HUNTING, FISHING, AND CAMPING
By Leon Leonwood Bean
Down East Books, 2011
112 pages, $19.95
ISBN 978-1-60893-012-3
Everyone in Maine has heard of L.L. Bean and how he started his outdoor boot business way back in 1912. However, folks may not know he was a terrific writer, too, penning a wonderful book about hunting, fishing and camping.
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of L.L. Bean’s founding, Down East Books has republished Leon Leonwood Bean’s 1942 classic, HUNTING, FISHING AND CAMPING. This hardcover book offers practical, simple advice based on experience, not theory, and although hyped as a “no-nonsense” guide, it contains some terrific humor and several hilarious jokes. Clearly, Bean knew a lot about the outdoors, and he had a great sense of humor.
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The book contains 44 short chapters, “readable in 85 minutes.” Chapters cover everything from hunting deer, bear, moose and game birds, to fishing for salmon, trout and bass, as well as sections on choosing a campsite, hunter safety, how to use a compass and cook a tasty campfire meal.
In the chapters about hunting, he explains the best places to hunt for certain game, what game eats and where, how to track, stalk or patiently wait for game, and certain animal peculiarities. For examples, he says that “black bear hunting is mostly luck,” that wild turkeys have keen senses of hearing and eyesight (they can see color), why hunting bobcat is “for able-bodied men only,” and why your guide should carry an axe instead of a gun.
He describes fishing tackle and firearms, along with clothing, footwear (of course!) and equipment, including tents, sleeping bags, cooking gear, a “grub list,” even recipes for baked beans, pea soup, venison steaks and roast duck.
This handy, useful guide may be 70 years old, but the information and tips are still valid and relevant today. And it’s great fun to read.
FEAR NO EVIL: TRUE STORIES OF THE MIGHTY EIGHTH
By Charles D. Hamlin
HIS Publishing Group, 2011
150 pages, $16.95
ISBN 978-0-615-51365-2
As the number of World War II veterans rapidly dwindles, it is a pleasure and an inspiration to read their stories before the tales are gone forever.
FEAR NO EVIL is a simple, unvarnished collection of the wartime memories of the crewmen who flew B-17 Flying Fortress bombers in the brutal daylight bombing campaign over Germany from 1943 to 1945.
Editor Charles Hamlin is a native of Rockland, and a World War II veteran of the famed U.S. 8th Army Air Corps, as a teenage ball turret gunner in a B-17. His stories are here, along with the stories of more than 20 other B-17 crew, from pilots and bombardiers, to navigators and tail gunners.
Hamlin and the others do not glorify war, there is no bravado or bluster here. Instead, the reader will find stories of tension and fear, along with the exaltation of surviving another mission, and the grim satisfaction of doing their job well no matter the dangers.
These men offer vivid descriptions of mission planning, fight operations and aerial combat over Germany, as they face heavy concentrations of accurate anti-aircraft fire and the swarming tactics of German fighter planes, while enduring bitter cold and numbing fatigue.
There are also stories of crash-landings, mid-air collisions, parachuting into captivity, daring rescues from the frigid North Sea, and the desperate (often futile) care of wounded men trapped in a crippled aircraft.
One man tells of navigating a plane across the North Atlantic without any instruments, another describes a terrifying aerial encounter with Germany’s new jet fighters, and a third tells of his very first bombing mission where he quickly learned that “this is a game of survival.”
This slim volume is a fitting tribute to the veterans of World War II’s air war.
— Bill Bushnell lives and writes in Harpswell.
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