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Horn of the Hunter
Horn of the Hunter is one of my favorite pieces of safari literature by one of my favorite authors, Robert C. Ruark. This book tells of a safari that Ruark and his wife Virginia embarked upon in the early 1950s. They were guided by Harry Selby who began his career under the tutelage of the legendary hunter, Philip Percival, regarded by many as the Dean of African Hunters. Percival was part of Theodore Roosevelt’s famed 1909-1910 safari, as well as guiding for Baron Rothschild and Ernest Hemingway on African hunts.
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Teddy Roosevelt and The Montana “Incident”
In 1889 a book was published titled The Wilderness Hunter, written by future president and avid sportsman Theodore Roosevelt. It told of his life and sporting adventures in the American West some eighteen years before becoming president. In the the book one story stands out among the others and its one that you might not expect to find in a book written by a future president.
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Six Miles to Charleston
It was a cold February day in 1820 as Lavinia Fisher stood on the gallows outside the Old City Jail in Charleston, South Carolina, clad in her wedding dress. Lavinia and her husband John had been convicted of murder. A crowd gathered to watch America’s first female serial killer be hanged, but before the beautiful Lavinia dropped to her death, she had one last message for the people below...
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African Game Trails
African Game Trails is written by Theodore Roosevelt and is an account of a safari he took with his son Kermit in East Africa starting out in March of 1909 sailing from New York and ending in Khartoum in March of 1910. The purpose of this expedition was to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, plants, and especially specimens of big game for The National Museum at Washington, the Smithsonian, and the American Museum of Natural History, New York. The game mounts from this expedition are on display to this day at these museums.
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Lords of the Fly
I enjoyed reading this book. It is not what I expected at all. Most of the books and literature I have read on fishing have either been technical or more often reflective essays or stories about the experience in more of a romantic or Zen kind of way...