Girl Hunter tells the story of her journey to becoming a hunter, and what it’s meant to her life and to her relationship with food.  This is a pretty hot and happening theme these days, and Pellegrini is an excellent example of what some people would call, “the new face of hunting.”  One thing she is not, as you’ll learn in the book, is your typical “redneck girl”. 

The writing is, at its best, well-crafted and evocative.  But… there’s a mighty fine line between evocative and sticky-sweet, verging on purple.  Georgia dances dangerously back and forth across this line.  I defintely get the sense of nostalgia and of place, but then I start to feel like it’s beating me senseless instead of treating my senses.

Or maybe it’s just my tastes.  I spent a lot of time and thought trying to figure out what it was, exactly, that defines Georgia’s writing.  It finally hit me.  This book is feminine.  The voice, the stories, everything about it says, “I was written by a girl.” 

Of course this shouldn’t come as a surprise to me, having spent a good bit of time reading Georgia’s blog before the book came out.  This is how she writes, and it definitely creates a “personality”.  So as far as that goes, she’s quite consistent.  The “girl hunter” writes with a girly voice.  There’s nothing at all wrong with that, especially because it comes across as fairly genuine.  I appreciate a writer who puts that much of their personality into her work.  This is no indefinite or generic narrator… there’s a very real person behind these words.  Even some of the technical errors struck me as particularly feminine (Note that these may have been corrected in the final release… I received a press copy).

And pardon me here, because I’m going to stereotype.  Flog me later. 

Some of the things that were a bit discordant in a hunting book struck me as the sort of mistakes that I’ve heard most commonly from women.  For example, in her opening story of the turkey hunt in Arkansas she’s looking through the scope at one point and  then, a paragraph of so later, she’s looking down the rib at the bead.  Generally speaking, you’re doing one or the other with a turkey gun… but not both.  It’s a critical detail to me, as an experienced hunter because it undermines her credibility. 

But is attention to these little details really more of a “guy thing” anyway?  I know that as much as Kat enjoyed some of the hunting we did, she never really paid close attention to the more technical aspects of the guns and optics we used.  Of course she tries in conversation to get the terminology right, but it’s pretty obvious that this isn’t what’s important to her about the hunt.  My mom often makes similar errors, despite a lifetime of exposure to hunting and shooting conversations from her dad and brother, my dad, me, and my little brother.  I know she knows better, but it doesn’t seem to matter all that much.  The gun goes “bang” and we bring home the meat.  Shotgun or rifle, centerfire or rimfire, scope or iron sights… none of that seems particularly important. 

So I don’t know if it’s a Venus vs. Mars thing, or just simple mistakes that an editor should have caught, but in the bigger picture I allowed it to become part of the girlish atmosphere of the book.  It’s not completely off-putting, but I’ll admit that it butted up against my own testosterone-shaded sensibilities from time to time.  Then again, I got the feeling that this book wasn’t really written for me in the first place, and I’m probably right. 

Nevertheless, once I started reading I had to finish.  The entire book (I admit, I didn’t read all of the recipes that accompany each chapter) was actually a reasonably short read.  And despite some of what I just said, I really enjoyed most of  it.  Each chapter is built around the story of a hunt in various parts of the country (and in Britain).  It’s sort of a handy structure for this kind of book, and because Pellegrini is far from the conventional hunter, it offers a very non-conventional perspective on the experiences she had along the way. 

Ostensibly, there’s a subtext throughout that asks about the sustainability of each hunting tradition or practice.  I don’t feel like she really challenged the question, but I didn’t feel like it was all that critical to the movement of the book either.  The important thing to me was that the writing didn’t become dogmatic or focused on whether one kind of hunter is better than the other.  What it did (and I liked this) was show that there are many kinds of hunters, and that the methods, means, and motivations of each vary as much by individual as by geographic location. 

