I recently read a book I quite enjoyed titled "Hunting American Lions." Frank Hibben is the author and it recounts his "study and adventure" in 1933-34 when he was hired by the American Nature Association "to study the American mountain lion before that beautiful animal became extinct."
I am fond of this book for a couple of reasons, one being that it was first published in the year in which I was born, the other is for its style. It's that old time Adventure Magazine style, one of the things they did differently in the past, that other country that Cooper has written about. It's all about the sizzle, and marginally about the steak. It is full of Swash and Buckle, and devoid of statistics. It details some 14 hunts for lion and jaguar, some successful, many not.
Nowhere in its 235 pages does it talk about ballistics, range, bullet weight, powder grains, scope brand, or whether the rifling was left or right hand twist. Twice, it mentions that the weapons they carried were "short barreled lever actions in .30-30" and once it mentions a "heavy revolver in .38 Special." But it does talk a lot about dogs.
They did their hunting with dogs back then, so they might not have been "Real Men." But the author was as fond of those pups as Bearman is of Shash. He dedicated his writings "To those immortals of the trail, Keeno, Old Red, Bugger, Buck and Drive, all gone to the heaven where exciting smells drift over Elysian Fields." Above all, the book is about the chase.
Hibben tells of the hunter's obsession, the heat of the chase, of spurring his horse across ground where he wouldn't have led it on foot had he been sane. He tells of sleeping out three days at a time with no food or bedroll when a sudden chase took an unexpected turn. He talks of cuts and bruises, of riding off a cliff in a storm in the dark (his horse also survived, well skinned up, but no broken bones).
He also details the kill and how anti-climactic it generally is and how he feels about that. He also discusses the attempt to make the ending more exciting and "climactic" by taking the lion alive by lassoing it and "roping" it out of the tree. He also notes that the .38 special was not a stopper in those days, either, and describes what happened when the lion that fell instantly dead to one .38 bullet suddenly changed its mind and decided it was still very much alive. He talks a lot about the ones that got away.
The book I have is a new edition, printed in 1995 by High-Lonesome Books, P.O. Box 878, Silver City, New Mexico 88062 ISBN# 0-944383-25-4. At the front of the book, the author's foreword and the note from the publisher are extremely timely. The author notes that "The American mountain lion has not become extinct. Actually, their numbers have increased. Mountain lions have reappeared in some of their original habitats where they were killed out many years ago. But professional hunters hired to kill mountain lions have disappeared." Mayhap non-professional hunters could be next.
But here is the part of the publisher's note that caused me to buy the book in the first place. From reading it, I could tell he is on my side, I could tell he understands the situation, I could tell he "gets it." (I have added a few line breaks to make it more readable in e-mail.)
"As HUNTING AMERICAN LIONS is returned to print, the cougar continues to thrive in available habitats while the lion hunting that Professor Hibben writes so well of is under siege. The neo-puritans are at work, with the goal of the prohibition of all hunting as their goal, and big game hunting with hounds is their current focus of attention.
Already, lion hunting has been outlawed entirely in California. Bear hunting with hounds has recently been outlawed in Colorado, and lion and bear hunting with dogs is now against the law in Oregon. Other campaigns by the neo-puritans can be expected and the legal pursuit of game with hounds may be lost in time, state by state.
Of course, this will merely drive the chase "underground," what always happens when honest people see that the legitimate has been proscribed by the intolerant. The human animal will continue to seek the singular thrall of the chase just as we continue to seek a crackling fire in the evening, albeit the furnace in the basement keeps us warm enough. So long as we protect their habitats, we will have our game; so long as we have the game, we will have our hunt. Society can no more eliminate hunting than religion."
The author still lives in Albuquerque, though of course he's an old man now with an artificial knee. He's even in the book, so if anyone has real strong feelings about his hunting methods, I suppose you can call him up and call him names. As for me, you can call me anything but late for dinner, and I'm just not gonna care. I just want to thank Frank Hibben for teaching me about one more thing I want to do before some idiot neo-puritanX-Mozilla-Status: 0009I can't. I'm not getting any younger either, so I've already found a guide and am saving my pennies for a hunt next year. I don't know if I'll like hunting with hounds or not, but I'm damn sure going to try it once to find out.