Jim Casada Outdoors

May 2011 Newsletter

Jim Casada Web site: www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com
1250 Yorkdale Drive E-mail: jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com
Rock Hill, SC 29730-7638
803-329-4354

May Musings, Meanderings, and Memories

For me this year, the merry month of May will be a busy one. Among the activities on my schedule are a one-day class in the University of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountain Field School (www.outreach.utk.edu/smoky) on nature writing, a talk to winners in a middle school writing competition, and being an exhibitor at the 15^th annual South Carolina Book Festival of the Book (www.scbookfestival.org). The latter event, scheduled for May 14 (9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.) and May 15 (10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.) at the Metropolitan Convention Center in Columbia, is a “must attend” for anyone who cherishes books, loves to read, or wants to hear presentations on a wide range of subjects from regionally and nationally renowned authors. There will also be scores of exhibitors, among them yours truly, offering books for sale. I’ll have a wide selection of works I’ve written or edited along with a solid offering of out-of-print material from writers such as Archibald Rutledge and Robert Ruark. I hope several of you who live in this part of the world will stop by for a “shake and howdy.” Admission is priced exactly right—it’s free.

Speaking of books, I’m taking a break from preparing for another book-related event to write this newsletter. In a couple of days I’m scheduled to deliver a sort of keynote address to the employees of the Lexington County (S.C.) Library system. This is an annual training/get the juices stirring/employee improvement event. My talk will revolve around a lifelong love of books, a boyhood in which the local library loomed very large indeed, a mother who worked as the local librarian for a decade after she got us kids raised and the nest was empty, and what books have meant to me. Those recollections, together with an exchange of e-mails initiated by a librarian in Casper, Wyoming and some folks at Cabela’s who were anxious to compile some sort of list of “must read” authors and books for the outdoorsman, set me to thinking about the whole matter of sporting literature.

It’s a huge field. I have a bibliography on my shelves published a couple of decades ago which lists almost 15,000 works on sport and runs to a whopping 1,176 pages, and even at the time it first appeared the work was woefully incomplete. Resting alongside it are perhaps four dozen more reference works on the literature of hunting, fishing, and related subjects, with their coverage ranging from American fishing books to African sport, specialized publishers such as Derrydale Press and Small-Arms Technical Publishing Company to sporting books series. On a personal level I have recently completed a bibliography of turkey hunting books, and it is about ready to go to the printer (if you are interested, just let me know and I’ll notify you when the book appears). All of this is my way of indicating that there are more books on hunting, fishing, and related subjects than anyone is likely to read in a lifetime. I’m sitting in an oversized room surrounded by thousands of books in these fields, and there are two storage sheds holding many thousands more. No, I haven’t read all of them, but there’s never a time when I don’t have a bookmark somewhere in an outdoor-related volume.

My love of the printed word goes about as far back as my memory. I had exhausted the outdoor-related books in Bryson City, North Carolina’s Marianna Black Public Library by the time I was in high school, and as I think I’ve related in these monthly meanderings at some point in the past, my visits to the local barber shop were always timed so that there was a long wait. This gave me ample opportunity to delve deeply into the latest issue of Field & Stream or Outdoor Life. I grew up with boon companions, never mind that they were vicarious friendships, who took me to distant destinations and exotic places. Among them were my all-time favorite, Robert Ruark (he just happened to be a son of the Tar Heel soil, as I was), Jack O’Connor, Corey Ford, Archibald Rutledge, Nash Buckingham, Charlie Elliott, Ray Bergman, Russell Annabel, Gordon MacQuarrie, Havilah Babcock, Edmund Ware Smith, Burton Spiller, and a whole host of others.

Sadly the little local library didn’t have many books by these writers, but they did have the classic works of writers such as Theodore Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, Jim Corbett, Ernest Thompson Seton, Charles Sheldon, Samuel W. Baker, and some of the greats of African exploration including Henry Morton Stanley, Dr. David Livingstone, and Fred Selous. Some index to just how much influence these boyhood literary pursuits had on me can be offered by the fact that my doctoral dissertation focused on African explorers (almost all of whom were also great hunters), and in my years as a “recovering professor” I’ve written or edited more than a dozen books on those sporting authors who gave me such a full measure of pleasure as a boy. I might add that particular pleasure has continued unabated in manhood.

Books have loomed so large in my life that I have now determined, as I reach the stage where looking back on simpler days and simpler ways seems, increasingly, to be a part of my existence, to pay tribute to the printed word as best I can. One such avenue I am traveling is to create, a few dozen books at a time, a major holding of outdoor books in the library which gave me my grounding. Named for a woman who happened to be my next-door neighbor, Marianna Black, the little collection had the most humble of beginnings. Mrs. Black stuffed two suitcases full of books she and her husband owned and thus the library was born. Eventually I hope for the Jim Casada Outdoor Collection (the library chose to name it for me, although I made no such request) to number some two thousand volumes on the outdoors, and certainly there should never be another youngster in my highland homeland who has to worry about exhausting the locally available outdoors’ literature before he heads off to college.

That’s enough, and probably too much, on my love of books, the role they’ve played in my life, where they’ve led me in terms of a second career as a writer, and the like. What I really want to do is fulfill, as best I am able, the request to offer a sort of list of books I feel every sportsman ought to read. That list, or at least a start on it, follows. You won’t find any “how to” or “where to” books here. They have their place and there are plenty of them on my personal shelves, but to my way of thinking the works which endure are those which reach out and grab your soul or, to borrow from the man I personally consider America’s greatest outdoor writer, Robert Ruark, ones which make you glad, sad, or mad. The authors and their books come in no particular order of importance, but I do offer brief commentary on each writer and what I consider his best works or special merits. If nothing else, maybe these listings will give you something to occupy some armchair hours during the withering heat and humidity of summer or the deep, depressing cold of winter.

Robert Ruark. In my studied opinion, Ruark ranks as America’s finest outdoor writer. The timeless tales of the “doings” of a sage grandfather and his irrepressible grandson, “The Old Man and the Boy,” first appeared as a long-running and immensely popular column in Field & Stream. Later most of the pieces were compiled into The Old Man and the Boy and The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older. Some years ago I discovered that a goodly number of the columns did not appear in either book and these, along with other Ruark magazine pieces which had not been in a book, formed the basis of The Lost Classics of Robert Ruark, which I compiled, edited, introduced, and concluded with a bibliographical essay (you can order signed copies through my web site). Mike McIntosh (who is mentioned below) did the same with Robert Ruark’s Africa. Also of note is Ruark’s Horn of the Hunter, a book which I consider a far better representation of hunting in Africa than anything Hemingway wrote.
Archibald Rutledge. South Carolina’s first poet laureate, “Old Flintlock” (as he was known to family and friends, was an incredibly prolific writer. Among the more than two dozen books he wrote on the outdoors, those which have won the most acclaim include An American Hunter, Tom and I on the Old Plantation, Days Off in Dixie, Hunter’s Choice, Old Plantation Days, and Plantation Game Trails. These works, as well as many others by Rutledge, are difficult to find and quite pricey. That was one reason, with the fact that he wrote lots of magazine articles which never made it into his books being another, I began what has turned out to be almost a cottage industry in compiling thematic collections of his writings. These include Hunting and Home in the Southern Heartland: The Best of Archibald Rutledge, Tales of Whitetails, America’s Greatest Game Bird, Carolina Christmas, and Bird Dog Days, Wingshooting Ways. I have all but the last-listed work in stock and all are priced at $29.95.
Havilah Babcock. An English professor at the University of South Carolina who wrote on the outdoors as an antidote for chronic insomnia, Babcock was masterful when he wrote about the things he loved most, such as quail hunting and fishing for redbreast bream. He had a real facility with book titles, and all of his outdoor-related works but one (The Education of Pretty Boy) are collections of stories previously published in magazines. They include I Don’t Want to Shoot an Elephant, Tales of Quails ‘n’ Such, Jaybirds Go to Hell on Fridays, and My Health Is Better in November.
Gordon MacQuarrie. As a son of the South, my preferences seem to trend towards great outdoor writers from the region, but MacQuarrie hailed from the upper Midwest and his work, filled with humor, good cheer, and an obvious love for the subject matter, is wonderful. Zach Taylor brought together most of his magazine stories in a trilogy, Stories of the Old Duck Hunters and Other Drivel, More Stories of the Old Duck Hunters, and Last Stories of the Old Duck Hunters. The contents are by no means limited to waterfowling.
Theodore Roosevelt. Several American presidents, including Cleveland, Hoover, and that pantywaist poltroon, Mr. Peanut (Carter), wrote books on the outdoors. However, none was the man, the president, or the sportsman that TR was. He was a prolific writer, and upwards of a dozen of his books dealt with the outdoors. The best of them include The Wilderness Hunter, Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail, Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, and his books on his grand African and Brazilian adventures. I edited and compiled a book, Forgotten Trails and Vanished Trails, which brings together many of his “lost” classics on the outdoors.
Jack O’Connor. Widely hailed as the greatest gun writer of the 20^th century, O’Connor was a fixture at Outdoor Life for many years before concluding his year as a masthead presence for Petersen’s Hunting. His books include, among others, The Rifle Book, The Shotgun Book, Hunting in the Rockies, The Big Game Rifle, Sheep and Sheep Hunting, Game in the Desert, and two autobiographical works, Horse and Buggy West and The Last Book. In recent years I have edited two collections of O’Connor pieces which didn’t appear in his books or previous anthologies, The Lost Classics of Jack O’Connor and Classic O’Connor (both are available through my web site).
Elmer Keith. A little guy with a big hat, big cigar, and affinity for big calibers, Keith was a sort of rival to O’Connor. Although nowhere near the stylist or wordsmith O’Connor was, Keith was colorful and knew guns. His books include Big Game Hunting, Big Game Rifles and Cartridges, Keith: An Autobiography, Hell! I Was There (an expanded version of his autobiography), Safari, and Shotguns by Keith.
Russell Annabel. The guru of Alaskan sport, Annabel wrote Hunting and Fishing in Alaska and Tales of a Big Game Guide. Many years after his death the folks at Safari Press resurrected his writings with a whole series of anthologies comprised of his long forgotten magazine articles.
Edmund Ware Smith. Maine has always been a bedrock of Eastern sport, and Smith’s wonderful writings on a fictional character, Jeff Coongate, along with additional Down East tales, are a pure delight. His books include For Maine Only, The One-Eyed Poacher and the Maine Woods, The One-Eyed Poacher of Privilege, The Further Adventures of the One-Eyed Poacher, Up River and Down, and A Tomato Can Chronicle.
John Taintor Foote. Masterful and prolific, Foote was at his best when writing about fishing and bird dogs, although his work covered other areas as well. Some of his many works are Anglers All, Blister Jones, Dumb-Bell and Others, Fatal Gesture, Jing, Pocono Shot, and A Wedding Gift.
Nash Buckingham. Tennessee’s Mr. Buck essentially devoted his life to hunting (almost exclusively waterfowl and upland game birds) and went through both his inheritance and that of his wife before becoming poverty-stricken late in life. But what a life he lived, and at his best he is without peer as a storyteller. His best known book is De Shootinest Gent’man and Other Tales, with his other works including Blood Lines, Ole Miss’, Game Bag, Tattered Coat, and Mark Right! George Bird Evans brought together a fine selection of Buckingham’s writings in The Best of Buckingham.
Burton Spiller. The writer on grouse, in my opinion, Spiller’s books include Firelight, Fishin’ Around, Grouse Feathers, and More Grouse Feathers.
Corey Ford. A grand humorist who wrote on a variety of subjects beyond the outdoor experience, Ford produced a great column for Field & Stream, “The Lower Forty,” for many years. You can find many of those rollicking tales in Uncle Perk’s Jug and Minutes of the Lower Forty, and Laurie Morrow has produced anthologies of some of his other writings. He was a masterful writer on dogs, and two of his pieces, “Just a Dog” and “The Road to Tinkhamtown” are revered classics.