Oh, and the recipes… I’m not real big on following recipes myself, but Pellegrini’s book is full of them.   Each chapter is focused on a regional game specialty (e.g. turkeys in CA and elk in WY), and at the end of the chapter are some recipes for cooking the various game mentioned in the chapter.  The structure works and the recipes that I did read actually sound pretty tasty.  For example, the Moroccan elk stew recipe below actually makes me want to try it.  Check it out:

Moroccan Elk Stew
Serves 8

Also try: beef, lamb, bison, venison and other antlered game

4 pounds elk shoulder or haunch, cut into cubes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons grape seed oil or butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ginger powder
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 medium-size onions, roughly chopped
4 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium-size turnips, peeled and chopped
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2/3 cup dried apricots
2/3 cup prunes, pitted
3 to 4 cups beef or antlered game stock

1. Heat a large, heavy-bottomed pot with oil. In a bowl, toss the elk cubes in the flour. Shake the cubes well and place them in the pot in batches, being sure not to crowd them. Brown them on all sides and transfer to a plate or rack.
2. Put all of the browned meat back in the pan and sprinkle it with the salt, cinnamon, ginger and pepper. Then add the vegetables, garlic, and dried fruit. Pour in enough stock for the meat to be three-quarters covered, and bring it to a boil. Lower the heat so the bubbles percolate. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours, until tender.

From the book Girl Hunter by Georgia Pellegrini. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group.  Copyright © 2011.

 Girl Hunter: Revolutionizing the Way We Eat, One Hunt at a Time is available on Amazon, and at several other locations.  Santa Hog approves.

So he did.

He wrote, and recently published, Hunt, Gather, Cook, Finding the Forgotten Feast.

As the press release that accompanied my copy of the book puts it:

We live in an edible world.  And yet many of us have forgotten the feast that lives all around us.

…

Hunt, Gather, Cook explains how to track down everything from wild mushrooms to mackerel to pheasant.  It also provides innovative ways to prepare wild foods that go far beyond the usual campfire cuisine: homemade root beer, buttermilk fried rabbit, wild greens ravioli, blowfish teriyaki.

This is what Hank writes about, and he does it very well.  Whether it’s on his blog or in the new book, Hank introduces you to wild food that may well be growing right out in your own backyard.  In fact, at one dinner I was priviledged to attend, that’s exactly where our salad came from… his backyard.

Oh, and it rocked!

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a little time with Hank, both at his table and in the field, and both experiences have been rewarding.  I haven’t met many people with his drive to learn things to their very core, and then to take that knowledge and tweak it with his own innovative touches.

And that’s exactly what he’s done in Hunt, Gather, Cook. Hank offers up far more than a traditional cookbook or a foraging guide.  There are plenty of both already on the shelves.  Instead, he’s taken the body of knowledge he’s acquired (he’s still acquiring), and then he tweaks it, like a recipe, until the book has evolved into a very enjoyable read that just happens to teach you a thing or two along the way.  What’s even better, is that Hank is a hell of a wordsmith… something I don’t see enough of in the publishing industry these days.

If you get half a chance, I’d definitely recommend finding a copy and giving it a read.  You can pick it up at Amazon, either in hard-copy or for the Kindle.

So he did.

He wrote, and recently published, Hunt, Gather, Cook, Finding the Forgotten Feast.

As the press release that accompanied my copy of the book puts it:

We live in an edible world.  And yet many of us have forgotten the feast that lives all around us.

…

Hunt, Gather, Cook explains how to track down everything from wild mushrooms to mackerel to pheasant.  It also provides innovative ways to prepare wild foods that go far beyond the usual campfire cuisine: homemade root beer, buttermilk fried rabbit, wild greens ravioli, blowfish teriyaki.

This is what Hank writes about, and he does it very well.  Whether it’s on his blog or in the new book, Hank introduces you to wild food that may well be growing right out in your own backyard.  In fact, at one dinner I was priviledged to attend, that’s exactly where our salad came from… his backyard.

Oh, and it rocked!

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a little time with Hank, both at his table and in the field, and both experiences have been rewarding.  I haven’t met many people with his drive to learn things to their very core, and then to take that knowledge and tweak it with his own innovative touches.

