Synopses & Reviews
Hunting the American West is a thoroughly illustrated, narrative history of big-game hunting in the nineteenth-century American West. The engaging narrative draws extensively on the writings of original participants and observers of the subject and -- along with an abundance of pictorial material -- affords unusual insight into the diverse methods and motives for hunting big game in the Old West. No other work on the subject conveys the feeling and character of the hunt in its various eras and styles, or its profound consequences, as convincingly.
This book covers the principal big-game species; subsistence, commerce, and sport hunting; the variety of methods used over time and among different peoples in the harvest; the evolving weaponry involved; the artistic expression engendered by the western chase; and the rise of the hunter-conservation movement, which led to the founding of the Boone and Crockett Club.
While it presumes solid scholarship, Hunting the American West is intended for a broad popular audience, including those interested in hunting, western history, firearms, sporting art, and conservation.
Winner -- 2009 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Non-Fiction Historical Book
Winner -- 2009 Independent Book Publishers Association Ippy Gold Award for Best Regional (Western) Non-Fiction
Winner -- 2009 ForeWord Magazine Silver Award for History Book of the Year
Finalist -- 2009 Oklahoma Book Awards for Non-Fiction
Finalist -- 2009 Independent Book Publishers Association BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD for Large Format Cover Design
Synopsis
Experience the grandeur, excitement, and peril of the quest for big game in the West from 1800-1900 in this vivid interpretation with engaging narrative, direct quotations, and historic imagery.
Hunting the American West is a thoroughly illustrated, narrative history of big-game hunting in the nineteenth-century American West. The engaging narrative draws extensively on the writing of original participants and observers of the subject and - along with an abundance of pictorial materials - affords unusual insight into the diverse methods and motives for hunting big game in the Old West. No other work on the subject conveys the feeling and character of the hunt in its various eras and styles, or its profound consequences, as convincingly.
Synopsis
Experience the grandeur, excitement, and peril of the quest for big game in the West from 1800-1900 in this vivid interpretation with engaging narrative, direct quotations, and historic imagery.
Synopsis
"A must read for anyone interested in the history of hunting, firearms, and the West. In his well-written, balanced narrative, based on the words of the hunters themselves, Richard Rattenbury transports us back into the nineteenth century, and a vanished American West."--John F. Reiger, Professor of History, Ohio University, Chillicothe; and author of The Passing of the Great West: Selected Papers of George Bird Grinnell and American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation
About the Author
Richard C. Rattenbury earned a B.A. degree in history from Texas Christian University and an M.A. in museum studies from Texas Tech University. He has served as curator of history at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum since 1987.
Table of Contents
(1) Foreword
(2) Acknowledgments
(3) Introduction
(4) The Object of the Chase: Big-Game Animals of the American West
(5) The Subsistence Hunters: Twelve Millennia Surviving with Wildlife
(6) The Sport Hunters: Adventurers and Aristocrats, 1800-1865
(7) The Arms of the Chase: An Evolving Array of Weaponry
(8) The Market Hunters: Demand, Depletion, Devastation
(9) The Sport Hunters: Officers, Blue-Bloods, and Foreign Gentlemen in the Golden Age, 1865-1900
(10) The Image of the Chase: Artists, Illustrators, Photographers, and Engravers
(11) The Sport Hunters: American Adventurers in the Golden Age, 1865-1900
(12) The Hunter-Naturalists: Conserving Western Big-Game Animals
(13) Bibliography
(14) Index