The Best Hunting Stories Ever Told (Best Stories Ever Told)

Jay Cassell (Editor), Thomas McIntyre (Introduction)

Top hunters and writers contribute to this exciting new adventure series!

Follow the trails of hunters—the original storytellers—as they interpret signs, examine tracks, and chase and catch their prey (or fail to). Readers can curl up with the best authentic hunting fiction and non-fiction, bringing the great Mount Kenya and the prairies of the American Bison into your living room. From Theodore Roosevelt and Gene Hill to Rick Bass and Charles Dickens, remember classic hunting tales and discover new stories of hunters’ luck, camaraderie, and use of smarts on the trail. The thrill of the chase and the passion for outdoor living are elegantly brought together in this exquisite volume, certain to delight both hunters and short-story aficionados.

With work by more than one hundred of the world’s most eminent authors and hunters, including:

Theodore Roosevelt

Zane Grey

Ted Nugent

Aldo Leopold

Rick Bass

Philip Caputo

Geoffrey Norman

Gene Hill

And many more!

100 black-and-white illustrations to enrich the literary experience

Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (Classics of the Old West)

Theodore Roosevelt (Author)

In this vivid celebration of the Old West, Roosevelt recounts his ranching adventures in the Dakota Badlands of the 1880s. Beautifully illustrated with 65 black-and-white illustrations by Remington, Roosevelt's stories portray a vanished way of life — the thrill of the roundup, Indian encounters, hunting bighorn sheep, bronco busting, and much more.

Through the Brazilian Wilderness

Theodore Roosevelt (Author)

Through the Brazilian Wilderness is Theodore Roosevelt's narrative of his expedition into the Brazilian jungle in 1913. Teddy Roosevelt was a man's man, a New York kid whose taste for adventure was sparked in his boyhood by a dead seal for sale on a Broadway sidewalk. Harvard student, soldier, Rough Rider, youngest President ever and one who survived the assassin's bullet, maverick politician, Nobel Prize winner, hunter and conservationist, and finally the man who, at 55 years old, explored an unknown region of the Amazon river basin. Imagine one of today's former-Presidents undertaking a similar adventure. For six weeks, in 1914, Roosevelt and his party paddled and carried their canoes down a previously unexplored 950-mile river now called the Rio Roosevelt. Men died, boats were lost, food became scarce, dangerous animals and natives were about, fever borne by insects sickened many in the party (and led to Roosevelt's own death five years later).

This is the stuff of Through the Brazilian Wilderness. Theodore Roosevelt was truly a unique, gifted and accomplished person. If he had followed the interests of his youth, he would have grown up to be a naturalist rather than President of the United States. As a boy he had a vast collection of frogs, squirrels, snakes, birds, insects that he called the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History. Science's loss was politics gain. However, T.R. never lost his interest in nature. Following his presidency, he set out on an expedition to explore and map unknown regions of Paraguay and Brazil on the 950-mile "River of Doubt," a previously unexplored tributary of the Amazon River. The expedition collected thousands of species of birds and mammals. Roosevelt admired those who lived life with passion and for what he called "the Great Adventure." The story of his expedition, as chronicled in "Through the Brazilian Wilderness," tells one of T.R.'s last great adventures in his typical inimitable style.

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (1858–1919) was the 26th President of the United States. He is noted for his energetic personality, range of interests and achievements, leadership of the Progressive Movement, and his "cowboy" image and robust masculinity. He was a leader of the Republican Party and founder of the short-lived Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party of 1912. Before becoming President (1901–1909) he held offices at the municipal, state, and federal level of government. Roosevelt's achievements as a naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier are as much a part of his fame as any office he held as a politician.

Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and The Wilderness Hunter

Theodore Roosevelt (Author)

It's no secret that America's most bully president was also its most bully outdoorsman and conservationist; what's often forgotten was how beautifully and authoritatively he wrote about the wilderness and his considerable experiences there. These two pre-White House narratives--Ranchman was originally published in 1885, Wilderness eight years later--are rich and vivid. The former chronicles Roosevelt's sojourns in the Dakota Badlands; the latter is an extended love letter to the pleasures and challenges of outdoor life.

So what if some of his 19th-century ideas seem politically incorrect by the standards of the next century--magnificent prose is still magnificent prose. "Nowhere, not even at sea," writes the future First Hunter in one haunting passage, "does a man feel more lonely than when riding over the far-reaching seemingly never-ending plains ... [but] after a man has lived a little while on or near them, their very vastness and loneliness and their melancholy monotony have a strong fascination for him." By comparison, the isolation and weight of the Oval Office must have seemed like an afternoon stroll in the park.