And that’s exactly what he’s done in Hunt, Gather, Cook. Hank offers up far more than a traditional cookbook or a foraging guide.  There are plenty of both already on the shelves.  Instead, he’s taken the body of knowledge he’s acquired (he’s still acquiring), and then he’s tweaked it like a recipe, until the book has evolved into a very enjoyable read that just happens to teach you a thing or two along the way.  What’s even better, is that Hank is a hell of a wordsmith… something I don’t see enough of in the publishing industry these days.

If you get half a chance, I’d definitely recommend finding a copy and giving it a read.  You can pick it up at Amazon, either in hard-copy or for the Kindle.

Anyway, Al Cambronne dropped me a note recently after seeing my review of another book, and asked if I’d be interested in taking a look at the work that he and Eric Fromm did on their book, Gut It, Cut It, Cook It, The Deer Hunter’s Guide To Processing Game.  Of course I told him I’d be glad to give a look, and to provide an honest review.

Well, here’s the thing.  I’ve been processing my own game since my daddy first showed me how to peel the skin off a squirrel.  I remember that I got a break on my first deer, when the old guys in camp showed me how to skin and gut it, but after that, I’ve been pretty much on my own.  Almost 40 years later, I’ve seen and/or tried more different field dressing, skinning, and butchering tricks than I can even remember, and I’ve skinned almost everything from doves and quail to elk and bison.  But I never, ever, read a book about it.  And honestly, I never felt the need to.

However, since I’ve been writing outdoors content, I’ve probably reviewed a couple dozen books or videos on how to field dress, how to skin, how to cape, or how to butcher game.  They’ve all got their high points and low points, but with very few exceptions, none of them really taught me anything I didn’t already know.  I’m just not the target audience, which makes my reviews sort of academic. 

With that in mind, I decided to take a different tack with this one.  I decided to hand this book to someone who has never field dressed or skinned an animal, and get their take on it.  To make it really convenient, and interesting (at least to me), I gave it to someone who will in all likelihood, never skin or dress her own game.  I gave it to my girlfriend, Kat.  All I asked is that she give an honest review.  The key question was, after reading the book would she feel confident that she could process an animal herself.  Here’s what she said:

Recently Phillip handed me this book and asked me if, after reading it, I would be able to butcher my own meat.  Unlike Phillip, I did not grow up processing game meat.  In fact, my butchering skills end at occasionally trimming the fat off store-bought steaks.  And while I strongly feel that all the butchering duties belong to the man as God intended, I agreed to give it a look through.
 
I have to admit, going in I thought this would be just another look-at-me-the-super-hunter type book, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out it wasn’t.  As I read through the pages, it quickly became clear that this book was a frank look at how a deer goes from game animal to dinner.  The book is made to lay flat on the table and comes with a DVD.  I didn’t view the DVD, I only read the book.
 
Overall, the book is heavy on photos showing all steps of the process, but it also has lots of practical advice with a little humor thrown in along the way.  The photos give you a good look at the entire process and are done in painstaking detail.  You see each cut as it really looks in lots of brightly shot, clear images.  I think following the photos alone could get you through the whole carcass, but the insightful commentary helps explain the details. 

The book really starts at the beginning and goes through the entire process.  In Chapter 3, “Shop before you shoot, aim carefully, and don’t shoot your steaks”,  I like the photos showing the kill zones from different angles using a life-sized decoy, and the description of visualizing your shot in 3D.  These are followed by photos of different shots using different ammo and the impact on the meat itself.  The spine shot is very graphic, but a great look at what happens to the meat under the skin.  You just don’t see that one the hunting shows that end at the celebrating over the carcass. 

The book could use some editing.  I got tired of seeing the same photo repeatedly and there were several sections that were stuck in between the middle of hyphenated words that made reading it straight through rough.  But I assume this book was constructed to be taken in sections.  The way it is laid out, you could simply flip to the section you need and start from there.  Also I was surprised that there wasn’t even some basic recipes in the book.  While there are some photos of some tasty dishes, the reader is left to find those in their own kitchen or other books. [Editor's Note:  The DVD that comes with the book provides about 50 recipes, as well as a lot of other information.]
 
So, could I butcher my own game after reading this book?  The instructions are clear, the advice is sound and the pictures are exact so yes, I could… but I still don’t want to.

So there ya go!  An honest review from someone who has never processed her own game. 

For my own part, although I probably will, I haven’t read this book yet.  I’ve flipped through, and I agree that the photos are excellent and provide an unflinching visual guide to how best to kill, dress, and process your deer.  The heavy-duty pages should hold up well to handling in the skinning shed or at the butcher table, and the choice to publish in a ringed binder makes for a really utilitarian handbook.  I could absolutely see this book as the kind of thing you’d keep hanging around deer camp, both for the newbies and to refresh the occasional deer hunter. 

Gut It, Cut It, Cook It has been out for a while, and is currently available through most large book outlets, including Amazon and Borders, as well as through the publisher’s own site, Krause Books.

At any rate, I struck up a conversation with a fellow who seemed less grouchy than the rest.  He immediately handed me his card.  William Hovey Smith was his name, and it took a moment for it to register.  I’d seen a couple of his books last year, but never got a chance to read them.  Mr. Smith was not a retiring wallflower, by any stretch of the imagination.  He was quick to let me know who he was and what he did, and just as quick to query me about what I do. 

When he found out I wrote a blog instead of working for a major publisher or magazine, I thought he’d blow me off.  That happens a lot at SHOT, where the industry is only now recognizing the full impact of the Internet.  Smith didn’t miss a beat, though, and before I knew it, he’d taken my card and promised to send me a copy of his latest for review. 

And so, a week or two ago, I received a copy of Backyard Deer Hunting, Converting Deer to Dinner for Pennies a Pound.  The timing couldn’t have been better, as my day job has had me on the road a lot of late.  I’d have plenty of time for reading.

As it turns out, I didn’t really need a lot of time.  The book went quickly, written as it was in Smith’s homey, plain-language.  On a two-hour flight to Spokane I flew through the majority of the 271 pages.  I finished the book on the return flight, and I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

In a nutshell, Backyard Deer Hunting is a guide to the budget-conscious hunter who wants to feed a family in a healthy and economical way.  As Smith writes in his Forward:

This book is not about looking good, owning fancy gear, impressing anyone, or putting trophy heads on the wall.  This book is about killing deer, wild hogs, bears, and other meats-on-the-hoof, and eating them.

He stays true to this theme throughout, encouraging the reader to use equipment at hand to the point of dumpster-diving for gear and clothing, sharpening up grandma’s old kitchen knives, and even to the recovery and processing of roadkill (where legal).    The point is, you can get into hunting for big game without spending a fortune on gear.  Under the right circumstances, you really can hunt, kill, and process big game for a few cents per pound. 

Dunno if you can tell, but I liked this book.  Smith really breaks it down to basics, cutting through the marketing hype and getting back to the important things.  You don’t need the latest camo patterns, the $200 knives, or even the super-whiz-bang magnum rifle.  According to the book, all anyone really needs is a .22 long-rifle and a 12ga shotgun.  With these guns and a sharp knife, you can hunt, process, and eat pretty much anything from squirrels and birds to deer, hogs, or bear. 

His tone and language are enjoyable as well.  Some folks will find that he comes across a little coarse, but it’s an honest voice.  He doesn’t pull punches, but he doesn’t go out of his way to present an ersatz hominess either.  When I was reading the book, I felt like Smith was just trying to lay it out as plainly as possible.  It isn’t always pretty, but it’s clear.  When you finish reading, you get the message. 

If anything put me off on the book, it would be that Smith could really have used a good copy editor.  There were several instances of misused words where it’s pretty evident that the editors relied on spellcheck program instead of a human reader.  This kind of error in a published work is a real irritation for me because it’s so unnecessary.  Unfortunately, it’s also a reflection of the plight of publishing in the age of blogs and social media.   It seems like no one has the time or patience to get it right these days… and what I think is worse, is that many people don’t seem to care.   

