Hunting Around the World

Fair Chase Pursuits from Backcountry Wilderness to the Scottish Highlands

By Jack Ward Thomas

Hunting nourishes human bodies, minds, and, in some cases, careers.

Like many rural Texas youths in the 1940s, Jack Ward Thomas learned to hunt early on. It provided food for his family and a lifetime of enjoyment. But hunting also brought Thomas to his life's work in conservation, highlighted by his 1993 appointment as chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

Hunting Around the World offers the best accumulated stories, nostalgia, and wisdom of a quintessential hunter-conservationist.

Thomas hunted red stag in the Scottish highlands, doves in Argentina, caribou in Alaska, and all manner of big, small, and feathered game across the United States. But his first and most enduring love was hunting in the "high lonesome" of western wildernesses. Thomas's storytelling about those quests is classic sporting literature. Readers will feel the chill of a frosty mountain morning, tense moments as a bull elk wanders into shooting range, exhilaration as well as "pangs of conscience" in making a kill, and the wistfulness of truth that old age and old injuries will someday bring every hunter's backcountry chapters to an end.

Thomas offers thoughtful analyses of why he hunted, the simple-minded critics of hunting, and habitat loss as the greatest threat to both wildlife and hunting.

About the Author: A child of the Dust Bowl, Jack Ward Thomas's personal adventures spanned hunting rabbits for his mom's skillet to leading pack strings up into the "high lonesome" of western wildernesses. His professional service in natural resource conservation culminated with his tenure as the thirteenth chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

• 240 Pages

• 13 B&W Photos

Available in the following editions — Paperback and eBook (ePub and Mobi).