That’s but a sampling, and in looking back I see I’ve concentrated largely, although not exclusively, on the hunting side of the sporting equation. There’s more to come, and next time around (in a forthcoming newsletter, although not necessarily the next one), I’ll devote more space to fishing. After all, fly fishing has probably seen the production of more books than any single aspect of the outdoor experience. If nothing else, maybe I’ve made a suggestion or two which will recall an old favorite or direct you to a writer with whom you were not previously acquainted. For now, let’s finish with a trio of recipes for early summer which should let you put some of that venison from last fall to good, tasty use.

BLACKENED VENISON LOIN STEAKS

4-6 venison loin steaks, cut 1-inch thick
1/2-1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt

Press pepper into both sides of each venison steak. Place steaks on grill (or in a broiler pan) two or three inches from heat. Grill 10 to 12 minutes or until desired doneness is reached. Turn only once and do not overcook. Season with salt when cooking is completed. Simple and supremely satisfying.

VENISON STEAKS WITH MUSTARD RUB

1 tablespoon lemon pepper
2 tablespoons dry (powdered) mustard
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon paprika

Blend above ingredients in a small bowl. Rub mixture evening over the surface of venison loin steaks. Grill over medium heat, not hot coals, until desired doneness is reach. Turn only once and do not overcook.

CHEESEBURGER VENISON PIZZA

1/4-1/2 pound ground venison
1/4 cup chopped onion
3 slices bacon
1 pizza kit such as Contadina
8 ounces light mozzarella cheese (in addition to cheese in kit)

Brown venison and onion in fry pan. Cook bacon in microwave on paper towels. Place sauce on crust. Top with kit cheese. Spread venison on top. Crumble bacon and distribute evenly. Top with additional mozzarella cheese. Bake at 425 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes or until crisp and cheese is melted and golden.

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Feel free to contact Jim with your comments, questions or suggestions at jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com.

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