For the new hunter information is often more important that hardware, and some recent books could be appropriate stocking stuffers for less than $20 delivered to your door.
Backyard Deer Hunting: Converting deer to dinner for pennies per pound contains basic information on all aspects of hunting. It considers everything from “why people hunt?” to equipment, regulations, knives, first hunting rifles, cleaning, processing animals and ends with 50 easy recipes for cooking deer and other game. Not only does this book consider deer, it also discusses wild hogs, other big game animals, small game and waterfowl. It is available from Amazon.com and other sources and is presently being discounted.
For hunters in states that have recently allowed crossbows to be used during the general archery season such as TX, MI, PA, RI and NJ; Crossbow Hunting, is the only book that completely considers the crossbow as a hunting tool. It is complete with descriptive information on various price crossbows, hunting strategies for different game animals, hunts for African lion and other animals and concludes with chapters on cleaning and cooking game. This book is also being discounted at Amazon.com and in other electronic book markets.
Hi Hovey,
I first read your book, “Crossbow Hunting” a year or so ago and confess that I only glossed through it. At that time I was really more interested in the do-it-yourself aspects of crossbows with a view to getting back into the sport with one I made myself. However I have since read your fine book more thoroughly and have come to realise just how much very good information is contained in those 276 pages.
There is nothing worse, in my opinion, than turning the first few pages of such a book, only to find that the author is banking on the fact that nobody will know any different and thus the contents will not be challenged. Yours is not one of those. I congratulate you for the way that you have been able to take several difficult subjects and yet convey them in ways that make for very enjoyable reading and at the same time, most educational too.
Much has been written and continues to be written about the many various ready-made crossbows available today but except for very old books like the ones by the late Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey et al, there is little outside of the Internet about ‘rolling your own’.
I have always considered the crossbow to be somewhat of an art form, and when one studies crossbows through the ages this is very much evident in the way the vast majority were made; not unlike best guns have been since.
Mr. Robin Allen of the Crossbwman’s Den in British Columbia is the only man I know who has been persuing this art form, in fact for over fifty years now, and it is a pity that our sport does not enjoy the same kind of following as does ‘primitive archery’ where men and women make their own instruments and hunt with them too. To do this and to then to prepare the fine wild fare with guiding sound advice from your books has to make for the complete hunting experience. One for which we can all be proud of.
Thank you for your continuing contribution to a way of life that must never be compromised by unsound judgement.
Ralph
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