Book Review

Reports follow on a book about-and by-late SSM Editor at Large Robert F. Jones; a look at the intellectual evolution of the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold; a couple of works (one serious, one light) about shooting in Britain; and an art book on grouse of the British Isles.

A Roaring in the Blood:
Remembering Robert F. Jones
Edited by Annie Proulx (Sporting Classics, 800-849-1004, www.sporting classics.net; 2007) 193 pp. $40 (deluxe leather-bound edition, $75).

National Book Award-winning novelist Annie Proulx characterizes the late Bob Jones as "a highly intelligent maverick who loved the blood sports and the rough country of the world" and who "smoked, drank, and tickled danger under the chin." Early on Jones was a staff writer for Time and Sports Illustrated. Later, as a freelance, he wrote essays and articles for SSM and other outdoor magazines and produced short and long fictional works. Selections from Jones's sporting writings are presented in this new book as well as reminiscences by a range of people who knew, worked with, and hunted and fished with the man. There's also a brief section of color photos taken during the last years of Jones's life.
Jones was an important writer about the sporting life; I still have a photocopy of an essay he wrote on grouse hunting for Sports Illustrated in the 1970s, when that magazine had the guts to print material about blood sports. It was one of those signal pieces of writing that helped shape my own philosophy toward our chosen craft, writing, and toward our shared passion, hunting.
Jones's prose in A Roaring in the Blood includes memoirs, essays, reports from the field (North America and elsewhere) and fiction. The writing is by turns humorous, serious, ribald, thoughtful, passionate, poignant, angry-always honest, and always vivid, with telling details that put the reader in the thick of things. Here's a passage about Jones's Labrador, Luke: "These birds we kill fly on in my dreams, and in Luke's dreams, too. In sleep, our legs twitch in syn-chrony, old muscles now, bone-stiff and bone-weary. Blood crusts on his thorn-ripped nose, blood scabs on my thorn-ripped hands." In "The Royal Macbob," Jones tells of a red-letter day afield that carries over into the bedroom. There's a piece about two unruly Irish setters who helped turn Jones into a hunter, and a comparison of pheasant shoots in Dakota cornfields and an estate in England. Vintage Bob Jones, all of it, and all worth reading.
I got a kick out of the contributions from folks who knew him. Some of the reflections are politic, and some describe "Bad Bob" (as Jones was sometimes known) in what only can be called unvarnished terms. What emerges is a full picture of a man who was blustery, macho and pugnacious, yet also kindly and helpful (particularly toward other writers, and that's not a universal trait among those who make their living with words), a prodigious snorer, a lover of dogs, a companion known "for his occasionally socially unacceptable behavior, usually liquor-fueled"-all in all, a human with a huge appetite for life.

Aldo Leopold's Odyssey
By Julianne Lutz Newton (Island Press, 800-621-2736, www.islandpress.com; 2006) 483 pp. $32.95.

Julianne Lutz Newton trained as a wild-life biologist and is now a research associate at the University of Illinois. This book, arising from her PhD thesis, is an ambitious intellectual biography of a key figure in the American conservation movement. Aldo Leopold was born in 1887; he worked as a government forest ranger, taught game management at the University of Wisconsin, and thought deeply and wrote lucidly about how our civilization could inhabit and use the land in ways that would allow for both our economic prosperity and the preservation of natural resources. Leopold is known today as a founder of wildlife management and a pioneering ecologist who, particularly in his final and best-known book, A Sand County Almanac, gave us a land ethic that, sadly, we have largely failed to live up to.
Leopold, writes Newton, proceeded along two paths of intellectual inquiry: a study of the land (which he took to mean soils, waters, plants, animals and people, collectively) and how it functions; and human motivations and behaviors. He identified three cultural attitudes that pose what he considered to be "grave obstacles to conservation": individualism, a deeply embedded get-rich-quick mentality and the commodification of nature. Leopold pointed out "the standard paradox of the 20th Century: Our tools are better than we are and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. But they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
In researching her book, Newton studied archival materials, Leopold's published and unpublished works, and critical writings by other observers while drawing on her own background as a scientist and conservationist. She ably explains how Leopold's philosophy matured between 1909, when he began working as a forest ranger in southwestern Arizona and New Mexico, and his untimely death, after suffering a heart attack, in 1951. Newton offers insights into the hopes Leopold continued to hold that "a rising population of modern, technologically powerful humans would learn and practice ways of living that met their various needs and yet at the same time kept the land healthy." Her book makes us feel even more keenly the loss of Leopold's intellect and what he could have given us had he been able to keep on with his science, teaching and advocacy.

The Great Shoots: Britain's Best-Past and Present
By Brian P. Martin (The Sportsman's Press, distributed by Stackpole Books, 800-732-3669, www.stackpolebooks.com; 2007) 287 pp. $45.

