"The Heart Of The Hunter"

A book truly from the heart!

Last week Thursday I had a meeting in Kalamazoo, MI, and arriving too early I decided to go hunting...for hunting books, in used book stores, which is one of my favorite forms of prospecting for potentially forgotten gems.

At Bicentennial Bookshop Inc. (820 S. Westnedge Avenue, Kalamazoo, MI) I spent a good hour spot and stalking their overflowing shelves, and finally decided on taking three new specimens home and at least one (for I have not yet read the other two) proved to be a great trophy!

I had never heard of Edison Tesla Marshall (1894-1967) before, but after researching a bit I found him to be a prolific writer sold his first story to Argosy magazine while a freshman in college, giving him confidence to pursue writing as a career, and later in life "he traveled around the world and earned a reputation as a big game hunter and adventurer in search of story material." It looks to me that Mr. Marshall worked very hard to create and sell fantasy stories to others so he could live a full life as if in a fantasy story!

There is no bravado in "The Heart of the Hunter," but an honest discussion of the anguishes and contradictions of the chase, the pursuit of big and many times dangerous game, the excitement and fear, but never cowardice. Mr. Marshall takes us from his native Indiana where he first started hunting small game with a .22 rifle he received as a birthday gift in the first decade of the XX century, and moving to Oregon, to where his family relocated in 1907, and where he fell in love with ducks, which he hunted with an old Winchester hammer pump gun, the same gun with which he accidentally shot himself losing his left hand thumb and a piece of his left ear. According to him "Ducks are the big game of small game."

He started his big game adventures in the Yukon and Alaska, where in three different trips he hunted caribou, moose and grizzly and brown bear in ever more desolated and wild places. For all his hunts in the Northern Wilds Marshall used a Springfield 30-06, which he called .30 U.S.

After that he traveled to then British East Africa on safari with the famous expatriated American white hunter Bwana Cottar with whom he hunted "plains game," rhino, buffalo, leopard and lion, but not elephant as he considered the fifty pound extra license fee as so high. To The Whispering Veld he took the Springfield and a 9,5x57mm Mannlicher-Schönauer that he had won on a bet. He clearly did not like the later rifle due to his fierce recoil, and eventually used Cottar's Winchester 1895 in .405 for much of the dangerous game hunting. During his African safari Marshall starts to question his quest for big game trophies and his passion for conservation, leading to discussions and potentially disagreements with Bwana Cottar.

A couple years after Africa Marshall travelled virtually halfway around the world to the Big Jungles of French Indochina to where he took a Mauser .404 Jeffery, "shooting sixty grains of cordite and a four-hundred-grain bullet - much more powerful than Cottar's lever-action .405, well-balanced, stoutly fashioned, and one of the most positive if not foolproof arms I had ever put to my shoulder." In the luxuriant jungles of Indochina Marshall hunted for saladang, water buffalo, sambar deer, wild boar - as big, if not bigger, than the ones that destroyed the fields of France - leopard and his special kind of Golden Fleece, the tiger! "Without tigers it could not fill the bill. Tigers were the incarnation, the titulary goldhead, of the jungle." Besides the .404 Mauser, he also took a Remington .35 pump-action rifle, Model 14, as requested by "an American manufacturer."

Two years after his return from IndoChina, he traveled overland from the Gulf of Tonkin all the way down to Bangkok, and two years after that he arrived at the Jungle of Mowgli, where he hunted the Duars of Bhutan specially for tiger, sitting for countless hours over malodorous baits, and not shooting from the back of trained elephants while local villagers drove fields and forests., but also for water buffalo and other smaller antlered game.

Twenty two months afterwards he returned in the Pursuit of the Giants, hunting not the younger jungle tigers, but older and bigger tigers that grew to heavy to hunt wild game and now feasted on domestic livestock and eventually on their herdsmen in the fallow fields around villages. In pursuing this most dangerous game he again brought the .404 Mauser, but also another rifle. "This was no less than the double-barreled .470, made by the great George Gibbs of Bristol, and the grandest piece of ironmongery I had ever seen. Its long cartridge contained a five-hundred-grain bullet propelled ninety grains of cordite."

During this shikari Mr. Marshall first shot a smaller jungle tigress, and then a gigantic Grandfather of Tigers that measured a full ten feet in between pegs, as large as the famous Bachelor of Powalgarh, hunted by the dean of all tiger hunters, Jim Corbett. He shot another male tiger almost as large, and then during a drive for deer and boar a tiger - Kala Bagh, the black tiger, so called because of his black soul for he always killed the herdsmen prior to killing the cattle - appeared from nowhere and mauled one of the beaters, that probably had his life saved by Marshall due to the first aid provided and him taking to a hospital for treatment.

Marshall then had to travel to Burma where he was unable to collect much material for his book, but where he hunted a gigantic rogue elephant that was fully ten feet tall and had twenty inches tracks. Its broken tusks were eighteen inches in circumference and weighed just short of sixty pounds apiece.

He then returned to India, to find that during the previous five weeks Kala Bagh had set a blood record, killing six cattle, one buffalo, one pony, and oddly enough, three goats in the same night, and probably in the same minute. "And the great tigers of the grasslands had been piling up that kind of slaughter for years." Eventually both hunters met in a fierce battle.

Edison Marshall in Indochina with a "small" tiger (1931)

I am not sure if Mr. Marshall ever met Robert Ruark (1915-1965), both being accomplished writers as well as hunters, but both had enough sense to use enough gun. By the end of "The Heart of the Hunter" Edison Marshall writes the following: "I had hunted enough big game that when I told of it, or wrote of it, I would receive a respectful hearing. Never again would I remain silent when hunters urged the adequacy of light rifles against heavy game. These made for straighter shooting at long ranges. But let the hunter take more time and care in the stalk; and then hit as hard as he can, for surely noble quarry deserves a quick dispatch. This is the least we can give."

I had great pleasure reading "The Heart of the Hunter," even if I know that am unable to write nearly as well as Edison Marshall did and I am certain that in our rather stupid times I will never hunt the beautiful and elusive tiger, but I can at least try to live as full a life, turning my dreams and fantasies into reality.

In Bocca al Lupo

In loving memory of Vito Benevelli (1949 - 2016)

I first met my friend Vito Benevelli when during a brief visit to Torino, Italy, my friend and work colleague Giorgio Mallia took me to his restaurant Frandin da Vito in San Mauro Torinese prior to a business meeting, about ten or twelve years ago. Giorgio knew about my passion for hunting, and also knew that Vito was not only a great hunter, but also a fantastic chef, and that his piemontese menu always had a great offering of wild game. His wife, Signora Luciana waited on us, and before we left she introduced me to Vito and we talked briefly about hunting. To say that my first meal there was memorable would be a gross understatement, but let's also say that it was "the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

In the years following that first visit I returned several times, we would spend more and more time talking about hunting, while savouring a glass of Nebbiolo followed by a Genipi, that Vito prepared himself with flowers he collected while hunting in the surrounding Alps.

Then when I lived for about a year in Torino in 2011/2012, we got even closer, and would meet at least every week that was in town. Once he took me shooting Élica, and on another time he took me to his hometown of Monforte D'Alba to hunt capriolo. He was frustrated because it was buck season, but only does and fawns appeared in the field. I remember that when we got back to the restaurant in San Mauro Torinese we had some battuta di carne cruda and thens shared a tajarin al ragu di coniglio, always complemented by a bottle of his own Benevelli Nebbiolo wine.

Even after I left Torino I was able to visit Vito at least once a year, and a couple months ago he called me saying that there were capriolo everywhere in the piemontese hills and that I should meet him at his home in Monforte so we could hunt together. Luckily I was able to combine a business trip to Livorno with a visit to Vito and we were together from Friday, September 9th, until Monday, 12th.

I was very concerned when he picked me at the train station in Asti I was very concerned with him. He seemed tired, was short of breath and temper, coughing constantly, as if the late European summer heat was suffocating him.

I could not have had a better host than Vito, along with Signora Luciana and their daughter Carlota. We hunted every morning and evening, always saw capriolo, but had very bad luck with his 240 Weatherby Magnum rifle. Eventually I shot the rifle and it was shooting patterns, not groups!

Finally on the Monday morning at an Azienda Faunistico Venatoria in Mondovì, after once again being entertained by several does and starting back, I saw a different animal. We stopped the car and I could see antlers. Vito told me to get the zaino (backpack) and rifle out and get ready. And that time the Weatherby didn't betray us, and the photo you see above is from the capriolo that I shot, on what would be Vito's last hunting day.

Carlotta called this morning at 4:45 with terrible news. Vito's hunter's heart betrayed him and I lost my dear friend.

In bocca al lupo, bravissimo amico Vito! May God be your guide.

A Real Rage

The recovered Rage...

I guess it is true that we learn something new every day. I bought a TenPoint Titan Xtreme crossbow a couple years ago, but as luck had it I did not have the opportunity to fire it at anything but targets until Monday this week.

Although I am a bit of a traditionalist, at Neverland the expected ranges from our tree stands are a bit longer than I am comfortable to shot with my compound bow, so the investment on the crossbow. Also, it is always nice to play with a new or different toy.

The other "innovation" that I accepted along the crossbow was the use of mechanical broadheads, in my particular case Rage's X Blade 125 grains. As my compound bow is set to 56 pounds draw weight I felt that fixed-blade broadheads would guarantee me better penetration, but the crossbow has power to spare.

Anyhow, I hunted both morning and evening of Michigan's bow season opening day from the tree stand that overlooks the feeder at an overgrown clearing at Neverland, north of the bridge over the Mann Creek and west of the powerline. And apart from a close encounter, almost of the third degree, with a Cooper's Hawk that attempted to land either on my tree or my crossbow, but then decided it was safer to pick the next tree to the left, and watching cotton-tail rabbits, squirrels and blue jays stealing the corn intended only for the precious and scarce whitetails I had only a beautiful and quiet day at the woods.

After that the weather turned sour, overclouded or raining and windy most of the week. Maybe a very northern side effect of hurricane Matthew playing havoc in the more southern latitudes. Last Saturday I spent the morning bird hunting with Del, when we shot a couple limits of woodcock but saw no grouse, and in the afternoon I had a terrible earache that made driving home a terrible chore and would not allow me to hunt.

Sunday after mass I felt good enough to hunt again, and went back to the same tree stand, and had another quiet, pleasant and beautiful evening in the woods, with only the same cotton-tail, squirrels and blue jays entertaining me when I would stop re-reading Jim Fergus "A Hunter's Road". Driving home Sunday night I called my wife that is visiting our daughter and grandson in Houston and she mentioned that there was a weather alert for a potential frost on Monday morning. And that comment energized me, as a cold blast put the deer on the move.

On Monday morning I was comfortably seating at my tree stand a solid hour before first light, and had finally discovered a good way of balancing the crossbow on the rail so I had my hands free, to read, use the rangefinder, text to my wife, or whatever.

With sunup the frost started to appear in the more open areas, and my hopes were renewed. About an hour or so later I noticed a slight movement behind the trees to the left of the feeder and felt the all too common adrenalin rush better known as buckfever.

The grey shadow stood still for several minutes and finally a small doe came from behind the tree and moved behind the feeder. I positioned the crossbow on the rails, turned the green light on the dots and chose the proper dot for a 35 yards shot. When the doe cleared the feeder I pressed the trigger and was brutally surprised.

I heard the arrow hitting the doe almost as I pressed the trigger, and she went down immediately. By the picture below you can see that the spine must have been hit, but nonetheless the effect was nothing but definitive.

I will let Neverland rest before going back for the big buck that haunts my dreams, and that I am sure that I will meet one day.

...and the end game.

A Macnab...of Sorts

According to the prestigious English publication THE FIELD, "the Macnab Challenge has its roots in the 1925 novel John Macnab by John Buchan. The story follows three protagonists, all desperate to relieve the ennui that has engulfed them. The solution can only be something devilish, with a dash of daring. Under the mantle of John Macnab, they issue a warning to three Highland estates: within 48 hours they will remove a salmon or stag, undetected, and present it at the door of the house. On this, they stake their reputations and the danger proves innervating. The modern Macnab Challenge: bagging a salmon, stag and brace of grouse within one day between dawn and dusk, is derived from Buchan’s tale. It is a thrilling test of sporting skill (with a dash of luck thrown in)."

I also read about Macnab Challenges in South Africa, where the sportsman will attempt to hunt a Vaal Rhebuck ram, shoot a brace of Francolin on wing over English pointers and catch a trout on a fly rod, all in a single day. Also, my good friend Del Whitman Jr. and I have been discussing for some years the institution of the "Neverland Macnab," which would require a ruffed grouse shot over dogs, a whitetail deer during either bow or gun season and a brook trout fished from the Mann Creek, all within the borders and boundaries of Neverland's 35 acres, during the same season, as I don't like being pressed or hurried on pleasurable endeavours.

I can imagine multiple other Macnab Challenges across the world, from Patagonia to Alaska or from Europe to Asia, but I would like to talk about the Macnab that I just completed in the forests and rivers of Ontario.

My friend Bob Scott and I had been discussing another bear hunt, and last February we met at the Grand Rapids Huntin' Time Expo to discuss arrangements with Jeff Helms of Agawa Canyon Outfitters. As in the case of our last hunt in 2013 we were looking for hunting "later in their season," which means after Small Game opener (September 15th). We penciled out arrangements, but Bob was unsure about making it due to family issues. The plan was that Richard Hobbs from South Africa would also come, but he later had to cancel due to a knee surgery.

