury", america, american, boone, crockett, dave richey, hunting, west

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daverichey December 8th, 2008

TITLE: Death Roe

AUTHOR: Joe Heywood
PUBLISHER: The Lyons Press
DISTRIBUTOR: Globe Pequot Press, 246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437-0480
CONTACT: Globe Pequot Press, 246 Goose Lane, Guilford, CT 06437-0480

WEBSITE: Globe Pequot Press
WEBSITE: Authors Website
COST $24.95 + S/H; Hardcover book with dust jacket

This is the sixth book in Heywood’s highly acclaimed Woods Copy Mystery Series. The chief focus of each Woods Cop book is Grady Service, a hard-nosed, rawboned conservation officer and detective for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Most of his earlier books have dealt with Service’s painstaking challenges to enforce fish & game laws in the Upper Peninsula, but not this time.

This book is a fictionalized account of a company contracted to harvest salmon and eggs at the state-owned weirs on Great Lakes tributaries where salmon run up-river to spawn in the fall. The weirs are manned by the contracted company, but all types of illegal shenanigans take place as the company bills for more fish than they harvest. And that’s just the tip of the ice berg.

A woman, employed by the company, tastes the eggs of harvested salmon and pronounces them acceptable for caviar. Soon the company is mixing New York salmon eggs, which contain Mirex, a deadly chemical, and those eggs are unsafe for human consumption. The contaminated eggs are added for “taste” to the Michigan eggs, which were fit for eating. The woman dies from the poison, and piece by piece, Grady Service and a female conservation officer begin to learn more about this company and its corrupt ways of doing business.

They uncover bribes, kickbacks, and other illegalities that compromise some state employees. The web of deceit and crime spreads to a host of Upper Peninsula Yoopers, officers of the New York state fish and wildlife agency, and then federal game wardens and IRS agents enter the case.

The book has 346 pages of hard-hitting, explosive twisting and turning plot shifts, and Heywood manages to keep the reader hooked on this fast-paced novel.

Not only is Service a target for the criminal enterprise operating on Michigan’s spawning streams, but his work on this rapidly developing case makes him a target for some of the DNR’s highest ranking personnel. In true Woods Cop fashion, he doesn’t slow down, and continues to forge ahead until the outlaw operation is put out of business.

This book has it all: page-turning suspense, a weird cast of characters who are just weird enough to be real-life people. The book moves along with crisp dialogue, fast-paced action, and some feelings for an aging officer who gets banged up a bit.

Heywood has a solid background in what goes on with Michigan conservation officers because he spends a great deal of time riding with officers, and this gives him a great feel for what the life of an officer is all about.

This is a good read, and like the other books in the Woods Cop series, it leaves the reader wanting another quick taste of what Heywood’s next book will be about, and that is always a major surprise.

Tags: "lyons press", dave richey, death roe, department, fish, fishing, Joe Heywood, Michigan, natural, resources, up, Upper Peninsula, Wood Cop

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daverichey November 30th, 2008

TITLE: Horned Death

AUTHOR: John Burger

PUBLISHER: Safari Press
DISTRIBUTOR: Safari Press, 15621 Chemical Lane, Building B, Huntington Beach, CA 92649-1506

CONTACT: Safari Press, 15621 Chemical Lane, Building B, Huntington Beach, CA 92649-1506

WEBSITE: Safari Press (contact or detailed information on this or and other Safari Press books)
eMAIL: info@safaripress.com
PHONE: 1 (714) 894-9080
ISBN #
COST $35 + S/H These books are not sold through other stores but must be order directly from the publisher.

The name John Burger has always been linked with the African buffalo because the author shot more than 1,000 of these animals during his many years in Africa, and he had more experience with these cantankerous critters than any man who ever hunted them.

The Cape buffalo has a nasty disposition, and it doesn’t take much to tip them over the ragged edge and into a rage. They tend to take their anger out on the closest thing, and if it is a hunter the buff sees, he plans to ambush you or charge from a distance. In any case, if the buffalo catches the hunter, the animal will hook the victim, bounce it into the ground, throw the person into the air, and otherwise rearrange that poor soul’s anatomy in such a way that few attack victim can survive.

Burger, after all the buffalo he had shot, considered this animal one of the most dangerous animals on earth. This book has everything needed to make it a fun but frightening read.

Burger seemed to have a wonderful sense of humor, and in one chapter describes how he and a friend lassoed a Cape buffalo although both men were injured in the fracas. In another account he described spending some time with a murderer and robber, who was eventually hauled off to jail.

This isn’t all about hunting Cape buffalo. It also deals with elephants and other game, but make no mistake about it: after reading Horned Death, and how dangerous this animal can be, a person will develop a new brand of respect for them.

Twenty-eight chapters, and 348 pages with numerous black-and-white photos, and Burger covers hunting this animal in grand fashion. His respect for the dangers of guiding hunters on a Cape buffalo hunt shows through.

The dust jacket cover, with its bold and haunting cover, sets the stage for what is inside. The cover features a red-eyed buffalo, and if that doesn’t grab you attention about this animal, nothing short of a buffalo attack will do the trick.

This is a book for the hardcore African hunter, a person who is willing to stand his ground, aim for the brain and hope the bull dies farther away than one buff the author shot. It died five steps away from him.

This is a book as pertinent to current buffalo hunters and hunting as it was after the turn of the 20th Century when Burger began killing Cape buffalo to feed the natives working to build railroad tracks across much of the African continent. Hunters may never experience all of the scenes that Burger describes, but if they experience just one charge during a hunt, they will be happy to have read this book before heading for Africa.

It is a very good read, and this is a legendary hunting title.

Tags: "big game", africa, cape buffalo, dave richey, horned death, hunt, hunter, hunting, john burger

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