Brian Martin, a former editor of the British magazine Shooting Times, suggests that a "great shoot" (by which he means an estate that offers shooting to guests, by invitation or for pay) is one that provides "consistently excellent support in an environment where both game and wildlife flourish, where the landscape is at least aesthetically pleasing if not stunning, where visiting Guns appreciate a great sense of history, where everyone is simply thrilled to be there and where there is sensible provision for the sport in future generations."
Shooting flying game is a thoroughly British institution that has been popular for centuries and remains so today, not just among the rich but also among people of lesser means. It draws thousands of visitors from overseas (including readers of this magazine). The institution has evolved from a Victorian extravaganza based on shooting tremendous numbers of birds to an emphasis on "smaller bags of quality birds and a much greater interest in variety of quarry."
In this revised edition of a work originally published in 1987, Martin presents chapters on society's changing views on shooting; the economics of setting up and running a shoot; game laws and gamekeepers (with lots of intriguing information on poaching-at one time, you could get "transported," banished to one of the overseas colonies, if you got caught filching Lord Winterbottom's pheasants); techniques and styles of shooting; the evolution of shotguns, cartridges and accessories; and conservation and the future of the sport, which provides a major impetus for keeping the British countryside natural and open, thereby preserving scads of other wild creatures in addition to pheasants, partridge and grouse. Martin goes on to describe dozens of the greatest shoots in different regions of England, in Wales and in Scotland.
Stories abound in those descriptions, with lots of jolly good "There'll always be an England" bits. Such as the Lord who, when told by the butler that his head keeper was sick and unable to direct the day's shooting, replied: "Will you please inform him that the lower orders are never ill." Or the Earl who had shot all of his life on an estate that had been in the family since 1401, and "when he died in 1992, aged ninety-eight, was still shooting stoats with his .410 pistol." Winston Churchill's father, Lord Randolph, once had "the misfortune to shoot a pet dachshund belonging to a lady of quality. He tried to make amends by having the animal stuffed to present to the lady at Christmas, but this only made her more upset." Martin also tells us that some 12 million pheasants are shot in the UK each year and about 80 percent of bagged game is exported to the Continent.
Planning to shoot in England? Ensure you attain the full Monty by reading this book, which is copiously illustrated with period photographs and advertisements, reproductions of game books and portraits of contemporary participants.

Shooting, Top Tips
By Bryn Parry (Swan Hill Press,
distributed by Stackpole Books, 800-732-3669, www.stackpolebooks.com; 2007) 148 pp. $29.95.

Bryn Parry's new book of color cartoons and colorful text covers much of the same ground as The Great Shoots but in a more lighthearted vein. Parry is a regular contributor to The Shooting Gazette and other English magazines. He subtitles his book "The Rough Guide to Smooth Shooting." His cartoons, some naughty, some wittier than others, depict shooting gentlemen who are buffoons and worse; locals as "redneckedy" as you'd encounter in any backwater of America; and intriguing specimens such as "The Keeper (Disciplinera Robustus)" and "The Peg Wife (Neva Againus)." He proffers sound advice, including: "The most important thing to remember is that no one else minds if you are missing as long as they are not."

The Grouse: Artists' Impressions
By Simon Gudgeon, et al. (Swan Hill Press, distributed by Stackpole Books, 800-732-3669, www.stackpolebooks.com; 2007) 151 pp. $49.95.

In July/August 2007, I reported on The Woodcock: Artists' Impressions. Now a partner volume on grouse has come out, and it's just as stirring as the one on woodcock. The new book focuses on the red grouse, that denizen of the heather-clad moorlands of England, Scotland and Wales, and also includes the three less-common species that inhabit the British Isles: black grouse, ptarmigan and capercaillie.
As in the earlier book, this one pairs artists' works-scratchboard, watercolors, bronzes, pencil sketches, oils, acrylics-with text explaining the natural history and management of these highly prized birds. The art depicts the stunning landscapes in which these wild creatures are found and conveys the thrills of hunting them, both walk-up with the aid of dogs and waiting in a butt for the birds to be driven past. The painter Rodger McPhail observes: "I have good reason to love the red grouse. Not only has this splendid game bird supplied me with superb sport and excellent dinners, it has, over the last thirty years, provided a considerable percentage of my income." No, McPhail doesn't sell shooting days on his personal grouse moor, but, as he points out, "grouse shooting is a rich man's sport and rich men can afford the luxury of original paintings."
Though I'm not rich, I once spent four days tramping through the purple-clad Grampian Mountains of Scotland pursuing red grouse. It was a hunt of a lifetime, and the striking works of art in this large-format volume brought it all back for me.