The Hog Blog

I just finished reading a great, and very informative book by one of the foremost wild pig researchers in this country, John Mayer, along with Lehr Brisbin.  The book, entitled Wild Pigs in the United States, Their History, Comparative Morphology, and Current Status, was sent to me by the PR folks representing the University of Georgia Press.
 
I asked for the copy in part to serve my hunger for more scientific information about these great animals, and also to see if the authors were able to resolve one of the biggest arguments in hog hunting… how to tell a Eurasian boar hybrid from a plain, old, feral hog.  My objectives were, by and large, met within the pages of the book.

There are some scientists out there who truly write like gifted novelists.  Their prose is tight, reasonably colorful, and involving.  Their work flows like great fiction, and you come away both fulfilled and educated.

Mayer and Brisbin are not in that category.  These scientists write like… well… like scientists.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, except that the reading gets really dry.  I was definitely educated by the time I finished, but some of the book was really a chore to get through.  The morphology section, in particular, goes rapidly over the head of the non-taxonomists in the audience as well, and left me reeling for my old college textbooks. 

Literary criticism aside, though, this book was full of great stuff!  Read the rest of this entry »

A little while before Christmas, in the Jesse’s Hunting and Outdoors Journal, I reviewed a couple of books sent to me by Stoeger Publishing.  Stoeger puts out a pile of great titles for the outdoorsman and shooter from a lot of the experts in their fields. 

They’ve since sent a couple of others, including Peter Fiduccia’s Whitetail Strategies: The Ultimate Guide, (which is still on my shelf to be read).  But the other day a new package arrived.  Not expecting anything I tore it open to find The Official NRA Guide to Firearms Assembly: Rifles and Shotguns.  This book includes blow-up drawings and diagrams with basic instructions for assembly and disassembly of all kinds of rifles and shotguns.  Now I don’t spend a lot of time taking my guns apart, because I tend to get myself in trouble when I get it down to the little springs and sears, but I’m pretty confident that with a little past experience and this book, I could do some pretty intensive maintenance on most of the guns in my safe (I’ll still defer work on the semi-autos to the gunsmith). 

Anyway, it’s a nicely put-together piece of work, and I think it would be really handy for any sportsman to have on the shelf.  You never know when you might need pull that shotgun apart, or replace the trigger assembly in your deer rifle.