In the meantime, I was able to convince another good friend, Eloir Mário Marcelino, from Tietê, Brazil, that he wouldn't be eaten by a bear, and that he would really enjoy big game hunting under absolute fair chase conditions in the "Canadian wilderness." And after many false starts, Eloir finally landed in the beautiful Cherry Capital Airport of my hometown, Traverse City, MI, on the last September 15th, the a few hours after I hunted the Grouse opener with Del and Matt (of Lake Ann Brewery), and a few hours before my wife traveled to Houston, TX, to spend time with the "man of her life," our grandson Sylas.

Eloir and I spend the Friday getting ready for the trip, buying some groceries and organizing our gear (or kit as the British would say), and for him bear spray, a new camera and other odds and ends.

And about four thirty on the Saturday morning we started four hundred plus miles trip to Halfway Haven, driving through the Mackinac and Sault Sainte Marie bridges, following the shores of Lake Superior on Canadian Route 17 to Wawa, and finally taking 101 towards Chapleau until we exited the black top on Much Lake Road. But I will let Eloir tell the details of the trip and borders crossings in his own blog.

We got to Halfway Haven by mid-afternoon when Sean - partner, cook, waiter, public relations, maintenance, and who knows how many other hats - welcomed us and showed us to our rooms. For good luck I stayed in the same room of my previous hunt, No. 8. We were a bit tired and just wanted to relax and enjoy a bit of conversation. Sometime later Jeff arrived from a bait tour and we lost no time in pestering each other.

On the next morning Jeff, Greg (of Kalamazoo area), Eloir and I went out on a bait run in order to reconnoiter and select our stands. During the brief outing I shot my first ruffed grouse of the week, on the wing, inside the bush, flushed by the reliable Jeff. Good work, old boy!

Grouse, the tastier of them all

When we returned it was time to demonstrate to Jeff and Sean that all ten hunters could hit the mark at about 30 yards. Everybody hit the mark well enough, and there was a long list of calibers used: 12 and 20 gauge slug guns, and rifles 30-06, 308, 300 Savage, 460 S&W, 348 Winchester and yours truly 9,3x74R.

Due to two repeating rifle failures that I had witnesses during my last bear hunt in 2013 - I short stroked the bolt of my 375 H&H after shooting a bear at 13 yards and jammed it, and another hunter failed to totally insert the magazine of his Remington 7400 which did not feed the cartridge to the chamber causing a click instead of a BOOM when his bear showed up - I hear the wise words of John A. Hunter and brought a double rifle for this hunt, in the ubiquitous (or almost) 9,3x74R caliber, paired up with the excellent RWS H-Mantel 286 grain bullets.

By two thirty in the afternoon and with the beginnings of a fever that would pester me for the next couple days, I climbed on Jeff's Ranger and drove the three miles to my blind at Hoppy Creek. I took my place at the tree stand and tanked the nearby waterfall for camouflaging my annoying coughing, another sign of the cold that I was nursing.

Jeff had almost ordered me to shoot a bear on that first day, as it would bring good vibes to the camp. And I tell you, I would rather be lucky than good, as around five, and despite the all the coughing, a beautiful boar black bear materialized to my left, maybe ten yards away.

I had the double rifle over my legs and just waited for the bear to look elsewhere, and as he was about to start circling me I sat the crosshairs of the Swarovski scope on the middle of the middle and pressed the trigger. And the bear collapsed; went down like a sack of bricks! But amazingly, after what seemed a long time, he struggled to get up and when it was apparent he was going to run I let him have the top barrel. I think that the energy of the second shot helped him move forward, but soon he rolled up and rested under some logs.

Two old bears

Even without having planned it, I was in the way of a Macnab, put there was no reason to rush it. Just like Ernest Hemingway, I don't think that we should impose a time limit on hunting, or fishing. We must enjoy these activities according to the pace established by our souls.

Then, some days later, when the weather was perfect, no wind, and all the hunters had been cared for, Jeff and I took his jet boat on the slow moving Montreal River to jig for walleyes. Before the purists attack me I need to say a couple things: I am not much of a fisherman, the closest fly-fishing waters were several hours away, and walleye are great eating fish, not to say very sporting ones. So, what is the problem if my Macnab was not completed with trout or salmon?

An almost magical evening in the Montreal River

And this is how I completed my unplanned Macnab Challenge of feathers, fur and fish, but I need to say that without great friends taking part in it, the achievement would be meaningless.