The Fair Chase Chronicles

Book excerpt: Hunter, writer, university professor and wildlife biologist Walt Prothero claims that our humanity evolved from our hunting traditions, and without those traditions Homo sapiens would never have appeared on the African savannas. Bipedal locomotion freed up the hands to make and use tools--stone hand-axes, wooden spears, flaked stone blades. Without those first crude tools, smart-phones, television, modern medicine and writing would not exist. The first part of this book deals with ethics and philosophy of modern hunting, and what hunters must do today to keep hunting alive tomorrow, including fair-chase hunting. The first part of the book is also liberally sprinkled with hunting anecdotes, the oldest form of human communication. The second portion of the book consists of hunting stories, all with a common theme--fair-chase hunting. If hunting is to survive into the 21st century, it must evolve as humans have evolved. Of course the reader may read a story simply for the enjoyment. Prothero has graced the masthead of Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield and Wild Sheep magazines and readers of such magazines are seldom interested in ethics or philosophy. The short narratives in this tome are as taut and adrenaline-pumping as any novel, and few readers will yawn at stalking man-eating crocodiles; at charging grizzlies and elephants; of solo expeditions into the Far-North wilderness; of chasing polar bears by dogsled on the Arctic Ocean icepack. ENJOY!