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< 16ga. General Discussion ~ What Are You Reading These Days? |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:04 am
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Member
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Posts: 1550
Location: Minnesota and Florida
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Hey guys. What are you reading these days? I find myself drawn to some books on upland shooting these last few weeks as a sort of aperitif for the new season. I'm just finishing re-reading (for the third time, I think) George Bird Evans' The Upland Shooting Life, and that has led me to re-read another standby on my shelf, Dr. Charles Norris's Eastern Upland Shooting.
Despite being a born and bred prairie boy, and mostly hunting prairie birds, I find a lot of excitement and inspiration from reading about the bird hunting of yesterday in the east and the south of the U.S. My guess is that some of that country and hunting is still good enough, and hope someday to experience a little of it.
Cheers! |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:41 pm
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Member
Joined: 10 Jul 2010
Posts: 356
Location: Ponchatoula, Louisiana
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Well, since you asked,
"America's Premier Gunmakers - Browning" by K D Kirkland
"An Outdoor Journal" by Jimmy Carter
"Across That Bridge" by John Lewis
and "The Last Mile" by David Baldacci
Some for the heart and some for the mind.
Regards,
Chuck |
_________________ The reason I am awed by shotgun shooters is that most of them don’t know how in the hell they do what they do.
Charles F. Waterman, |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:42 pm
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Joined: 07 Nov 2019
Posts: 21
Location: Michigan
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Reading Mike Gaddis Zip Zap so far so good , Had read Jenny Willow and highly recommend it. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:56 pm
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Joined: 19 Apr 2008
Posts: 477
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Anyone remember the Monk TV series about the detective who had "issues"?
I loved it and just found out a series of Monk books is out there. I just finished the first, "Monk goes to the Firehouse". Pretty good. Not rehashes of the TV scripts, but original works written by one of the TV writers. |
_________________ Many places remain undiscovered. Some because no one has ever been there. Others because no one has ever come back. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 4:02 pm
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Joined: 08 Feb 2009
Posts: 1311
Location: Western WA
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What am I reading:
First, How To Be An Expert At Shotgun Shooting by Fred Etchen. Written in 1960 this book is the best one stop guide to the nuts and bolts of shotguns I've come across. Some of the guns and terminology are a little dated but this guy knew his stuff, he was a national champ in the 1920s and the principles still hold.
Not for the easily bored, blunt as an 8 lb hammer, he really lays into those who don't take gun safety seriously or who don't understand the pertinent facts and principles of shotgunning. Page after page, chapter after chapter on things like the nuances of sustained lead vs swing through lead.
Nearly a whole chapter on the utter folly of 28" barrels and modified choke! He advocates either IC with 26" barrels or Full with 30" barrels, with ironclad logic that is difficult to refute. Hint: You need both. And he favors the SxS! What's not to love?
The book was presented to me by my wife after finding it in an antique shop. It's also available at Amazon.
Second: A Traveller's Companion To Montana History by Carrol Van West
If you thought you know about the Old West, forget it. This book will change your thinking forever. The Old West was much more brutal, wilder, magical, and crazier than you ever thought. Written almost as dry as an academic treatise, but draws you in as it covers the history of Montana in a manner that follows the highways if you want to seek out the sites and regions.
It covers in excruciating detail the Indians, miners, traders, cowboys, ranchers and their wives, millionaires, schemers, scoundrels, farmers, railroaders, as well as the mountains, rivers, and prairies themselves. packed into 270-odd pages of extremely small print, along with pictures.
The Blackfeet, wow! Actually a confederation of tribes, powerful, greatly feared, and very tough merciless unforgiving adversaries of other Indians and white alike. Extremely skilled traders and negotiators. That is, until one day a flatboat arrived on the Missouri below Fort Benton, with smallpox aboard. The traders wanted it quarantined, but the Blackfeet insisted on bringing them in, and within a few months three fourths of the Blackfeet were dead, never to recover even up to this day. That marked the end of the Blackfoot era. Incredibly tragic, hope something was learned.
The book identifies many location where ancient Blackfoot teepee rings and other sacred sites still exist and can be seen or even entered. I have to go there and sit down inside one. I don't want to go Bear Paw battefield, still too much violence and tragedy there to contemplate.
