Customer Reviews

Hunting the American West: The Pursuit of Big Game for Life, Profit, and Sport, 1800-1900

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During the 1800s, the American West was a magnet for men who hunted for survival, pleasure, and profit. Beautifully illustrated with period black-and-white images and full color artwork and photography, "Hunting The American West" by Richard C. Rattenbury (Curator of History, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum) is an impressive work of meticulous scholarship that provides a comprehensive historical overview drawn from the personal accounts and journal entries of participants and observers ranging from aboriginal hunters and 'Mountain Men', to European adventurers and big game market hunters. "Hunting The American West" addresses such issues as big-game species, subsistence hunting, commercial hunting, and sport hunting; the variety of methods used from 1800 to 1900; the evolution of weaponry used in hunting; language associated with hunting in the American West; and the rise of the hunter-conservation movement -- which lead directly to the founding of the Boone and Crockett Club. Informed and informative, "Hunting The American West" is a unique and valued contribution to the growing library of historical literature with respect to frontier experiences of the west and a core addition to personal, academic, and community library collections.

Hunting The American West -- The Pursuit Of Big Game For Life, Profit, And Sport, 1800-1900 is an impressive hunting history book filled with many art images and photographs of wild animals, western big-game hunters, and the many various weapons used. Richard C. Rattenbury is an elegant and fluid writer who meaningfully conveys the changing western landscape throughout the 19th century and describes the different types of hunters as well as numerous people who were actively involved in the hunting experience; quotes from the hunters themselves dramatically recreate the vigorous experiences they lived through.

On pages 26-27, Captain Randolph B. Marcy, hunting on the Great Plains in 1849, found that in making a fawn call for an antelope that a mountain lion was bounding at full speed towards him; Marcy then shifted his rifle focus to the fast-approaching big cat, which was shot dead ten yards from him. I believe the wolf and the jaguar should have been included in the highlighted animals, because they were also hunted for various reasons at that time in history. On page 45, George Drouillard is described as the leading hunter of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery, combining with other hunters in supplying 131 elk and 20 deer to Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Coast from December 1, 1805 to March 20, 1806. On page 87, young British soldier-adventurer George Frederick Ruxton awoke on a snowy night in Colorado in 1846-1847 to see a wolf in a sleeping state near his large fire, and realizing the animal only wanted warmth, Ruxton went back to sleep. On page 133, the full-page color photograph shows two Kentucky-pattern pistols with half-octagon barrels and well-lined handles, and at about .50 caliber, they appear more powerful than all the handguns of modern history. Pages 241 and 245 describe experienced hunter Frederick Courteney Selous' difficulty in finding animals in Wyoming in the fall of 1897 because of the hunting of the past decades. I liked Charles M. Russell's "predicament" painting showing a rifle-holding hunter standing on a rocky mountainside near his fallen bighorn ram when surprised by a standing grizzly bear on the slope on page 266 and Frank Jay Haynes' photograph of two bull elk sitting in the snow in Hayden Valley in Yellowstone National Park in 1894 on page 279. The last chapter highlights the thinking of George Bird Grinnell (1849-1938) and the political actions of Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) and John F. Lacey in successfully protecting wild animals and the lands on which they lived.

Great historical account of the title subject. The pictures are worth the cost even if you don't read the narrative.

Scholarly, gorgeously illustrated, and definitely the most thoroughly researched treatice and synopsis of the hunting history of the old west, "Hunting the American West" provides folks a single reference sumarizing the variety of game, the participants, their methods and motives, and the weapons and tools involved in this great 19th century saga. Like Mr. Rattenbury's previous masterpiece on western gun leather, "Packing Iron", this volume is comprehensive and brilliant, but still a delight to read.