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MaximumSmoke
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 9:04 am  Reply with quote
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Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Posts: 1550
Location: Minnesota and Florida

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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1stgun
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 1:41 pm  Reply with quote
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Joined: 10 Jul 2010
Posts: 356
Location: Ponchatoula, Louisiana

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

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hunterdau2
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:42 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 07 Nov 2019
Posts: 21
Location: Michigan

Reading Mike Gaddis Zip Zap so far so good , Had read Jenny Willow and highly recommend it.
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sneem
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:56 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 19 Apr 2008
Posts: 477

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.

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Brewster11
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 4:02 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 08 Feb 2009
Posts: 1301
Location: Western WA

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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fin2feather
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 4:04 pm  Reply with quote
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Joined: 06 Aug 2004
Posts: 2171
Location: Kansas High Plains

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.

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gomerdog
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:04 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 26 Sep 2015
Posts: 94
Location: Fremont County, Wyoming

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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MSM2019
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:06 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 04 Mar 2019
Posts: 1819
Location: Central ND

Read??

It's hunting season!! LOL

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Old colonel2
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:19 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 07 Jun 2020
Posts: 224

Most recently Birth of the Boxlock Shotgun by Campbell, very good detailed history of the A&D box lock
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double vision
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:34 pm  Reply with quote
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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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tramroad28
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 5:42 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 20 Jul 2011
Posts: 625
Location: Ohio..where ruffed grouse were

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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SamW
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 6:28 pm  Reply with quote
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Joined: 03 Apr 2012
Posts: 21
Location: SE Utah

Jim Corbett Omnibus...hunting maneater tigers and leopards.
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fourtown
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2020 8:07 pm  Reply with quote



Joined: 25 Jan 2014
Posts: 223
Location: MN

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ROMAC
PostPosted: Tue Sep 22, 2020 4:10 am  Reply with quote



Joined: 07 Mar 2010
Posts: 482
Location: South Eastern PA

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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UncleDanFan
PostPosted: Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:44 am  Reply with quote
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Joined: 06 Apr 2007
Posts: 3370
Location: The Great Northwet

I just finished reading Dune by Frank Herbert. Incredible book. Can't wait for the movie in December!

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