Montana had a couple other things: Gold, lots of it. And people looking for it. Here's an amazing fact from the book: A crew of miners working a claim in Confederate Gulch extracted seven hundred pounds of gold IN A SINGLE DAY. Imagine what life must have been like when things like that were going on. Towns housing thousands of people and hundreds of businesses erected in months, only to be completely abandoned a few years later.
Another thing: You didn't want be to a cattle rustler or horse thief back than. Your life usually ended at the end of a rope, swiftly and without ceremony. The ranchers (well known names, honored to this day) had way more important business to attend to than memorialize your final moments.
And heros of Montana and the Old West? Not really any to be found inside this book. Read it and you will understand why.
The book is filled with this kind of material. Fascinating reading, a book you can't put down once you start it.
B. |
Last edited by Brewster11 on Mon Sep 21, 2020 4:05 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 4:04 pm
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Member
Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 2172
Location: Kansas High Plains
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Recently finished Yellowstone Autumn by W.D. Wetherell and now am about halfway through his River Trilogy. Bout time to finish up the fishing books and get into some bird huntin' stuff! I think I'm gonna revisit some old friends: Burt Spiller, H.P. Sheldon, maybe some Gordon MacQuarrie and Corey Ford. |
_________________ I feel a warm spot in my heart when I meet a man whiling away an afternoon...and stopping to chat with him, hear the sleek lines of his double gun whisper "Sixteen." - Gene Hill, Shotgunner's Notebook |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:04 pm
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Joined: 26 Sep 2015
Posts: 94
Location: Fremont County, Wyoming
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Magazines mostly...Wyoming Wildlife; Fur, Fish, and Game; the Mule Deer Foundation periodical; Pheasants Forever; NRA Hunter.
Non-fiction book....Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:06 pm
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Joined: 04 Mar 2019
Posts: 1844
Location: Central ND
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Read??
It's hunting season!! LOL |
_________________ Mark...You are entitled to your own opinion. You aren't entitled to your own facts. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:19 pm
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Joined: 07 Jun 2020
Posts: 229
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Most recently Birth of the Boxlock Shotgun by Campbell, very good detailed history of the A&D box lock |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:34 pm
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I cycle through my McIntosh, Hill, Smith and other books around this time of the year. I have a couple interesting books by Gough Thomas that I've also been enjoying lately. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:42 pm
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Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 625
Location: Ohio..where ruffed grouse were
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At present, a lot of WJ Burley, along with Bill Crider.
Where Spaniels Spring by Roebuck in order to feel a smile and, if I can find it in this mess...The Big Blue Book of Ruffed Grouse...4th edition.
I aim to get Dart by Alice Oswald soon....a book long poem of the river by the same name.
Doubtful that I ever will have another pup but, should I, Dart will be the name. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 6:28 pm
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Member
Joined: 03 Apr 2012
Posts: 21
Location: SE Utah
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Jim Corbett Omnibus...hunting maneater tigers and leopards. |
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Posted:
Mon Sep 21, 2020 8:07 pm
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Joined: 25 Jan 2014
Posts: 229
Location: MN
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Posted:
Tue Sep 22, 2020 4:10 am
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Joined: 07 Mar 2010
Posts: 483
Location: South Eastern PA
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I just finished reading my entire set of Double Gun Journals, including both indexes. I'll start back on Year 1 , Issue 1 soon. As soon as I finish one I take the next chronological one down and start all over again.
I swear I still find great nuggets of information that may have overlooked or just plain forgot.
Other than that, I am reading "The Greatest Hunting Stories Ever Told" by Lamar Underwood. There are short stories by Faulkner, Ruark, Hill, Babcock, Capstick, Ford, Hemmingway, Roosevelt, Buckingham, O'Connor, Corbett... etc....Great book for the variety of authors. |
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Posted:
Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:44 am
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Member
Joined: 06 Apr 2007
Posts: 3373
Location: The Great Northwet
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I just finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert. Incredible book. Can't wait for the movie in December! |
_________________ Gun art: www.marklarsongunart.com
Gallery art: www.marklarsonart.com
The man's prayer from the Red Green Show: "I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to. I guess." |
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