Glory Days of Baja [Hardcover]

Larry Stanton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1997

This book represents 25 years of hunting in Mexico's Baja. To anyone who has ever hunted in Mexico with its plentiful supply of gamebirds and liberal bag limits it will rekindle memories of great days afield

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: John Culler & Sons (July 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887269053
• ISBN-13: 978-1887269056
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,424,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Paradise Lost, August 20, 2008

By 

Ron Braithwaite "Hummingbird God" (El Indio, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Glory Days of Baja (Hardcover)

"The Glory Days of Baja" is Larry Stanton's more-or-less true story of a way of life now past. We read of a cast of characters--Curran, Barr, Braith, and Stanton, himself-- characters more strange and idiosyncratic than those in Toole's 'Confederacy of Dunces.' We read of heat, dust, mechanical breakdowns, shotguns, cold cerveza, mysterious sloe-eyed women, cactus and mud and more mud. We hear the yip of the ever-present coyotes making a kill at the beginning of day.

It's a bit like a slapstick, liquor-addled, fall-on-your-face 'Treasure of Sierra Madre'. Instead of gold, though, the treasure is a fast darting dove or a flight of pintail ducks circling warily over decoys. The real treasure, though, is the love of the Mexican peasants, people who have been abused and brutalized over the centuries by an uncaring Mexican Government. There is even a bandido--or at least I remember a bandito--"I ain't got no stinkin' badge." But that's not what he really said, "Tienes dinero?" As he pointed a rifle at my chest. "No tengo." I told him and was relieved when my friend came up behind him and put a shotgun to his head.

Afterwards I asked my friend, Mike, what we'd have done if we'd killed my would-be bandido. "We'd have shot his goats, his dogs and we would have gone hunting." and Mike wasn't kidding.

Anyway, the old Baja is long gone now...gone to red tape, complex fish and game laws, multiple rubber stamps, mordida and drugs...always drugs. While it lasted, though, it was a paradise. I still miss the flavor of quail grilled over a fired and washed down with ice-cold Dos Equis.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico.