Books from Bygone Days

[Walt]

I don't remember who sent the recommendation to read "Frank Glazer, Alaska's Wolfman" but thank you. A very fine book. Another excellent book I ordered and read a couple of years ago is called "Camp-Fires in the Canadian Rockies", a wonderful book first published in 1906. It's yet another one that's hard to put down.

[Bill in Oregon]

Looks great Walt.
A favorite of mine is "Scouting on Two Continents" by Frederick Russell Burnham. You can't make up the life he led -- or the grit he possessed -- in your wildest dreams.

[Echo154]

Hell I was there! My favorite…my FIL had a signed copy…..I had hoped to get it one day…..but he lent it to somebody and he never got it back before he passed. I finally found a hardback in good condition….it sits on my coffee table!

[samsi]

Looks good. I just finished The Rediscovered Country by Stewart Edward White, basically his journal of a 3 month ramble around then German East Africa just prior to WW1.

One of the high points was his solo hunt of what turned out to be 4 lions. He used, alternately, a Springfield Sporter and a .405 Winchester so there's levergun content.

His earlier work African Camp Fires is worthwhile also.

[AJMD429]

.
This one is a true tale of the attempt to find a route from New York to the Hudson Bay - the exploration started in 1903, and what I liked was it was not a dull 'journal', but nor was it a glossed-over adventure-story. It describes things like how they goofed up and lost a week's worth of fish by not properly drying them, and numerous other real-world blunders, in the context of exploration into what seems today to be oddly-uncharted territory for the beginning of the 20th Century. Leonidas Hubbard didn't survive the journey, so his partner Dillon Wallace wound up writing the story.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-long- ... /10439339/

"...In the summer of 1903, Dillon Wallace had the privilege to accompany his friend, Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., to explore a section of the unknown interior of Labrador. The expedition had a disastrous ending and Hubbard, fighting bravely and heroically to the last, finally succumbed to starvation. Before Hubbard's death, Dillon Wallace gave him his promise that should he survive he would write and publish the story of the journey. In "The Lure of The Labrador Wild" that pledge was kept. While Hubbard and Wallace were struggling inland over those desolate wastes, where life was always uncertain, they entered into a pact that in case one of them fell the other would carry to completion the exploratory work that Hubbard had planned and begun. Providence willed that it should become the duty of Dillon Wallace to fulfill this pact. You will read the amazing record of this real-life story in "The Long Labrador Trail"..."

[Lastmohecken]

I have about all of the early books written by Elmer Keith, and they are some of favorites. Jack O'Connor also. And I have a book written by Pope of Pope and Young fame, that I really like.

[Ray]

Alas, several of these are out of print but the "canadian wilds" edition that is apropos to the theme of the o.p. seems available.

https://www.furfishgame.com/shop_online ... _books.php

Here is the electronic book online.....

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34173/3 ... 4173-h.htm

Another good one.....

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34063

[Drawdown]

Thank You Walt, that's an entirely new to me book, i will look into maybe getting it and several others of these suggestions!

[Ray]

Here is an interesting excerpt from chapter 20 of the electronic version of martin hunter's "canadian wilds" that I linked above.

Seeing a small shark brought ashore the other day by one of the salmon fishermen, who had found it rolled up in his net, put me in mind of an exciting adventure I had many years ago. Both at the east, as well as the west side of the mouth of the great River Moisie, sand banks run out to sea for a distance of two or three miles. These are covered at high tide, but being of almost a uniform height, the falling tide runs off of them in a very short space of time, and leaves them dry with the exception of some odd places where pools of water remain. The banks are dry the last two hours of the ebb and the first two hours of the flood tide.

The great river continually deposits on these sands such quantities of vegetable matter, that they are a resort for many kinds of small fishes; and numerous waterfowl come there at certain stages of the tide to feed on the fish.

I was only about eighteen at the time, and had gone out in a birch-bark canoe to shoot ducks on the banks. My companion, an Indian boy, even younger than myself in years, but several times older in experience, was to steer the canoe. The last words his father said to us before leaving, were, "Don't go too far out, or the 'Ma-thcie-ne-mak' will cut your canoe and eat you."

The sea that morning was as calm as a pond, and perfectly glassy from the strong May sun striking straight down on it. We had been out for a couple of hours, and had had pretty fair luck with sea-ducks and loons, and were just about starting for the shore before the tide left us dry on the banks. If such a thing had happened, it would have entailed on us the labor of carrying our canoe a mile or so to the beach, over soft yielding sand.

"We better go," the boy was saying when his words were cut short in his mouth. With the remains of that breath he screeched "Ma-tchie-ne-mak!" and started to paddle like one possessed. I admit that his fright was infectious, and coupled with the dread name of shark, it so quickened my stroke, that Hanlon's sixty-a-minute were very slow compared to the way I worked my paddle. I have read, and heard from old whalesmen, that as long as one kept the water churned up, there was no danger of the shark getting in his work. Twice the boy called out, "There he is!" Once I caught a glimpse of the monster a few yards off on our port beam, heading to the shore also, but evidently watching for a chance to attack us.

The tide was now running out, and consequently the more we neared the shore, the shoaler the water got. The shark had not stopped to consider this in his mad rush to catch us. At last our canoe grounded on the sands and we looked back with relief at our narrow escape. But, ah! what is that about a couple of acres astern, surely not the shark! But it was, and he was floundering about in shallow water, in one of the pools, and every minute the water was getting less. "Hoop-la! we will now hunt the shark," I said to little Moses, as I started off toward him over the now dry sands.

Yes, there he was, the great, ugly beast, flopping about in a basin surrounded by banks, out of which it was impossible for him to escape. From the shore the boy's father and one of my men saw what was going on and came out with a handful of bullets and their guns. In the meantime I was employing the time with good results, by pouring into the shark charge after charge of AAA shot at close range.

By the time the men reached us the fish was pretty sick, and apart from snapping his immense jaws, was lying perfectly still. The first bullet from a distance of ten feet put an end to him. When the tide came in again we towed him into the river and cut him up and salted the chunks in barrels to feed the dogs the next winter. From the liver we rendered out three gallons of oil as clear as water. This of itself was of value to us the next winter in our lamps, it gave a clear light and emitted no smoke. Those were the days before coal oil came into general use. Our only lights at the post were home-made tallow candles, or a cotton rag from a tin spout fed by seal-oil. This, combined with the burning rag, gave off a heavy, dense, black smoke, which was, if not injurious, very unpleasant to inhale during the long winter evenings. The shark-oil being so much superior, I kept it for my own private lamps, and the teeth ornamented the mantlepiece.

[Malamute]

r Cache Lake Country, by John Rowlands. very good, very enjoyable, about a year in his life in the Canadian back country.

Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, by Theodore Roosevelt. excellent book about his time in the west at his ranch and general area. He wrote several others about hunting, all have been quite good.

Many books by Calvin Rutstrum, some are how-to type outdoors, camping, wilderness canoe travel, cabin building, many are about life in the Canadian wilds in the early part of the 1900s. Even some of his how-to type books have good related stories in them. Some are somewhat philosophical about life in high speed civilization vs in the back country.

The Rifle Book, by Jack O Conner was good. I have not ever read any of his magazine pieces that are generally termed a war with Keith on cartridges etc, that doesnt even seem like the same person as wrote the book. He seems to give a pretty well balanced account of rifles and cartridges available at the time. Its obvious he was a huge fan of the 270, but he certainly didnt disparage any other common hunting rounds, and owned and used many different ones.

[Bill in Oregon]

I don't know why Keith and O'Connor were at such odds with each other. But Keith had very little use for the .30-06, proving he had huge blind spots. Ask Alaskan moose and bear guide Phil Shoemaker, whose sig line on accuratereloading.com is:

Anyone who claims the 30-06 is ineffective has either not tried one, or is unwittingly commenting on their own marksmanship
Phil Shoemaker
Alaska Master guide
FAA Master pilot
NRA Benefactor www.grizzlyskinsofalaska.com

[Walt]

It seems to me that if Keith had a failure with a particular cartridge, maybe because of a difficult shot or the ammo available at the time, he wrote it off as being a worthless cartridge and shunned it for the remainder of his life. He didn't have much faith in expanding bullets; he considered them unreliable.

[Ray]

I don't know why Keith and O'Connor were at such odds with each other. But Keith had very little use for the .30-06, proving he had huge blind spots. Ask Alaskan moose and bear guide Phil Shoemaker, whose sig line on accuratereloading.com is:

Anyone who claims the 30-06 is ineffective has either not tried one, or is unwittingly commenting on their own marksmanship
Phil Shoemaker
Alaska Master guide
FAA Master pilot
NRA Benefactor www.grizzlyskinsofalaska.com

Billy.....er, pardon, Wilhelm, mister Keith wrote of the fall of 1917 using his 1903 Springfield and remington 150 gr. bronze points and 220 round soft noses and both the 150 gr. ball service loads & the 167 gr. camp perry match ammo. He said, "when I dressed my six point bull, I found that all three of my 220 gr. slugs that entered from the rear had all stopped in the paunch. That convinced me that the 30-06 was hardly an elk gun."

If I followed the narrative accurately, there were at least 5 or more shots in that elk.

Then later, of the fall of '24 he wrote, "the third bull showed (the one I had hit five times in the lungs) upon examination, all five of those Remington 150-grain bronze points went through the rib cage into the right lung. They each blew out a little pocket about the size of a hen's egg." He then goes on to describe obtaining a Hoffman Arms .400 whelen.

Way above my pay grade to judge my elders & betters but I suspect it was more of an inadequate available ammunition problem than anything else.

[Malamute]

Ive read several of Keiths books and dont recall any mention of not trusting expanding bullets.

What I do recall is him writing words to the effect of "in all fairness, most of the failures of various cartridges has been when light weight or trick bullets were used, best grade bullets such as Nosler Partitions, Remington cor-loct, (and some others he mentioned) the picture is changed". Basically with better bullets he felt most cartridges bumped up a step in effectiveness.

Keith by no means only liked large bores, he experimented with many rounds and bore sizes, generally in the class of what today would be magnum class for the bore., before such rounds were generally commercially available. I dont recall all of them, but eh liked and/or helped develop 280 magnum class loads, some 300s, 333 (30-06 necked up to 333, before 338 bullets were available), and a 338 win mag equivalent, and liked the 35 whelen and 400 whelen. He worked with long tubes in the primer flash hole to get higher velocities, it seems to have worked, but he decided it was too much work to load them. He mentioned that artillery shells ended up using the method.

All in all, I think it likely his era had less well developed bullets and probably overall quality control than we have in the past 40 or 50 years. Poorly expanding, or bullets breaking up were part of the reason premium bullets were developed.

There were reports of some hard speer 30-30 bullets in the 80s I believe. I probably have some. Two deer i shot with speer 170 gr bullets in 30-30 didnt seem particularly impressed with being shot with them. It would be easy to conclude the 30-30 isnt a great deer cartridge based on such performance, though the majority of people seem to get good results.

Forgot to mention in the previous post, Charles Russell the Western artist also was a writer. There are several of his book that my family had when I was a small youth, and likely strongly influenced the trajectory on my life. Trails Plowed Under, being one. The story A Savage Santa Claus is a good story to start with, Mormons Murphys confidence is also good. Same are obviously tall tales, many others likely a compilation of things heard from Russells many friends that had been there, done that all across the Montana west, and seemed to congregate around his place or at one of the saloons in Great Falls.

https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks07/0700941h.html