I’ll pull back on the reins here, before I take off down the trail with my personal diatribe against the laziness and de-evolution of our written language.  This is supposed to be a book review.  So…

Despite the sin of weak editing, the book is still an excellent read and could be a real asset to newer hunters who may be intimidated by the pricy stuff they see advertised on TV or in the magazines.  The information it provides outweighs the detraction of little errors.  There’s plenty here that would pertain to experienced hunters as well, particularly when it gets down to meat preparation and cooking. 

Would I buy the book myself?  Honestly, I don’t generally buy how-to books so I probably wouldn’t.  It’s not the kind of thing I read in my free time.  But knowing the content, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the book to someone looking for good instruction on the basics of hunting.  It accomplishes the goal Smith sets out in his forward, and there’s not much more you could ask of any author.

We’ll start with a book I’ve actually been sitting on since the 2010 SHOT Show, The Gun Rights War (Amazon.com link here).  I started reading it right after I got home from the show, but it got set aside in the madness of this past spring, and I was only able to get back to it this summer.  Honestly, there are still a couple of chapters I haven’t finished, but that’s only because I’ve been trying to catch up so many other books, magazines, and videos.

For those who’ve been paying attention to the ongoing battles regarding the 2nd Amendment for a while, Neal Knox may be a familiar name.  His involvement started in the late 1960s and continued until his death in 2003.  Knox’s efforts, in large part, laid the groundwork for the NRA’s political and legal action committees.  Knox was a well-known columnist in several shooting magazines at the time, and with that sort of podium and excellent writing skills, he was pretty influential.  This book presents a compilation of his columns, put together and annotated by his son, Chris Knox.

Like many hunters and sportsmen I know, I’ve had a long-standing love/hate relationship with the NRA.  I’ve often challenged their rhetoric and dishonest tactics, but at the same time I’ve always appreciated that they were (at times) the only voice we had fighting to protect our gun freedoms.  In the collection of columns, Knox lays a lot of those arguments out, including some that have practically become cliche, but he does so with logic and examples to support each argument… something that is painfully missing from much of the literature presented by the NRA to rank and file membership, and to the press.  In fact, the way the NRA (mis)communicates to the members and the media became a huge issue for Knox, and eventually led to an upheaval (and his expulsion)… a key point of the book.  Knox insisted on honesty, even when the facts didn’t paint the rosiest of pictures.  As we know, honesty is usually an early casualty when things get political.

For his part, Chris Knox’s annotations help to set the context and history around some of the columns.  Without this background, folks like myself who were still children in the 60s would probably be a little lost.  Chris does a nice job of setting the stage for his father’s words without burdening the reader with too much of his personal interpretation. 

Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more about the gun rights discussion, particularly as it developed over the past three decades, this is an excellent source of information.  You’ll read some pretty scary truths about efforts by various political forces to severely restrict our access to guns (there are some good reasons 2nd Amendment advocates sometimes sound “paranoid”), a good bit about the political contortions on all sides of the debate, and how efforts by the NRA and other organizations have shaped gun laws in this country. 

The most important thing I believe you’ll learn, though, is how important it is for the the membership of the NRA to step up and direct the organization’s path and leadership.  Knox was a huge advocate for empowering the members at all levels so that their voices could be heard, and so that the NRA would reflect the goals and wishes of the members.  Honestly, I believe the organization needs another Neal Knox today. 

Even though I’m not especially active in the gun rights discussion, I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot about things I thought I already knew, and much more that I’d never even heard about.  For anyone who writes much about guns or 2nd Amendment politics, I’d consider this book required reading.

From politics to the skinning shed…

The next book in my “To Be Reviewed” pile is The Complete Book of Butchering, Smoking, Curing, and Sausage Making (How To Harvest Your Livestock and Wild Game), by Phillip Hasheider. 

I’ve been processing my own game from field to table for years, and while there are a lot of folks who can do it more artfully, I’ve usually been plenty satisfied with my own work.  Nevertheless, I went into this book while I was up at Coon Camp Springs, in hopes that it would give me some new ideas or improved techniques.  (Besides, without TV or computer up there, reading is pretty much the only entertainment after the clients go to bed and the fire is still burning.) 

The initial chapters of the book, honestly, kind of turned me off.  There’s a lot of stuff in here about the history of meat, butchering and processing, and even some health and safety topics.  However, this isn’t what I was looking for in a “how-to” book.  I guess the idea was to make it a little more robust than just a step-by-step manual, but in my opinion, the early stuff really just bogged me down.  For this kind of content (history of meat as food, etc.), I’d rather read someone like Michael Pollan. 

My other big complaint here was that there seemed to be a lot of general information, but it never really closes the loop with detail.   For example, when it talks about knives and equipment, there’s never really a strong recommendation for a specific tool.  A novice could have really benefited if the author would have simply offered a preference.  Simply telling us that there are several options doesn’t help the new butcher choose one.

I kept on reading, though, and I’m glad I did.  Once the book gets to the meat of the issue (bad pun intended), the book really gets good.  The techniques are described thoroughly and clearly, and the accompanying graphics generally support each topic (the graphic layout lost me a couple of times).  I believe that even a novice could follow these steps from one end to the other without a lot of confusion.  Butcher’s terms are defined and illustrated, as are the critical steps.  There’s even a little how and why, which goes a long ways toward actually teaching the techniques and not merely listing them.

I’m not big on recipes, so honestly, I gave them short shrift when I read the book.  I’m sure they’re fine, but there are a zillion cookbooks out there already.  I suppose that having the recipes right along with the butchering and processing steps is convenient enough, so I won’t knock it. 

The only other constructive comment I’d offer is that this is the kind of book some folks might like to take into the skinning shed with them.  The steps are laid out every bit as well as a procedural manual, but the smallish size of the book would make it hard to lay open on the table while you work.  The pages are pretty thick and glossy, so I expect they could withstand a little blood and water spatter, but the binding seems a little nice to risk covering in gore.  A redesign to make it more of a table-top book might be an idea for future printings.

Overall, I definitely learned some new stuff from this book despite having been processing game for so long.  That was cool.  I expect that someone who is new to butchering and processing could learn a ton more from it… and anyone looking to start raising, slaughtering, and processing their own livestock would do well to have this information on their bookshelf.  Just skip those first couple of chapters and get down to the task at hand.

Finally, my favorite of the bunch…  Kingdom Under Glass, by Jay Kirk. 

In the early years of the 20th century, the relationships between human and nature were pretty tenuous.  It was a time of newfound wealth, rapidly developing technology, and expansionism.  For most people, the idea that global, natural resources might be limited was still the fanciful realm of the gloom-and-doom set.  In their minds, there were still great, unexplored places in the world where flora and fauna flourished without end… there for the picking whenever we wanted it.  One such place was Africa.

At the same time, as more and more Americans settled into an increasingly urbanized and industrialized world, Nature became a thing to observe through the glass of a museum display, in the zoological park, or at Mr. Barnum’s big circus.  Only a small handful of people saw that Nature was in peril of disappearing entirely… not only from this continent, but around the world.  Among these visionaries stood individuals like Theodore Roosevelt and Carl Akeley. 

I doubt there are many Americans who haven’t at least heard of “Teddy” Roosevelt (although I wonder how many know of his contribution to the preservation of American wilderness), but I doubt more than a handful have any idea who Carl Akeley was.  Kingdom Under Glass seeks to remedy that, and it does so in a thoroughly enjoyable walk through history (or his story, if you prefer).

I don’t generally read much biography or straight history.  As much as I love to read, I’ve always found these genres to be dry as overcooked venison.  Occasionally, though, there’s an exception.  Jay Kirk makes that exception in this book, and does so in a way that made me forget from time to time that I was not reading a good novel.  Of course, the reason for that is that he manages to “novel-ize” the subject matter.  He uses the historical and biographical facts to develop a storyline, and through extensive research into the letters, journals, and other correspondence between the main characters, he recreates dialogue. 

Now this is a risky move on the part of the author because if he loses credibility, he’s done.  You can’t just make real characters say stuff and still call the work a “biography”.  That’s fiction, no matter how true the story may be.  Kirk skirts this failure by relying on key quotes that are attributable to correspondence, commentary from witnesses, and even film and photographic history.  For example, he recreates an entire scene in Akeley’s studio, right down to the rag carried in a back pocket, based on a series of photographs.

The writing itself is generally very good, and I was brought into the story easily.  While the mark of good fiction is that it “creates a willing suspension of disbelief”, Kirk goes one step further because he’s not writing fiction at all.  If anything, he’s challenged by the genre to remove any sense of disbelief.   The reader has to believe that this is a true story, and that the events and characters are as real as the history they made.  In my opinion, he accomplished that in spades.

So the writing was good.  Who is Carl Akeley and why should you care?  Why would you, a hunter or sportsman, want to read this book?

Carl Akeley was a pioneer of taxidermy.  At the turn of the 19th century, the taxidermist’s art consisted primarily of stuffing cured skins with sawdust.  The resultant work often left, at best, a vague representation of the original animal, but for the urban customer or museum visitor who had probably never seen many of these animals alive, the caricature was sufficient. 

Akeley was one of a handful of folks who believed taxidermy could, and should, be much more.  He approached a mount as a sculptor… as an artist… and developed techniques that would become the standard for decades.  For example, he studied the live dimensions of each specimen, and then recreated them with clay before laying the skin on.  He also believed in setting the mounted animals in realistic environments, complete with replica plant life.  The resultant lifelike representations put him in high demand, and soon he was creating natural dioramas for the likes of the American Museum of Natural History. 

In his role for the major museums, he soon found himself on specimen gathering safaris in Africa… including a major venture with Roosevelt’s safari for the Smithsonian Institution (Roosevelt and his son killed tens of thousands of African species for museums and scientists on their forays to the Dark Continent).  The oddly contradictory idea of these excursions was to collect specimens before they were all wiped out… a realistic possibility, given the sudden popularity of the African safari.  As trains, and then automobiles became more common in Africa while game laws and conservation were barely present, wildlife there took a beating. 

Akeley recognized this impending disaster, and after having killed hundreds or thousands of animals himself, began to wonder if something else might be done.  The mountain gorilla was the calayst for this change, and before his death, Akeley was responsible for convincing king of Belgium to set aside one of the first wildlife preserves in Africa to protect these great animals.  It’s a heck of a legacy.

I haven’t done a very good job here of describing a really good book.  You’d be better off just to read it for yourself and make up your own mind.  Kingdom Under Glass, A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve The World’s Great Animals, is available at Amazon, or at most other booksellers.

I just finished reading a great, and very informative book by one of the foremost wild pig researchers in this country, John Mayer, along with Lehr Brisbin.  The book, entitled Wild Pigs in the United States, Their History, Comparative Morphology, and Current Status, was sent to me by the PR folks representing the University of Georgia Press.
 
I asked for the copy in part to serve my hunger for more scientific information about these great animals, and also to see if the authors were able to resolve one of the biggest arguments in hog hunting… how to tell a Eurasian boar hybrid from a plain, old, feral hog.  My objectives were, by and large, met within the pages of the book.

There are some scientists out there who truly write like gifted novelists.  Their prose is tight, reasonably colorful, and involving.  Their work flows like great fiction, and you come away both fulfilled and educated.

Mayer and Brisbin are not in that category.  These scientists write like… well… like scientists.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, except that the reading gets really dry.  I was definitely educated by the time I finished, but some of the book was really a chore to get through.  The morphology section, in particular, goes rapidly over the head of the non-taxonomists in the audience as well, and left me reeling for my old college textbooks. 

Literary criticism aside, though, this book was full of great stuff! 

The History section breaks down the origins of the first hogs in the U.S. (Hawaii was first, of course, with the introduction of pigs by the Polynesian settlers around 750AD), and then follows with the history of introductions of the Eurasian wild boar.  I thought I knew a little about all of this, but the level of detail challenged a few preconceptions and added depth to my knowledge.  For example, I knew that hogs were traditionally raised free-range by the earlier farmers, and the escapees formed the foundation of many populations of feral pigs, but I didn’t realize how widespread the practice was. 

I also learned more about the spread of swine by the Spanish explorers as they trucked it across the lower section of the country (Florida to Mexico and CA).  Basically, the pigs have been here as long as the Europeans (and longer in Hawaii).

The other thing I didn’t realize was the extent of stocking efforts, both of Euros and ferals, by several state game and wildlife agencies, including FL, TN, MS, NC, and GA.   I found this a little ironic in light of the current state of affairs.  

This section was probably the most rewarding to me, personally, and I think the book would be worth owning simply for these chapters.  I’d have loved more anecdotal reports and stories, though, just to colorize the data, but that’s really not what I think the authors were trying to accomplish.

I mentioned the Comparative Morphology section a moment ago.  As I said, this part receives a thorough scientific treatment.  For those with a research bent, who understand statistics, taxonomy, and some basic animal physiology, the majority of these chapters will probably provide some great insight.  I consider myself barely above layman in these things, and had to rely on the summaries for the most part.  After a little while, though, I was able to start making sense of the charts and diagrams. 

What I took away from the morphology discussion largely reinforced what I thought I already knew.  The vast majority of wild hogs in this country are feral hogs, descendants of domesticated swine with no “true wild boar” in their modern heritage.  The remainders of the wild-living hogs are hybrid crosses between released or escaped Eurasian wild boar and the ferals. 

The book solidifies something I’ve stated before… that you should be suspicious of any outfitter or guide who claims to be hunting free-ranging Eurasian (so-called “Russian”) boar.  True, there are a couple of small, isolated populations of true Eurasian stock in a couple of parts of the country, but in places like CA, TX, and FL, your odds are that you’ll be hunting hybrids or ferals.  Not that you should turn up your nose at the prospect of a hybrid or feral hunt, but don’t pay extra to hunt something that probably doesn’t exist in the wild.  The only true “Euros” you’re likely to find in the majority of the US are inside high-fence operations (or recently escaped). 

When it comes to telling the difference between Euro, hybrid, and feral, things got a little more complicated.  Mayer and Brisbin did a great job helping me understand that there are a few key traits to go by, but none of them alone are sufficient to make the call.  Coloration, both of neonates and adults is an indicator, as is the shape of the skull, and the length and curvature of the snout.  Only the pure Euro stays fairly consistent, with hybrids and ferals offering significant variety. 

Finally, the book looks into the current status of wild hogs in the United States.  Here’s where things got interesting, but it’s also an area that I felt missed the boat. 

The research quoted in the book is about 20 years old (or older), with the most recent data coming in around 1988 and 89.  Things have changed a lot since then, with a population explosion that Mayer termed in later papers, “The Hog Bomb”.  It was interesting for me to see the difference between the distributions of wild hogs plotted on a 1988 map in the book, contrasted with current distribution maps.  At the time of the research, for example, viable populations of wild hogs were reported in about 18 or 19 states.  Current estimates have them in about 39 states, and anticipated to be present in all 50 states within the relatively near future.

Overall, it’s a really good read if you’re up for the dry, scientific nature of the work.  I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the wild hogs on an “authoritative” level. 

It is not a hunting book, and really doesn’t offer any information to the casual hog hunter such as habits and traits that would make you a better hunter.  If that’s what you’re after, then you’re gonna want to keep looking.  There are some on the market, but I haven’t had a chance (or the budget) to review them.

They’ve since sent a couple of others, including Peter Fiduccia’s Whitetail Strategies: The Ultimate Guide, (which is still on my shelf to be read).  But the other day a new package arrived.  Not expecting anything I tore it open to find The Official NRA Guide to Firearms Assembly: Rifles and Shotguns.  This book includes blow-up drawings and diagrams with basic instructions for assembly and disassembly of all kinds of rifles and shotguns.  Now I don’t spend a lot of time taking my guns apart, because I tend to get myself in trouble when I get it down to the little springs and sears, but I’m pretty confident that with a little past experience and this book, I could do some pretty intensive maintenance on most of the guns in my safe (I’ll still defer work on the semi-autos to the gunsmith). 

Anyway, it’s a nicely put-together piece of work, and I think it would be really handy for any sportsman to have on the shelf.  You never know when you might need pull that shotgun apart, or replace the trigger assembly in your deer rifle.